Turn-of-the century Argentine political leaders were deeply influenced by new ideas about the origin and treatment of criminality developed by the Italian positivist school of criminology. According to this school, crime was not the fruit of the criminal's wickedness, as classic penology had claimed, but was rather the result of a complex web of social and psycho-biological determinations of which the criminal had been a victim. This pathology called “crime” could be corrected if its origin was scientifically determined and if the new methods of rehabilitation prescribed for criminals and potential criminals were enforced. Although not all of the premises of the criminological school led by Lombroso, Ferri, and Garofalo were accepted uncritically in Argentina, the basic principles of the new science were widely adopted by jurists, doctors, hygienists and psychiatrists. These ideas were received in the context of massive European immigration, accelerated urbanization, and the emergence of a large working class.