ABSTRACT
The small volume On Crimes and Punishments by the Italian nobleman Cesare Beccaria (1738-94) proved to be one of the three or four most influential texts in the history of criminology. From one point of view, this is not a criminological text at all, but rather a treatise on the nature of law – on the legal changes that autocratic governments should make to reduce crimes. Nor does it attempt to analyze crime scientifically, as later theorists tried to. But implicit in Beccaria’s legal recommendations and in his philosophy of punishment is a theory about the nature of man and the causes of crime.
