Cesare Beccaria on Torture and the Death Penalty

In 1764, Cesare Beccaria wrote On Crimes and Punishments in which he describe and analyzed the judicial system in Europe. His views on judicial torture and the death penalty were different from tradition. He condemned both torture and the death penalty. It is Beccaria who most influenced the western world on these two issues. When analyzing the idea of torture, Beccaria argues that it is a practice that is not successful in catching criminals. He writes that often the innocent confess to crimes they did not commit. (And vice versa for the guilty).  In his work Beccaria presents the reader with very modern ideas on the judicial system. At one point he writes that a man is innocent until proven guilty. This is something that we still hear and follow in America. Later Beccaria makes a key statement in his argument against torture, he writes, “[t]he impression of pain, then, may increase to such a degree, that, occupying the mind entirely, it will compel the sufferer to use the shortest method of freeing himself from torment. His answer, therefore, will be an effect as necessary as that of fire or boiling water, and he will accuse himself of crimes of which he is innocent: so that the very means employed to distinguish the innocent from the guilty will most effectually destroy all difference between them.” This is the center point to the argument of torture. In the end, it is ineffective in that guilt does not reside in the muscles of the accused. It is ineffective in that the wrong people are often condemned or set free. 

The question of the death penalty was and still is an issue that is discussed all over the word. Supporters usually say that the death penalty is necessary for showing other criminals what will happen to them. Violent crimes need the death penalty because of how horrid they were, the punishment must be equally bad. However, those who oppose of the death penalty follow the views of Beccaria, who has influenced western thought. As Beccaria writes,“[i]f the experience of all ages be not sufficient to prove, that the punishment of death has never prevented determined men from injuring society, if the example of the Romans, if twenty years' reign of Elizabeth, empress of Russia … ; if, I say, all this be not sufficient to persuade mankind” than what is? What people do not realize is that the death penalty has been around for a long time, and numbers of crimes have never dropped. The threat of death does not have enough leverage against people. After all, the fear of death has never stopped people from fighting wars. It will definitely not have an effect on an individual who as an outcast of society, plans to murder or commit other crime. If we stop to think about what is going on in the mind of the criminal than maybe we could realize that the death penalty is not going to stop them. However, people got comfortable with the state putting criminals to death because it is easier. It is quicker than trying to reform such bad people.