Cesare Beccaria

Cesare Beccaria, Marquis of Gualdrasco and Villareggio, was an Italian writer, philosopher, jurist and economist. He was born in Milan in 1738 and died there in 1794. A figure of the Milanese Enlightenment, he is regarded as one of the pillars of Enlightenment criminal law, the movement that reshaped European criminal justice along more rational lines, and he is often called a founder of modern penology.

He belonged to the circle of the brothers Pietro and Alessandro Verri, and took part in the journal Il Caffè and in the Academy of Fists, a playful society of young Milanese aristocrats that discussed, among other things, the reform of criminal justice. Alessandro Verri, who had firsthand knowledge of the prisons, drew his attention to the plight of prisoners. Before turning to criminal law, Beccaria had published work on economics, including a 1762 tract on the disorder of the currency in the Milanese states.

In 1764 he published On Crimes and Punishments, a brief treatise that circulated widely across Europe, especially in France, where the Encyclopedists received it enthusiastically. Drawing on social contract theory, he argued that society exists to protect the rights of its members, and that a crime violates that agreement. Two principles followed. Punishment should be proportionate to the offence. And no one has the right to dispose of another person's life, which led him to reject the death penalty. Beccaria held that deterrence depends more on the certainty and duration of punishment than on its severity. He therefore thought long imprisonment more effective than execution, which people quickly forget. He accepted capital punishment only in narrow cases such as rebellion or treason against the state.

His concerns went beyond capital punishment. He called for the abolition of torture as a means of proof and as a punishment, and he argued that judges should be bound to the written law and not invent penalties, an idea linked to the separation of powers. He also anticipated the principle of legality, which Feuerbach later stated in its definitive form.

His influence was considerable. His ideas inspired penal reforms across much of Europe, and he is associated with the modern view of punishment as a tool of prevention and with later debates over capital punishment. His emphasis on the social utility of punishment also left a mark on the utilitarian thinking that followed.