Cesare Beccaria

thumb|Cesare Beccaria Cesare Bonesana-Beccaria, Marquis of Gualdrasco and Villareggio (15 March 1738 – 28 November 1794) was an Italian criminologist, jurist, philosopher, and politician. Quotes On Crimes and Punishments (1764) No man can be judged a criminal until he be found guilty; nor can society take from him the public protection, until it have been proved that he has violated the conditions on which it was granted. What right, then, but that of power, can authorise the punishment of a citizen, so long as there remains any doubt of his guilt? The dilemma is frequent. Either he is guilty, or not guilty. If guilty, he should only suffer the punishment ordained by the laws, and torture becomes useless, as his confession is unnecessary. If he be not guilty, you torture the innocent; for, in the eye of the law, every man is innocent, whose crime has not been proved. [On the death penalty] Seems so absurd to me that the laws, that are the expression of the public will, that hate and punish the murder, make one themselves, and, to dissuade citizens from the murder, order a public murder. (Chapter XXVIII) As punishments become more cruel, the minds of men, which like fluids always adjust to the level of their surroundings, become hardened, and the ever lively power of the emotions brings it about that after a hundred years of cruel tortures, the wheel causes no more fear than prison previously did. For a punishment to serve its purpose, it is only necessary that the harm that it inflicts outweighs the benefit that “the criminal can derive from the crime, and into the calculation of this balance, we must add the certainty of punishment and the loss of the good produced by the crime. Anything more than this is superfluous, and therefore tyrannical. External links Cesare Beccaria Cesare Beccaria at McMaster University Archive for the History of Economic Thought. Category:1738 births Category:1794 deaths Category:Philosophers from Italy Category:Jurists Category:Politicians from Italy Category:Non-fiction authors from Italy Category:People from Milan