Beccaria's On Crimes and Punishments

In 1764 a 26-year-old Milanese aristocrat, Cesare Beccaria, published a short book called Dei delitti e delle pene, On Crimes and Punishments. He issued it anonymously from Livorno because it attacked the cruel justice of his day. In about 100 pages he argued against torture to extract confessions, secret accusations, arbitrary judges and the death penalty.¹

Courts in 18th-century Europe often used torture, and punishments such as the wheel or burning were public shows. Beccaria had joined a circle of reformers around the brothers Pietro and Alessandro Verri, who read Montesquieu, Rousseau, Helvetius and Hume. From Montesquieu he took the rule of law and proportionate penalties; from Rousseau, the idea that punishment rests on rights citizens give up to the state, so it should go no further than needed. Crime, he argued, is best deterred by punishment that is certain, swift and mild, not by rare, savage examples.

The book was an immediate success, reprinted in Italian and translated into French, English and other languages within a few years. The Church placed it on the Index of Prohibited Books in 1766. Rulers, however, paid attention. Catherine the Great borrowed from it in her 1767 Instruction, and in 1786 Grand Duke Leopold of Tuscany abolished the death penalty and torture, the first state to do so in modern times. Jefferson and John Adams cited it in America, and Bentham built on it. The idea that punishment must be limited, public, prompt and proportionate shaped modern criminal law.¹