The Origins of Scientific Evidence: Salvatore Ottolenghi’s Police School

• Main Author: Loredana Garlati
• Format: Article
• Language: Spanish
• Published: Instituto Brasileiro de Direito Processual Penal 2021-08-01
• Series: Revista Brasileira de Direito Processual Penal
• Subjects: scuola di polizia scientifica; ottolenghi, salvatore; antropometria; dattiloscopia.
• Online Access: http://www.ibraspp.com.br/revista/index.php/RBDPP/article/view/597

The essay deals with the steps that led to the birth of the Scientific Police School (Higher School from 1925), thanks to the work of Salvatore Ottolenghi. The School was founded in 1902 in Rome and aimed to teach both police and investigative police officers a scientific method to best perform their tasks: in the former case, the prevention of crimes; in the latter one, providing the judiciary with “objective” data in order to ascertain the procedural truth. The survey gives the chance to focus on a culturally lively period, in which the fideistic enthusiasm towards the so-called auxiliary sciences (anthropology, psychology, forensic medicine, statistics, and so forth) came on the scene of criminal trials, also thanks to the boost given by the Positive School. Particular attention was paid to anthropometry, developed by Bertillon, and dactyloscopy, also thanks to the studies of the Italian Gasti. It was the dawn of the so-called scientific proof, which raised questions – asked even today – about the role of the judge; the legitimacy of practices accused to be invasive and to violate personal rights; the relationship between science and law and between scientific proof and discretionary power (or intime conviction) of the judge.