Cesare Beccaria Accomplishments

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Cesare Beccaria started his career as a professional who studied criminals and their crimes. It was a goal of Beccaria to change how criminals should be punished. Although Beccaria did not think getting married was a way to get out of committing crimes, he stood his ground for the deterrence for misconducts and penalties.

Beccaria was an Italian criminologist who was famous all over the world at 26 years old (Bohm & Vogel, 2017). As stated by Bohm & Vogel (2017), “Beccaria’s treatise is the first succinct and systematic statement of principles governing criminal punishment” (para. 5). Beccaria was the first contemporary author who was against capital punishment; furthermore, he was not fond of the use of cruel exercises of criminals. Beccaria …show more content…

Furthermore, Beccaria had an understanding that when someone committed a crime, he or she should receive some type of reprimand for their actions. Unlike other individuals, Beccaria devised a different version for punishing criminals (Bohm & Vogel, 2017). Bohn & Vogel (2017) indicates, “Special or specific deterrence is the prevention of particular individuals from committing crime again by punishing them, while general deterrence is the prevention of people in general or society at large from engaging in crime by punishing specific individuals” (p. 17). Why would anyone want to single particular people out and use them as models? For Beccaria, he placed emphasis on encouraging the avoidance of misconduct instead of reprimanding criminals. Needless to say, Francois-Marie Arouet de Voltaire, a French philosopher, had a different version of how to keep men from becoming criminals. Voltaire believed that if all men got married, there would be less crimes. In addition, Voltaire thought married men stood a better chance of getting into trouble because he would focus his mind on his family and did not want to shame them. Voltaire’s concept was excluded from Beccaria’s philosophies. Beccaria indicated that a mortal’s enthusiasm is overseen by sensible self-satisfaction (Bohm &