Interessante e pieno di spunti, rivoluzionario per l'epoca, ma...a livello stilistico è davvero contorto. Le idee e le argomentazioni presentate offrono molti spunti, così come è interessante anche la lettura dell'opera stessa, consideratone l'intento. È proprio questo suo intento utilitaristico che forse oggi ai nostri occhi passa (erroneamente) in secondo piano rispetto alle idee sulla pena di morte e sulla tortura. Tuttavia lo stile è davvero pesante e contorto. A livello sintattico vi sono diversi periodi confusi o esageratamente lunghi e contorti, cosa che non facilita certo la lettura e che ha inciso pesantemente sulla mia valutazione.

Cesare Beccaria was an 18th century criminologist and philosopher who belonged to an intellectual group known as “The Academy of Fists” which set their focus on reforming the justice system. Beccaria noticed that there weren’t many publishing’s on reform so he wrote his own. Beccaria believed that everyone possessed free will, the ability for rational thought, and power to have self-interested thoughts, he believed that when people commit crimes they do so because they freely chose to do so in their own self-interest which sometimes don’t match up with societies interests. In Beccaria’s essay he explains that many of the criminal’s choices can be anticipated, society should take steps to discourage and manipulate these choices other than just setting a penalty severe enough to scare them from committing these acts. Beccaria believed in “social contract” which is the belief that the government is in place solely to serve the people and in turn, the people were the source of the government’s political power which means the people can give or restrict governmental power, or basically make their own rules. He also believed in Utilitarianism, the belief that the government should only legislate in ways that provide the greatest good for its people. In Beccaria’s time things were dealt with in an “eye for an eye” sort of way where your punishment was retribution for the crime committed, he believed that punishment needed to be practical and useful to the people and also make the world a happier place to live in. Of Crimes and Punishments is overall a very interesting informational essay if you’re interested in law, it goes through all sides of the argument, the government’s view, societies view, and the criminal’s view. I really enjoyed this book since I would like to be a lawyer, and it gave me a really good understanding of how the justice system works and what punishments are just and which ones don’t benefit society or the criminal.

Marsilio Publishers

Cesare Beccaria è un uomo del 1700, ma con la sua mentalità era già secoli avanti. La mia stima verso questa figura, ancora oggi di tale rilievo, è inesplicabile a parole.

Questo libriccino è stato capace di influenzare molte riforme della giustizia, nei secoli passati, tra cui quella di Pietro Leopoldo d'Asburgo, sovrano del Granducato di Toscana, che nel 1786 fu il primo in Europa ad abolire la pena di morte. Beccaria, pur non essendo un giurista, si occupa di tutto il sistema giudiziario. Le sue idee sostanzialmente sono queste: le leggi nascono per garantire l'ordine e la sicurezza di tutti, devono essere chiare e comprensibili per tutti; le punizioni devo essere proporzionate alla gravità del reato e devono essere certe: solo la certezza della pena può prevenire i reati, che è poi il fine di qualsiasi legislazione. E veniamo ai 2 pilastri della sua riflessione: l'inutilità e l'infamia della tortura e della pena di morte. La tortura è infamante per uno Stato che si dichiara civile e illuminato dalla ragione. Sotto tortura, spesso non si dice la verità, ma quello che il torturatore vuole sentire. Gli innocenti ammettono delitti che non hanno commesso; i colpevoli, se sono forti e robusti e sono capaci di resistere al supplizio, non confesserebbero e potrebbero essere giudicati innocenti. La sofferenza disumana che lo Stato provoca ad un altro individuo non può essere tollerata. Così come la pena di morte, che è solo uno "spettacolo" passeggero che non serve a fare da deterrente, un delitto di cui si macchia lo Stato. Non è l'intensità della pena che fa diminuire i crimini, ma l'estensione nel tempo. Per Beccaria, niente è peggio che vedere un individuo privato a vita della sua libertà con l'ergastolo, che egli propone come alternativa valida alla pena di morte.
Insomma, in un mondo in cui ancora esiste la pena di morte e viene praticata la tortura, le riflessioni di Beccaria hanno valore, pur essendo del 1763/64

On Crimes and Punishment, Cesare Beccaria argues for different punishments.
He starts with a famous quote,

"Every punishment which does not arise from absolute necessity is tyrannical." -- Montesquieu

Laws are conditions under which Men are united.
Punishments are necessities to defend public liberty.

Beccaria writes on all types of crimes, including Adultery, Suicide and Sodomy.
How do you convict Suicide? After all, the person has died.

It seemed that he has a strong case to argue for most of crimes and punishment.
One quote which I loved was, "The Laws is greater than of those by whom they are violated, the risk of torturing an innocent person is greater."

I imagine for death penalty, torture, the risk of inflicting pain on innocent people is greater. As I was learning about death penalty in the United States, they abolished it around 1850's - 1890's due to a lot of pressure from Social Justice groups. A few states still have death penalty.

During the late 1800s, Some people find it entertaining when someone was hanged in public. They would drink in public while watching execution. Now these are not in the book.

Overall a great introduction to Crimes and Punishment.

Deus Vult
--Gottfried--

Cesare Beccaria’s On Crime and Punishment (1764) is an essay that was published pretty early in the Age of Enlightenment. It was influential In France, England and the US, among other countries, and it is a superb illustration of the humanitarian ideals that the Enlightenment thinkers propagated.

The essay itself is rather short and consists of 47 small sections which deal with specific subjects.

In general, Beccaria’s thesis can be summarized as the following theorem:

-tA punishment is no act of violence of the society against the individual, if and only if:
-tIt is public, direct and necessary
-tIt is as mild as possible
-tIt is proportional to the crime (impact and species)
-tIt is determined by law (i.e. objective)

In other words, Beccaria wanted to do away with the arbitrariness and inhumanity of penal law as it was practised in most countries back then. In the conditions of humane penal law we see all the Enlightenment themes surfacing: the equality of all people regardless of class and status, the autonomy of each individual, the logico-mathematical approach to social questions, objectivity as a social criterion.

Beccaria’s theorem is the result of an analysis of the fundamental issues surrounding criminal punishment. He places the origin of penal law in the social contract (fictive or not). To overcome all the problems of individual life people band together and in this they voluntarily give up their right to violence, etc. In this there arises a common interest, which has to be defended by and embodied in a higher authority. The state is born. All the while, human passions being what they are, and the multiplicity of mutually exclusive private interests, it becomes necessary to institute criminal law and enforce it through punishment.

But punishment seems to be an offense against the social contract, which was deliberately signed with the aim of protection of individual rights. This tension is inevitable, but it can be mitigated through the methods of division of powers and strict application of laws.

For Beccaria, the sovereign is lawmaker and its task is to offer a complete and understandable system of determining laws, as well as to continuously update the laws when experience demands it. The judge, or the jury, is not allowed to interpret the law: his sole function is applying syllogistic reasoning to the case at hand. The law and its prescribed punishment are the major premise; the current case is the minor premise; and the conclusion of the syllogism is either freedom or punishment for the suspect. In other words: the sole function of judge or jury is to evaluate the evidence and witness reports, and to conclude whether the suspect is guilty or not. The law prescribes itself, so to speak. This is an important point that Beccaria emphasizes throughout the essay. Arbitrariness and selectivity in penal law leads to tyranny and inhumanity.

For Beccaria the goal of punishment is simply the prevention of the crime being committed again, either by the same person or by others. We inflict bodily harm on someone in order to prevent the unfortunate situation from recurring. That is, we purposefully break the social compact and in doing so, we have to ensure that all punishments inflict the highest impressions on the public at large at the smallest bodily harm for the person involved.

Another very important point in the essay is Beccaria’s total rejection of the death penalty. It is barbarous, ineffective (the worst crimes are committed irrationally) and goes fundamentally against the social compact. But most important of all, it is not punishment at all – the criminal is instantaneously killed and that’s that. Better is to punish him by lifelong slavery (forced labour), since the length and severity of the punishment is a much better preventive measure. Also, this type of punishment should be reserved for only the worst species of crimes: those that endanger the whole of society and/or the sovereign (i.e. high treason).

Most of the essay is concerned with very specific cases, for example the species of crime and the appropriate punishment for each. This is all rather uninteresting for a review. So let me end with a particular interesting notion of Beccaria: the family as a threat to liberty. He observes that a society of 100.000 people which is founded on family structure (given the average size of five members per family) has only 20.000 free citizens. The head of the family is a tyrant in the family sphere, yet he is free in broader society – the 80.000 remaining citizens are oppressed on both accounts. Only in a society that binds all individuals – as individual – to the law, can freedom for all be guaranteed. This breakdown of inherited social structures is a familiar theme in Enlightenment thought – whether it’s the breakdown of absolutism, religious dogmatism, economic mercantilism, or family structure.

In short, On Crime and Punishment is a typical Enlightenment plea for the abolishment of tyranny, barbarity and inequality, and the establishment of personal autonomy, equality (before the law) and humanity. It is a sympathetic little text which was very important in reforming the penal system of many a country back then. It still breathes a very lively breath to modern readers, forcing one to reflect on the principles of established norms or laws (as institutionalized norms) that are taken for granted.

Muito interessante pelo valor histórico. Volta no tempo.

The hinge upon which the successful movement to outlaw state sponsored torture as a regular and legal part of criminal proceedings and ultimately to make it a crime against humanity which only the most barbaric, pariah-like governments would employ.

Beccaria was socially clumsy--he was a complete failure in the erudite salons of Paris where Voltaire sponsored him--and wrote very little besides this small book. However it took the world by storm, translated by the leading intellectuals of the day and adopted as policy by states throughout Europe.

Just about every history and legal analysis of torture cites "On Crime and Punishments" as the primary document in the west concerning the abolition of torture.

Non sono una grandissima fan, ma riconosco che si tratti di una lettura essenziale non solo per chi opera in quel campo, ma per chiunque abbia a cuore la libertà e i diritti umani.

leitura interessante pra ter contato com a fonte de diversas mudanças e reformas importantes no direito e processo penal, MAS como um livro escrito no século XVIII por um homem, nobre, branco e europeu, possui algumas (tantas) coisas absurdas.

I read the version with commentary from Voltaire. An excellent treatise forming the foundation of the classical school of criminology. This work (among other classic books and treatises) had a massive influence on the development of the American criminal justice system.

As Essay on Crimes and Punishments by Cesare Beccaria

Should a crime be punished according to its results or by its intends? The centuries old question will be finally answered in this review, so bear with me!

The field of crimes and punishment is a very important one for libertarians. But it doesn’t get all the light it deserves because libertarianism is fuelled in the first place by economics which has not much to say upon this. Happily, I came across this essay by pure luck, I wanted to listen to some Voltaire on LibriVox and it happens that this essay was listed under his name, because he wrote a commentary for a translation. The book was published in 1764 and I’m astonished to see the Enlightenment in some respect being so far advanced of our own times. While it is true that the book was very influential and many ideas got put into practice, there still remains some reforms to be done. It’s the first book of the Italian enlightenment I came across (Frankly, I wasn’t sure that they had one ;-) which motivated me to listen to it as well.

I’m very happy that the author takes my sides in some questions I consider key but unfortunately we also have our differences.
He is against the maxim that the spirit of the law is to be considered rather than the exact wording of the law. He argues that to adopt this would be to give away to a torrent of opinions and it would lead to the same law being implemented differently. And I would add, it would open the door for politically motivated verdicts. We are not alone in this opinion, the great individual anarchist and abolitionist Spooner was vehemently on this side when he examined whether there were constitutional laws in the US that provided for slavery (there are none).

On the other hand, the minor conservative-liberal thinker Erik von Kuehnelt Leddihn ( reviewed his Leftism before) thinks that it’s the spirit of the laws that should be taken into account over the strict letter, though his comment was directed towards constitutional law and not penal law (This is not always strictly separated, here in Switzerland we have some part of the penal law written directly into the constitutional. This happened in the last decade of the first part of the 00s as the politicians refused to put into law a popular petition that wanted harder punishment of non-Swiss criminals, so they started another popular petition where they put their demands directly into the constitution. This didn’t help though much, because we do not have a constitutional court). But the question remains, whether it is penal or constitutional law, or any other branch of the law, why the spirit of the law should be taken into account? Were the people formulating it too dumb to put correctly into words what should apply? I hardly doubt. And if so, the solution would not be to adhere to spirits (always a bad idea) but to correct the faulty laws. It’s really as simple as that. But interest groups make it appear to be more than that in order to achieve more political power for judges.

Beccaria dealt with the question of how much to punish a crime. For this he developed an interesting scale of crime, that indicated how much a certain class of crimes was hurting society, with the first one being the worst crimes:
1: (Those who immediately tend to a dissolution of society) High Treason
2. Crimes that are destructive to the security of individuals. Security is the reason why humans create and enter society (B. is here influenced by Hobbes), therefore highest punishment should be applied (This contradicts his saying that the crimes of class 1 should be punished to most severe). Examples given are murders and robberies. Rape would obviously also belong to this category.
..
N (The last being the class of crimes that do the smallest possible injustices to a private member of this society). Crimes which disturb public tranquillity. Tumults and riots in the streets.

The punishment should be the greater the lower the number on the scales to which the crime belongs. Because, if two crimes would be punished equally, who are on different parts of the scale, there would be nothing to deter men from committing the greater crimes, as it is attended with greater advantage.

Here we see the first departure from libertarian principles. A libertarian would have been more interested in a scale that shows how classes of crimes hurt the individual (rather than society). Although, in this case, the scales would come out almost identically. High treason would still be on top, because it still threatens individual liberty, albeit only indirectly. Later on, we’ll see how this different approach leads Beccaria to set up some wrong principles based on flawed logics.

The second point I fully agree with Beccaria and which is one that I think is of utmost importance, is that those err who believe that the greatness of crimes depends on the intention of the criminal. The author argues that it would be necessary to form a particular code for every individual and a penal law for every crime. Also, from modern economics (long after Beccaria’s time), we learn that it is not possible to learn about a person’s intention with certainty. All that a judge can make then is educated guesses and this can easily give hand to corruption and grave injustices.
Beccaria informs us that the degree of sin is dependent upon the malignity of the heart, which is impenetrable by finite beings (Beccaria was aware of this important insight of Austrian Economics). But the heart is penetrable by god, who punishes or forgives our sins. Beccaria asks: “How then can the degree of sin serve as a standard to determine the degree of crimes ?”
To make intentionality a factor in punishment is to confuse the different concepts of crime and sin and make “gods” out of our judges. Apotheosis is never a good idea to put into law.

Beccaria argues that every citizen should know when he’s innocent or guilty. Censors or arbitrary magistrates should not be necessary. He says that the uncertainty of crimes have sacrificed more people to secret tyranny than have ever suffered from public or solemn cruelty. This is super important today with the myriad of laws (often of great length) that legislation is putting out. If you want to know if you’re doing something innocent or guilty, you would have to spend your whole life reading laws, but you would never catch up since legislation is putting out new laws. There are several books dealing with this problem, one that was just recommended to me is Harvey A. Silverglate’s Three Felonies A Day. The person who recommended it to me also gave me this great quotation by Tacitus: “The more numerous the laws, the more corrupt the government."

He further argues that when Police do not act according to the code of laws, they open the door to tyranny.

According to Beccaria, the object of punishment is to deter the criminal from further doing the crime and do deter others from doing it. Punishment should be chosen so as to make the strongest and most lasting impression on potential criminals while doing the least torment to the body of the punished.

It is obvious that there is a conflict of reconciliation between these two points. And it seems to be in a potential conflict with his scales of crimes, where crimes are punished according to the class they belong. How is this to be reconciled? Beccaria offers no direct help. It becomes worse when Beccaria adds that a punishment shouldn’t be disproportionate to the crime. It’s hard to reach a verdict that does justice to every criterion. As a libertarian, to me the criterion that a punishment should be proportionate to the crime, is by far the most important and the only one that should be used. If it happens to deter others from doing the crime, that’s all the better. And if it isn’t as horrendous as to pervert the rest of society that’s another great silver lining. But proportionality should really be the key here, and while Beccaria mentions it, he neglects it at other times.

Concerning as to who should be allowed to testify, Beccaria held some modern, humanistic views:
Women (He rejects the argument that women are weak)
Those already punished with capital punishment
Those who are branded with infamy
In all these cases, they have no inclination to give false testimonies.
Credibility of the witness should be only determined on the relation with the potential criminal, whether that relation was based on hatred or friendship.
One witness is not good enough. And, very interestingly: The credibility of a witness diminishes as the atrociousness of the crime increases.

There are two kinds of evidence: Perfect and imperfect (mostly what we today would call circumstantial). Perfect evidence excludes the possibility of innocence, only one is therefore needed.

He formulates another very important maxim: All trials should be public.

He says that secret accusations are bad.

He is against capital punishment. He even indiscriminately calls capital punishment murder, which is plainly wrong and offensive. It is only murder in the case that the defendant was innocent or the defendant did a crime that was lesser than murder (i.e. robbery).
Beccharia calls capital punishment barbaric and argues that it perverts the minds of the citizens, which is a good argument imo.

Now, there’s a part in the book that deals with the prevention of crimes. One solution is to give out rewards, to someone for something. I have completely forgotten what it was all about. Another way to lower crimes (which I agree to), is to ‘perfect’ education. But for this, the education system would have to become privatized. All in all, I found this part of the book to be the weakest.

What I find to be very wrong, and indeed dangerous, is his view that the right to punishment belongs to society rather than the individual. From this he deduces that the prince has no right to pardon anyone. A conclusion I can agree with. But he also says that the offended have no right to prevent the punishment and with this I cannot concur. Here he’s far removed from the anarcho-capitalistic position. The state (or whoever is in charge of criminal cases) has only a right to go after the perpetrator with the victim’s consent. If that consent is missing, nobody has the right to judicially go after the suspect. In a murder case, or in cases where the victim(s) end up in a coma (or are in one from the start) or are in a similar condition, the consent is assumed to be given (In some cases, it may be overridden by the wishes of the victim’s loved-ones, but how that is supposed to work out in reality is not the topic of this review).

This is all I have to say about this marvellous book but it came with a commentary of Voltaire, which I also want to mention. He brings the case of a young, poor, unmarried mother who murdered her newborn baby child as she was overburdened and apparently didn’t know how to deal with the situation in a less gruesome way. The mother was condemned to death and Voltaire criticized this. This was surely a hard and heart-breaking verdict, but having capital punishment in place, how could the verdict have been different? As Beccaria points out, it’s the outcome of the crime and not the mothers alleged intentions that have to be considered. And since Beccaria believes that it’s the society, not the victim (or victim’s loved ones) that has the right to punish, there’s no mitigating circumstances to be looked for. The reason here, why Beccaria would be against capital punishment is that he is against capital punishment’s per say. So I wonder, whether Voltaire has actually understood the book.

Further on, Voltaire cites The City of God by Saint Augustine. I found that interesting because I’m listening to this book whenever I walk my pug.

Voltaire says that kings should always sign death warrants before a capital punishment is executed. So as to make sure there’s no mistake.

Also, Voltaire introduces the difference between natural law and political law: “I CALL natural laws, those which nature has dictated in all ages, and to every people, for the maintenance of the principles of that Justice which nature, notwithstanding all that has been said against it, has implanted in our hearts. Theft, violence, homicide, ingratitude to indulgent parents, perjury committed to injure, not to assist, an innocent person, and conspiracy against our native country, are positive crimes, every where more or less severely, and always justly punished.” And “I call those, political laws, that are made to meet a present emergency, whether for the purpose of strengthening the power of government, or the prevention of future misfortune. For example ; it is apprehended that the enemy may receive intelligence from the inhabitants of a city ; you shut the gates immediately, and you forbid any one to pass the ramparts, on pain of death.” This is a similar distinction as between natural law and positive law or malum in se and malum prohibitum.