Primitivo González del Alba

Primitivo González del Alba (February 24, 1849 – 1913) was a Spanish jurist, legal writer and criminologist from Burgos in northern Spain. He was involved in a number of famous criminal trials in the course of his career as a Public Prosecutor [''Fiscal''] and a judge, which took him to many parts of Spain and culminated in his appointment in 1911 to the highest court in Madrid, as a ''Magistrado del Tribunal Supremo de Justicia.''

One of the leading Spanish criminologists of his day, his writings contributed to the debate on the underlying causes of crime. In particular, he stressed the importance of social factors in fostering crime, while maintaining, nevertheless, that individual free will [''libre albedrío''] still played a crucial role. In formulating this view, and by also articulating his belief that criminology would always be an evolving and never a static science, he challenged both the main schools of criminology (the Positivist school and the Classical school) and their rigid, opposing ideologies. Provided by Wikipedia