The Death Penalty And Criticisms Of Beccaria

’s Work Essay, Research Paper

Running head: DEATH PENALTY AND CRITICISMS

The Death Penalty and Criticisms of Beccaria’s work

Troy K. Prichett

University of Alabama

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to discuss Beccaria’s On Crimes and Punishments,

with emphasis on Beccaria’s views on the death penalty and the many criticisms

that surrounds his work. Beccaria had extreme views against the death penalty,

but he contradicted his views several times. This led to the criticism of his work

and many of his views of society of the Enlightenment period. There were some

who said the Beccaria did not write On Crimes and Punishment, this along with

other criticisms will be address below.

The Death Penalty and Criticisms of Beccaria’s Work

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the death penalty and the many

criticisms surrounding Cesare Beccaria’s On Crimes and Punishments. Key

points in Beccaria’s life according to Adler, Mueller, and Laufer (2000):

Cesare Bonesana, Marchese di Beccaria (1738-1794), was rather undistinguished as a student. After graduating with a law degree from the University of Pavia, he returned home to Milan and joined a group of articulate and radical intellectuals. Disenchanted with contemporary Europeans society, they organized themselves into the academy of fists, one of many young men’s clubs that flourished in Italy as the time. Their purpose was to discover what reforms would be needed to modernize Italian society. In March 1763 Beccaria was assigned to prepare a report on the prison system. Pietro Verri, the head of the academy of fists, encouraged him to read the works of English and French philosophers-David Hume (1711-1776), John Locke (1632-1704), Claude Adrien Helvetius (1715-1771), Voltaire (1694-1778), Montesquieu (1685-1755), and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778). Another member of the academy, the protector of prisons, revealed to him the inhumanities that were possible under the guise of social control. Beccaria learned well. He read, observed, and made notes on small scraps of paper. These notes, Harry Elmer Barnes has observed, were destined to “assure to its author immortality and would work a revolution in the moral world” upon their publication in July 1764 under the title Dei delitti e delle pene (On Crimes and Punishment). Beccaria presented a coherent, comprehensive designs for an enlightened criminal justice system that was serve the people rather than the monarchy. (p. 62-63) After On Crimes and Punishment was published Beccaria was considered the founder of Classical school of Criminology.

The Death penalty

The death penalty also known as capital punishment is being put to death for committing a crime. Beccaria (1764/1963) views the death penalty as a “ . . . useless prodigality of torments, which has never made man better . . . .” The purpose of punishment is to deter crime, but when that punishment exceeds what is necessary to deter crime it becomes unjust, according to Beccaria. What can justify the execution of one of societies citizens. How can we determine if the punishment of the crime should be death. Are there any crime that are justified by the killing of a human being. These are some questions that Beccaria (1764/1963) answers:

There are only two possible motives for believing that the death of a citizen is necessary. The first: when it is evident even if deprived of liberty he still has connections and power such as endanger the security of the nation-when, that is, his existence can produce a dangerous revolution in the established form of government. The death of a citizen thus becomes necessary when a nation is recovering or losing its Liberty or, in time of anarchy, when disorders themselves take the place of laws. . . . I see no necessity for destroying a citizen, except if his death were the only real way of restraining others from committing crimes; this is the second motive for believing that the death penalty may be just and necessary.(p. 46)

So only in extreme situations the death penalty can be just and necessary. But during the enlightenment period when laws were hard to interpret and most people in society could not understand or did not know the law; how could we then justify the death penalty if society was not sure about the law or the punishment of crime. According to Beccaria (1764/1963) “If the interpretation of laws is an evil, another evil, evidently, is the obscurity that makes interpretation necessary. . . . written in a language that its foreign to a people . . .” Thus if society is confused about the law and the punishment that one might get for breaking the law, then how can it be an effective deterrent. If deterrence is the whole reason for punishment then wouldn’t it be more effective if society knew the law and the punishment. If the death penalty is an uncertain punishment and the duration between committing the crime and punishment, then that in itself makes the death penalty ineffective for others that witness the execution, because the see the long wait before being punished. Beccaria (1764/1963) stated “With the death penalty, every example given to the nation presupposes a new crime; with the penalty of a lifetime of servitude a single crime supplies frequent and lasting examples. And if it be import

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