An Essay on Crimes and Punishments (Annotated)

A punishment may not be an act of violence, of one or of many, against a private member of society, it should be public, immediate and necessary; the least possible in the case given; proportioned to the crime, and determined by the laws. Beccaria was an Italian economist and jurist. He wrote on the currency and other economic subjects, but his greatest work was his Treatise on Crimes and Punishments, first published in 1764, in which he argues against capital punishment, and which established h