Cesare Beccaria s Impact on Modern Jurisprudence

Review: Cesare Beccaria’s , An Essay on Crimes and Punishments

Today, the U.S. incarcerates more of its citizens than any other industrialized nation, and their confinement is determined by their respective offenses. Although they may not realize it, these individuals owe a significant debt to Cesare Beccaria’s early work in penology since they are no longer subject to torture and fewer criminals are being executed for capital offenses. To learn more, the purpose of this paper is to provide a review of Cesare Beccaria (1764). An Essay on Crimes and Punishments. This essay is credited with revolutionizing modern penology by advocating for rational, humane, and proportionate punishments. His work emphasized deterrence over retribution, condemned the use of torture and the death penalty, and laid the foundation for criminal justice reforms centered on fairness, legality, and the protection of individual rights, influencing legal systems worldwide. Following the review of the relevant peer-reviewed literature and a critical analysis, a summary of the essay’s main points and key findings are provided in the conclusion.

Review and Discussion

Today, many prisons in the United States are struggling to cope with overcrowded facilities, razor-thin budgets and staffing shortages that preclude most rehabilitative programs in favor of security. Nevertheless, inmates in modern prisons are treated far better than their counterparts in the not-too-distant past, and they can credit Cesare Beccaria’s 1764, An Essay on Crimes and Punishments for multiple reforms that changed prisons from the torture chambers that brutalized prisoners and freely applied the death penalty during the 18th century and early 19th centuries (Haney, 2016).

According to Rahe et al. (2024), Beccaria’s book was one of the more influential texts on penology at the time, especially with respect to the unacceptability of torture as punishment, with long-lasting implications for modern criminal punishments. In this regard, Rahe and his associates at the U.S. National Constitution Center emphasize that, “The impact of his little book on the post-revolutionary revisal of the laws in the various nascent American states was considerable” (para. 3).

In reality, it is reasonable to suggest that many people at the time were unaware or unconcerned about the horrific conditions in the nation’s prisons unless they or family members or friends had personal experience at the tender hands of the criminal justice system – until Beccaria’s essay became widely known. This means that like Upton Sinclair’s bombshell accounts of the unsanitary and downright disgusting practices of the Chicago meatpacking industry during the early 20th century in The Jungle that resulted in the passage of the Pure Food and Drug Act and the Meat Inspection Act in 1906, Beccaria’s book was the catalyst the fueled fundamental reforms in the prison system and practices that endure to the present. In this regard, Panov (2016) cites the book’s “significance in reformation, development and improvement of legislation on criminal justice, as well as the formation of science of criminal law, criminal procedure, jurisdiction, criminology and other sciences” (p. 226).

Besides other critical reforms, Beccaria’s book also generated significant attention concerning the appropriateness of the death penalty in the Age of Enlightenment. Prior to the Enlightenment era, execution was generally accepted as an appropriate method of punishment for a wide array of offenses, most of which are not capital crimes today; the publication of Cesare Beccaria’s influential work in 1764, though, significantly altered the discourse surrounding capital punishment and the effectiveness of incarceration in both America and internationally (Bessler, 2018).

In fact, two of the most important points made by Beccaria that still influence the criminal justice system today are his calls for the elimination of both torture and the death penalty, addressing these two issues in separate chapters of An Essay on Crimes and Punishments. As a result of Beccaria’s efforts in these reforms, American lawmakers took steps to limit the use of torture and capital punishment during the latter half of the 18th century, with mixed success. Since that time, however, countries worldwide become signatories to the UN Convention Against Torture, which took effect in 1987 and was subsequently ratified by the United States in 1994 (Bessler, 2018).

Consequently, torture, once officially sanctioned under civil law with the primary goal of inflicting physical harm, is now outlawed and recognized by the international community as causing severe mental or physical suffering, including when used for extracting confessions or even as a form of punishment itself rather than an attempt to exact relevant evidence. In this regard, Beccaria emphasizes that:

The torture of a criminal, during the course of his trial, is a cruelty, consecrated by custom in most nations. It is used with an intent either to make him confess his crime, or explain some contradictions, into which he had been led during his examination; or discover his accomplices; or for some kind of metaphysical and incomprehensible purgation of infamy; or, finally, in order to discover other crimes, of which he is not accused, but of which he may be guilty. (1764, chap. XVI).

Further, numerous international agreements have reinforced this ban, with no exceptions permitted even during emergencies or hostile conflicts (Bessler, 2019). While so-called “waterboarding” has joined the historic list of state-sponsored and therefore acceptable interrogation methods in prosecuting the September 11, 2001 terrorist suspects at Guantanamo Bay, these episodes are still major outliers in the international community that agrees there is no room for torture in the 21st century.

Likewise, with respect to capital punishment, capital cases and their corresponding death penalties and frequently botched executions also cause extreme trauma and share many of the same characteristics as torture, affecting not only the condemned but also their loved ones, legal representatives, and corrections staff (Bessler, 2019). Critics of countries where the death penalty is still legal argue the practice should be categorized as torture and prohibited under American and international law. This perspective is based on exhaustive research in legal, psychological, and psychiatric fields, incorporating insights from mental health professionals, medical experts, and judicial opinions on psychological torture. It also takes into account previous precedential U.S. Supreme Court holdings that reject torture as a profound violation of both American constitutional and international laws (Bessler, 2019).

It is also noteworthy that Beccaria was assumed a pragmatic view about the death penalty. Rather than being opposed to capital punishment by virtue of its finality and unusual cruelty, Beccaria believed that the death penalty bang was not worth the criminal justice buck given its ineffectiveness in deterring crime, including capital offenses. For instance, Sitze (2008) notes that, “While traditional anti-death penalty literature has focused on its cruelty and inhumanity as a reason for abolishing the practice, [Beccaria] looks at works that decry it because of its uselessness for the well-being and security of the public” (p. 598).

Further, Beccaria’s arguments extended to calling for a “let the punishment fit the crime” approach that provided proportionate penalties for breaking the law, including most especially what works best in preventing rather than punishing criminal acts. In this regard, in his chapter on “Of Crimes which Disturb the Public Tranquility,” Beccaria asks:

What are, in general, the proper punishments for crimes? Is the punishment of death, really useful, or necessary for the safety or good order of society? Are tortures and torments consistent with justice, or do they answer the end proposed by the laws? Which is the best method of preventing crimes? Are the same punishments equally useful at all times? (1764, chap. XI).

These questions

Therefore, because they were ineffective in diminishing the frequency of capital crimes or as preventative measures, Beccaria maintained that the death penalty and torture were counterproductive to the best interests of society. For example, according to Beccaria, “It is not only the common interest of mankind that crimes should not be committed, but that crimes of every kind should be less frequent” (1764, chap. VI).

In addition, Beccaria argues that humans are essentially hard-wired to kill things, including other people. As the author points out, “In vain have the laws endeavoured to abolish the [single combat] custom, by punishing the offenders with death” (Beccaria, 1764, chap. X). Indeed, many humans in the 18th century – like today – are not the descendants of people who waited patiently in line for their turn but are rather the progeny of people who bullied, threatened, murdered and cajoled their way through life at the expense of others. This powerful genetic legacy does not disappear overnight, and the fact is that the death penalty has still failed to deter crimes of passion and murder aforethought.

All of this is not to say, of course, that there are many death penalty advocates who emphasize that murderers that are executed are absolutely guaranteed to not commit any more crimes, and some violent acts transcend are so heinous as to warrant the severest legal – or extralegal -- penalty that is available. It is to say, though, that Beccaria’s seminal work in this area has compelled lawmakers as well as the general public to reconsider the priorities of the criminal justice system in punishing offenders rather than preventing the crimes for which they are charged in the first place for more than 260 years.

The issue of the meaningless of punishment in achieving any substantive, effective restorative justice was discussed at length in Breccaria’s chapter, “Of the Intent of Punishments,” wherein he points out:

[I]t is evident, that the intent of punishments is not to torment a sensible being, nor to undo a crime already committed. Is it possible that torments, and useless cruelty, the instruments of furious fanaticism, or of impotency of tyrants, can be authorized by a political body? which, so far from being influenced by passion, should be the cool moderator of the passions of individuals. Can the groans of a tortured wretch recall the time past, or reverse the crime he has committed? (1764, chap. XII).

Indeed, a common refrain heard among many prisoners since time immemorial is they wish they had the opportunity to travel back in time to avoid committing their crimes in the first place, but remorseful hindsight is not a replacement for the punishments the law exacts for criminal conduct. Moreover, there are some circumstances in which it would be inappropriate to treat some criminal offenders as a “cool moderator of the passions of individuals” when those passions translate into torture of innocent people or genocidal acts.

Notwithstanding these considerations concerning the appropriateness of state-sponsored torture and imprisonment, though, Beccaria also makes a good point about the highly subjective level of evidence that is needed to convict an individual of a crime. For instance, in his chapter on the credibility of witnesses, Beccaria claims that humans are also hard-wired to remember past cheaters or transgressors, friendly gestures or assistance, or just workplace acquaintances when their own best interests are involved. Friends may overtly or unconsciously attempt to help a friend who is in trouble with the law when they testify at trial, just as old enemies will trot out the bad blood that colors their recollections about the defendant. As Beccaria emphasizes:

The credibility of a witness, then, should only diminish in proportion to the hatred, friendship, or connexions subsisting between him and the delinquent. One witness is not sufficient; for whilst the accused denies what the other affirms, truth remains suspended, and the right that every one [sic] has to be believed innocent, turns the balance in his favour. (1764, chap. XII).

The infamous Salem witch trials in the 17th century, the Scottboro boys’ trial in 1931, and, more recently, the so-called “Central Park Five” case in 1989 are just some of the more notorious examples of injustice inflicted on innocent people since Beccaria’s seminal work was published, and it is reasonable to believe that there are even far more but less visible instances of injustice taking place today. This harsh criminal justice reality does not mean that governments at all levels should ignore even petty crimes or just slap criminals on the wrist, but it does mean that, like mere humans, no system is perfect and this is certainly the case with the criminal justice system -- then and now.