~On Crimes and Punishments~Cesare Beccaria wrote the book "On Crimes and Punishments" with his "Academy of Fists" as a recommendation for criminal punishment. The Academy of Fists was a society he created with his friends to get rid of and protest economic disorder, bureaucratic petty tyranny, religious narrow-mindedness, and intellectual pedantry.This book was created based on Enlightenment principles, which he used to plead in behalf of reason and humanity. He wanted to steer people away from the death penalty because it showed a weak government. This book discusses that governments should spend time trying to figure out how to limit crime, not how to torture those who commit it. The death penalty was thought to be unethical for two main reasons which are discussed in this book. They are that the state does not possess the right to take lives, and that capital punishment is neither a useful nor a necessary form of punishment. Beccaria's idea of punishment was meant to be similar to the crime committed, unless it was a violence offence. In the case of a violence offence physical labor would be the penalty. In this way the punishments were to try and limit crimes, not kill who ever committed them, making punishments a teacher. Most places rejected Beccaria's ideas. This is partialy because the Catholic Church at the time used torture and death as a punishment, so he went against the church. The Grand Duchy of Tuscany was the first to abolish the death penalty, soon afterwards many other nations followed this example. |
"For a punishment to be just
it should consist of only such gradations of intensity as suffice to deter men from committing crimes." |