Beccaria on Crimes and Punishments

Beccaria on Crimes and Punishments

             Beccaria made a successful attempt at highlighting the workings of the criminal justice system and the heinous nature of the system. In line with Beccaria’s perspective on crime and punishment, this paper will shed light on various aspects of the criminal justice system from the perspective of the theme of Enlightenment. The researcher will discuss the importance of the penal system, the crimes that were punished, the extent of torture and punishment, and the reason why the penal system existed. This paper will be based on the theme of enlightenment and will take into consideration the observations that were made by Beccaria. Beccaria’s views on crimes and punishments were justified in that the application of the death penalty is a horrendous, unjust, and the right to punish citizens for a state is to delegitimize its formation and purpose.

Description of the Theme of Enlightenment

The theme of enlightenment has been drawn from Beccaria’s efforts to highlight the aspect of torturing criminals and injustice associated with the death penalty. In 1764, the people of Milan witnessed the torture and murder of Bartolomeo Luisetti, who was condemned to death after an act of Sodomy. Luisetti was killed through strangulation, after which he was burnt before the crowd. During this time, cruel criminal punishment was justified in that it instilled the fear of God amongst the people who watched the horrific event (Beccaria 17). After entering into the realm of enlightenment, Beccaria made attempts to rebel against the oppression of local elites who included their families. The theme of enlightenment was marked by Beccaria’s work who put forward some of the most vivid arguments on the death penalty. In line with Beccaria’s work, it is certain that it is unjust to assume that punishment and torture should serve to offer humans with retribution. Instead of torturing criminals and delinquency, imprisonment should be viewed as a form of protecting society while facilitating the reformation of criminals in society.

It was during this time that the era of enlightenment that the philosophy of democracy was introduced in that people was provided with the opportunity to choose their systems and leaders. The purpose of this theme is to show people the other side of the situation and help them solve issues critically. For instance, the aim of punishment should not be to instill pain but rather fear in other men as a sign of example. However, secret punishment is a misdeed in that it does not benefit any person or influence the desired actions. The importance of punishment is to act as an influence on other people and is not important if and when it is executed in secrecy..

When it comes to crime, death, and humanity, the theme of enlightenment advocates for logic and being rational, for instance, the belief that pain eliminates all forms of spiritual stains is illogical which begs the point that logic should be followed in the realm of enlightenment. It is also unreasonable to torture and individual in order to get the hidden truth in that some people are guiltless while sensitive mean can confess their deeds to escape pain, which beats the need of torturing a man to get the truth from them. As Beccaria explains, the fear of punishment could cause both the criminals and innocent to fall into ambiguity. Besides, torturing or killing participants does not result in the desired consequences since it is difficult to identify the truth even under normal circumstances.

Drawing Critical Comparisons, Link the theme to Ramifications and Explain the Connections

Bacceria’s findings on crime and punishment had a main role of substituting the existent legal system that was characterized by unfair privileges given to monarchs and nobles, superstitions, and hereditary rights for a justice system that was fair and equal for all. Bacceria aimed at promoting a centralized system that was rational with equal opportunities and one that founded in the rule of law. Critical analysis of Beccaria’s theme of enlightenment shows that his reasoning had a close relationship with the Philosopher Pietro Verri and colleagues at the Academy of Fisticuffs. Enlightenment was approached fro varying scoped, including human nature, politics, economics, and criminal justice. The theme of enlightenment is closely related to the theory of human motivation that was proposed by Verri that pain and pleasure are the main motives of all sentient forces. This is to mean that most actions are proportional to the pain or pleasure that caused the act. The efficient and proximate cause of actions is the man’s fight from pain in that man’s final cause is their need for pleasure in that one is more likely to rest in good acts and times when they are in pain. However, although Beccaria agrees with this theory, he believes that the aspect of thinking or imagining things that are not pleasurable or useful will affect an individual indirectly as a result of the anxiety associated with the inability to obtain it. This aspect reveals that man is never fully contented, and there is a high likelihood of idleness will not occur for fear to lose our pleasurable state or the motivation to escape from a painful situation.

Like Kant, Beccaria’s theme of enlightenment synthesizes the rationalist and empiricist epistemology and the formulations on happiness, which lays the philosophical foundation where he establishes his critique of the criminal justice system. In addition, Beccaria adopts other empiricist arguments of Helvetius and Locke in his effort to attribute human knowledge, such as morality, to the aspect of impressions on our senses. Beccaria believes that human reasons are not necessarily mechanistic or deterministic in that human reason has the ability to interpret and organizing our sense perceptions differently. As a result, his view on enlightenment does fail to agree with Hume perception that reason is the slave to man’s passions but claims that reason is the aspect that distinguishes people as human and their ability to control passions and act on them in a rather rational manner (Young 326). It is this epistemology that Beccaria believes that he established different grounds to develop a legal system that is based on rational grounds. According to the aspect of enlightenment, the law should be clear, and punishment should be speedy and certain such as to ensure the indisputable relationship between crime and pain. From a rational perspective, judicial discretion should be minimum in order for citizens to know where they stand to facilitate the desired reasoning. It is thus important to ensure that the legal system performs its purpose appropriately in order to deter people from committing different crimes against society.

Meaningful Arguments in Relation to the Experience in the Texts Analyzed

The arguments that were passed by Beccaria influenced many people and are being applied in forensic science, among other advanced interrogation techniques. One important argument was on what basis should one determine the one guilty of committing crimes. In the current society, even the application of technology and advanced forensic science makes it challenging to determine the person who committed a particular crime. In the past, the most definitive manner of determining the individual responsible for committing a crime was through torture. It boiled down to the pain that an individual was willing to endure, to tell the truth, or provide the demands of the torturer. However, this is not right in that; no man should be declared guilty until the verdict has been determined (Young 322). Additionally, society should not withdraw their protection until it has been determined that one has broken different terms of the compact. Besides, it is unjustifiable to cause one pain for a crime before they are proven guilty of an offense.

It was believed that torturing individuals would ease the process of questioning and facilitate the tortured individual to provide information that would aid in the discovery of truth. However, this is unjustifiable in that criminals with the ability to endure torture or pain could walk free, although he is guilty of an offense (Beccaria and Cesare marchese di Beccaria 19). On the other hand, an innocent man without the ability to resist pain could be convicted of any crime in that there is a high likelihood of surrender to avoid the pain of interrogation. However, some individuals believe that torture would facilitate criminals to provide information that would deter the occurrence of other heinous crimes. In this case, some people believe that it would be justifiable to torture in order to obtain such information and save lives. However, this utilitarian justification is illegitimate in that torture is inefficient and unjust on all grounds. Even in conditions where an individual may have information for future crimes, the extraction and reliability of such information are dependent on the criminal’s ability or inability to endure pain.

It was also believed that the death penalty was necessary to teach other people the cost of crimes and instill the fear of God. However, going by the aspect of justice and enlightenment, the death penalty is nothing but futile and excessive punishment. It is unjust to be guided by the medieval concept whereby the divinely anointed leader holds over death and life over his subjects. Instead, lives should be guided by a social contract where it is possible to negotiate rights that are necessary to concede in a bid to promote common peace and order. Individuals should hold to their right to life without ceding this right to the public good (Young 320). Besides, the death penalty is not useful or necessary but rather an act of war by the society against its citizens. It is only justifiable to proclaim a death penalty when it is evident that the criminal is a threat to society even when they are deprived of their right to freedom. Besides, the imposition of a death penalty is not the only viable mechanism to prevent other people from committing a crime. In order to make a lasting impression on the human soul, repeated and lasting blows should be used to foster the desired moral ideas.

Conclusion

The significance of the theme of enlightenment cannot be negated in the imposition of torture and the death penalty in crimes. From the aspect of enlightenment, people are rational beings with the ability to apply rationality in making decisions that enable them to achieve their personal gratification. Law should exist to benefit the entire society and to preserve social contracts rather than as a form of punishment. Enlightenment rather than conformity enables individuals to understand that a death penalty is an excessive form of punishment that does not serve any good to the criminal. Instead, it is an unnecessary act that does not serve any good on the part of the criminal. Extreme punishment and torture are unnecessary, and the society should instead foster permanent penal servitude in order for the criminals to repay the society they offended through their labor. It is thus evident that failure to analyze situations from an enlightened perspective proves significant damage both to the offender and the offended. As Beccaria argues, humans are rational beings whose actions are guided by the pleasure that one gets from the activity. As such, the law should foster a moderating effect on human conduct and be conditioned to act as an instrument of education in accordance with enlightenment principles. The law should not commit murder in order to prevent murders

Works Cited

Beccaria, Cesare, and Cesare marchese di Beccaria. An essay on crimes and punishments. The Lawbook Exchange, Ltd., 2006.

Beccaria, Cesare, and Cesare marchese di Beccaria. On crimes and punishments and other writings. University of Toronto Press, 2008.

Beccaria, Cesare. “An Essay on Climes and Punishment Translated by Henry Paolucci.” New York: Bobbs-Merrill (1963).

Becker, Jacob, et al. “On crimes and punishments.” Contemporary Sociology 39.5 (2010): 623.

Young, David B. “Cesare Beccaria: utilitarian or retributivist?” Journal of Criminal Justice 11.4 (1983): 317-326.https://doi.org/10.1016/0047-2352(83)90071-5