On Crimes and Punishments

On Crimes and Punishments is a seminal treatise on legal reform written by the Italian philosopher and thinker Cesare Beccaria between 1763 and 1764. The essays proposed many reforms for the criminal justice system, including prompt administration of clearly prescribed and consistent punishments, well-publicized laws made by the legislature rather than individual courts or judges, the abolition of torture in prisons and the use of the penal system to deter would-be offenders, rather than simply punishing those convicted. It is also one of the earlier, and most famous, works against death penalty. The main reason put forward against that measure is that the State, by putting people to death, was committing a crime to punish another one. On Crimes and Punishments is widely considered one of the founding texts of Classical Criminology.