Napoleone Colajanni (Castrogiovanni, 27 April 1847 – Castrogiovanni, 2 September 1921) was an Italian writer, journalist, criminologist, socialist and politician. In the 1880s he abandoned republicanism for socialism, and became Italy's leading theoretical writer on the issue for a time. He has been called the father of Sicilian socialism. Due to the Socialist party's discourse of Marxist class struggle, he reverted in 1894 to his original republicanism. Colajanni was an ardent critic of the Lombrosian school in criminology. In 1890 he was elected in the national Italian Chamber of Deputies and was re-elected in all subsequent parliaments until his death in September 1921. Redshirt Colajanni was born in Castrogiovanni (now Enna) in Sicily in a family of intense patriotic feelings. His father Luigi Colajanni and mother Concetta Falautano were small entrepreneurs in the sulfur industry. At a young age he was inspired by Giuseppe Garibaldi and attempted to join the Redshirts in the Expedition of the Thousand for the unification of Italy in 1860 escaping to Palermo at the age of 13, but without success. A relative recognised the young boy and brought him back home. Two years later, in 1862, when Garibaldi passed by Castrogiovanni in his Expedition against Rome, Colajanni joined the troops. He reached the Aspromonte, where he was captured by government troops and deported to the island of Palmaria. Liberated after an amnesty he returned to Sicily but volunteered again with Garibaldi's troops in the Third Italian War of Independence in 1866 and participated in the Battle of Bezzecca in Trentino, northern Italy, in July 1866. After the war, he finished school and started to study medicine in Genoa. He made contact with the Republicans of Giuseppe Mazzini and started to write for Il Dovere (The Duty). In 1867 he returned to Castrogiovanni due to the death of his father, but immediately left to join Garibaldi again in his new campaign to capture Rome. He arrived too late when the Battle of Mentana – in which Garibaldi was defeated by Papal troops and a French auxiliary force – had already ended. He took up his study in medicine again, this time in Naples. On February 26, 1869, he was arrested for taking part in a Republican conspiracy. He remained in prison until November 17, when an amnesty was declared because of the birth of the future king of Italy, Victor Emmanuel III of Italy. Towards positivist