Cesare Beccaria and on Crime and Punishment

Cesare Bonensa marquis of Beccaria or most commonly known as Cesaria Beccaria was an Italian philosopher, economist and writer from the Enlightenment period in Europe and he was born in Milan on March 15th, 1738. According to the Italian Wikipedia (http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cesare_Beccaria) he came from a noble family and pursuit his studies in Parma and then Pavia where he graduated from in 1758 and he became more involved in the Enlightenment movement after reading Montesquieu’s  “Lettres persanes” (Persian Letters) which is a violent satire against the French customs at that time seen from two Persian travelers.

Cesare Beccaria’s famous piece is called “Dei Delitti e Delle Pene” (On Crime and Punishment) written between the years of 1763 and 1764, and it is an essay on the legal reform that was in effect at that time. “Dei Delitti e Delle Pene” , according to the Italian Wikipedia (http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cesare_Beccaria), proposed several reforms for the criminal justice system and some of the most controversial ones were the abolition of torture for the prison inmates and against the death penalty because it was committing a crime to punish another one.

The essay was very controversial and in 1766 it was put in the list of prohibited books, so that people would not be influenced by this train of thoughts; however various translations of the works started to appear in France at the same time the book was banished and also in English in 1767 and the book was read in the United Stated by John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

Cesaare Beccaria travelled a lot around Europe and had great success in Paris due to his essay “Delitti e Delle Pene” (On Crime and Punishment), but when he returned to his home town Milan, according to the Italian Wikipedia (http://it.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cesare_Beccaria), he became a professor of political science. And later in 1771 he was nominated Supreme Council of Economy which was a position that he held for over twenty years and helping with the reforms on the judicial code, even though this attracted a lot of criticism from his friends that accused him of having become a bureaucrat and then he died in Milan in 1794 at fifty six years old because of a stroke.