On Crimes and Punishments

Not to be confused with Crime and Punishment.

On Crimes and Punishments (Italian: Dei delitti e delle pene [dei deˈlitti e ddelle ˈpeːne]) is a treatise written by Cesare Beccaria in 1764.

Frontpage of the original Italian edition Dei delitti e delle pene.

The treatise condemned torture and the death penalty and was a founding work in the field of penology.

History

Beccaria and the two brothers Pietro and Alessandro Verri started an important cultural reformist movement centered around their journal Il Caffè ("The Coffee House"), which ran from the summer of 1764 for about two years, and was inspired by Addison and Steele's literary magazine The Spectator and other such journals. Il Caffè represented an entirely new cultural moment in Northern Italy. With their Enlightenment rhetoric and their balance between topics of socio-political and literary interest, the anonymous contributors held the interest of the educated classes in Italy, introducing recent thought such as that of Voltaire and Denis Diderot.

On Crimes and Punishments marked the high point of Milan Enlightenment. In it, Beccaria put forth some of the first modern arguments against the death penalty. It was also the first full work of penology, advocating reform of the criminal law system. The book was the first full-scale work to tackle criminal reform and to suggest that criminal justice should conform to rational principles. It is a less theoretical work than the writings of Hugo Grotius, Samuel von Pufendorf and other comparable thinkers, and as much a work of advocacy as of theory. In this essay, Beccaria reflected on the convictions of the Il Caffè group, who sought to cause reform through Enlightenment discourse. In 1765, André Morellet produced a French translation of On Crimes and Punishments. His translation was widely criticized for the liberties he took with the text.^[1]

Morellet believed that the Italian text of Beccaria required some clarification. He, therefore, omitted parts and sometimes added to them. However, he mainly changed the structure of the essay by moving, merging, or splitting chapters. These interventions were known to experts, but because Beccaria himself had indicated in a letter to Morellet that he fully agreed with him, it was assumed that these adaptations also had Beccaria's consent in substance. The differences are so great, however, that the book from the hands of Morellet became quite another book than the book that Beccaria wrote.^[2]

Principles

 

Illustration from the 6th edition.

On Crimes and Punishments was the first critical analysis of capital punishment that demanded its abolition. Beccaria described the death penalty as:

the war of a nation against a citizen ... It appears absurd to me that the laws, which are the expression of the public will and which detest and punish homicide, commit murder themselves, and in order to dissuade citizens from assassination, commit public assassination.^[3]

Beccaria cited Montesquieu, who stated that "every punishment which does not arise from absolute necessity is tyrannical".^[4]

Regarding the "Proportion between Crimes and Punishment", Beccaria stated that:

Crimes of every kind should be less frequent, in proportion to the evil they produce to society ... If an equal punishment be ordained for two crimes that injure society in different degrees, there is nothing to deter men from committing the greater as often as it is attended with greater advantage.^[5]

Beccaria also argued against torture, believing it was cruel and unnecessary.^[6]

Style

The book's serious message is put across in a clear and animated style, particularly upon a deep sense of humanity and urgency at unjust suffering. This humane sentiment is what makes Beccaria appeal for rationality in the laws.

Suicide is a crime which seems not to admit of punishment, properly speaking; for it cannot be inflicted but on the innocent, or upon an insensible dead body. In the first case, it is unjust and tyrannical, for political liberty supposes all punishments entirely personal; in the second, it has the same effect, by way of example, as the scourging a statue. Mankind love life too well; the objects that surround them, the seducing phantom of pleasure, and hope, that sweetest error of mortals, which makes men swallow such large draughts of evil, mingled with a very few drops of good, allure them too strongly, to apprehend that this crime will ever be common from its unavoidable impunity. The laws are obeyed through fear of punishment, but death destroys all sensibility. What motive then can restrain the desperate hand of suicide?...But, to return: – If it be demonstrated that the laws which imprison men in their own country are vain and unjust, it will be equally true of those which punish suicide; for that can only be punished after death, which is in the power of God alone; but it is no crime with regard to man, because the punishment falls on an innocent family. If it be objected, that the consideration of such a punishment may prevent the crime, I answer, that he who can calmly renounce the pleasure of existence, who is so weary of life as to brave the idea of eternal misery, will never be influenced by the more distant and less powerful considerations of family and children.

— Of Crimes and Punishments^[7]

Influence

 

Dei delitti e delle pene (1766), frontpage, 6th edition.

Within eighteen months, the book passed through six editions.^[8][9] It was translated into French in 1766 and published with an anonymous commentary by Voltaire.^[10] An English translation appeared in 1767, and it was translated into several other languages.^[11] The book was read by all the luminaries of the day, including, in the United States, by John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.^[12][13]

The book's principles influenced thinking on criminal justice and punishment of offenders, leading to reforms in Europe, especially in France and at the court of Catherine II of Russia. In England, Beccaria's ideas fed into the writings on punishment of Sir William Blackstone (selectively), and more wholeheartedly those of William Eden and Jeremy Bentham.^[14] The reforms he had advocated led to the abolition of the death penalty in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the first state in the world to take this measure.

Thomas Jefferson, in his "Commonplace Book", copied a passage from Beccaria related to the issue of gun control: "Laws that forbid the carrying of arms . . . disarm only those who are neither inclined nor determined to commit crimes . . . Such laws make things worse for the assaulted and better for the assailants; they serve rather to encourage than to prevent homicides, for an unarmed man may be attacked with greater confidence than an armed man." His only notation on this passage was, "False idee di utilità" ("false ideas of utility").^[15][16][17]

References

1. Cesare Beccaria (1986). On Crimes And Punishments. Hackett. p. 17. ISBN 978-0-915145-97-3. Retrieved 21 July 2012.
2. "Over misdaden en straffen door Cesare Beccaria, (1738–1794) · Bibliotheek · Boom uitgevers den Haag".
3. Franklin E. Zimring (24 September 2004). The Contradictions of American Capital Punishment. Oxford University Press. pp. 34–. ISBN 978-0-19-029237-9.
4. Beccaria, ch. 2 "Of the Right to Punish"
5. Beccaria, ch. 6, "Of the Proportion between Crimes and Punishment"
6. See An Essay on Crimes and Punishment translated from the Italian with a Commentary attributed to Mons. Voltaire, Translated from the French (4th ed.). London: E. Newbery. 1785 [1775]. pp. 57–69. Retrieved 29 May 2016 – via Internet Archive.
7. See An Essay on Crimes and Punishment translated from the Italian with a Commentary attributed to Mons. Voltaire, Translated from the French (4th ed.). London: E. Newbery. 1785 [1775]. pp. 132–139. Retrieved 29 May 2016 – via Internet Archive.
8. See Dei delitti e delle pene (3th ed.). Lausanna [i.e. Livorno?]. 1765 – via BEIC.
9. See Dei delitti e delle pene, Edizione sesta di nuovo corretta ed accresciuta (6th ed.). Harlem [i.e. Paris?]. 1766 – via BEIC.
10. See also Traité des délits et des peines. Traduit de l'italien, d'après la troisieme edition revue, corrigée & augmentée par l'auteur. Avec des additions de l'auteur qui n'ont pas encore paru en italien. Nouvelle édition plus correcte que les précédentes (3rd ed.). Philadelphia. 1766. Retrieved 29 May 2016 – via Gallica.
11. See, for example, Tratado de los delitos y de las penas, Traducido del Italiano por D. Juan Antonio de las Casas. Madrid: Por Joachin Ibarra, Impressor de Camera de S.M. 1774. Retrieved 30 May 2016 – via Google Books.
12. See https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Adams/05-03-02-0001-0004-0016
13. See https://www.monticello.org/site/research-and-collections/laws-forbid-carrying-armsspurious-quotation
14. Draper, Anthony J. (2000). "Cesare Beccaria's influence on English discussions of punishment, 1764–1789". History of European Ideas. 26 (3–4): 177–99. doi:10.1016/S0191-6599(01)00017-1. S2CID 145297894.
15. "Laws that forbid the carrying of arms...(Spurious Quotation)".
16. Halbrook, S.P. (1989). A Right to Bear Arms: State and Federal Bills of Rights and Constitutional Guarantees. Contributions in political science. Greenwood Press. p. 54. ISBN 978-0-313-26539-6. Retrieved 3 July 2017.
17. Halbrook, S.P. (2008). The Founders' Second Amendment: Origins of the Right to Bear Arms. Independent studies in political economy. Ivan R. Dee. p. 132. ISBN 978-1-61578-014-3. Retrieved 3 July 2017.

External links

• On Crimes and Punishment by Cesare Bonesana di Beccaria: at Online Library of Liberty
•   Works related to An Essay on Crimes and Punishments at Wikisource
•   An Essay on Crimes and Punishments public domain audiobook at LibriVox