What are the 3 characteristics of punishment according to Beccarias concept of deterrence?

The Assumptions of Deterrence Theory

• Deterrence has long been considered the primary function of punishment because the threat of punishment is assumed to prevent people from committing acts that they may otherwise commit
• Rational choice theory: The assumption that behavior is governed by its consequences
• Economists favor rational choice theory

Specific and General Deterrence

• Specific deterrence: The dissuasive effect of the imposed punishment on the future behavior of the person punished
• Contrast effect: The distinction between the conditions of the threatened punishment and the conditions of the everyday lives of those being punished
• General deterrence: The effect of punishment on those who have witnessed (directly or indirectly) it but not personally experienced it

Three Principles of Punishment

• According to Cesare Beccaria, the three principles of punishment are: Certainty, swiftness, and severity
• One out of three murderers gets away with his/her crime in the U.S. today
• The time lapse between conviction and execution went from an average of 14.4 months in the 1950s to 174 months in 2010

The Death Penalty/Deterrence Debate

• Peterson and Bailey’s article on the death penalty tells us that the death penalty had no discernible effect on reducing homicides and that most abolitionist states had lower homicide rates than most death penalty states

Deterrence: Criminologists and Sociologists versus Economists

• Economists find a deterrent effect with the death penalty, however, sociologists/ criminologists find no deterrence

Is there a Brutalizing Effect of Capital Punishment?

• Brutalizing effect: The assumption that executions are perceived by some as saying that it is okay to kill people who have offended us, and that a segment of those who perceive it this way will act on that perception and commit murder

The Inconclusive Conclusion of the Committee on Deterrence and the Death Penalty

• The Committee on Deterrence and the Death Penalty (CDDP) recommends that deterrence studies should not be used to influence judicial deliberations
• A study done by Dutch statisticians, Gerritzen & Kirchgässner, found that ideology may account for most contradictory findings regarding deterrence

What is Needed to Demonstrate if the Death Penalty is a Deterrent?

• More sophisticated statistical techniques and models are necessary to demonstrate if the death penalty is a deterrent
• Economists and criminologists/sociologists working together on the issue would average out their biases

The Opinions of Criminologists and Police Chiefs on the Death Penalty

• The American Society of Criminology (ASC) issued a resolution regarding the death penalty making it very clear it would like a speedy abolition of this form of punishment

Pascal’s Wager: A “Last Ditch” Effort

• Death penalty proponents apply Pascal’s reasoning to the death penalty debate under the assumption that rational people will consider the death penalty the “best bet”
• Abolitionists find it repugnant that lives may be gambled with using the Pascal’s wager

Cesare Beccaria is seen by many people as the “father of criminology.” Here is a brief summary of his ideas and famous essay “On Crimes and Punishments,” both in video and text format.

• Discussions about Crime and Punishment
• Publication of Beccaria’s “On Crimes and Punishments”
• Only the Law Can Prescribe Punishment
• The Law Applies Equally to All People
• Making the Law and Law Enforcement Public
• Beccaria: Punishments Should be Proportional, Certain, and Swift
• Beccaria Argued Against the Death Penalty
• No Right To Torture
• The Power of Education
• Beccaria: Controversy and Success

Discussions about Crime and Punishment

Cesare Beccaria is seen by many people as the “father of criminology” for his ideas about crime, punishment, and criminal justice procedures. He was an Italian born as an aristocrat in the year 1738 in Milan. At that time European thought about crime and punishment was still very much dominated by the old idea that crime was sin and that it was caused by the devil and by demons. And in part to punish the devil and the demons that were causing crime, very harsh punishments were used. At the time when Beccaria came along, the era of Enlightenment was in full swing, and scientists were starting to challenge the old views, but the people who had political power were not ready to leave those old ideas behind yet.

Beccaria didn’t start out as an intellectual. In fact, he wasn’t considered to be above average or interested really when it came to science or philosophy. But after he completed his law studies at the University of Pavia, he started to surround himself with a group of young men who were interested in all kinds of philosophical issues and social problems. And the intellectual discussions that Beccaria was able to have with these people led him to question many of the practices that were common in his time, including the way in which offenders were being punished for their crimes.

Publication of Beccaria’s “On Crimes and Punishments”

Beccaria’s famous work, “On Crimes and Punishments,” was published in 1764, when he was 26 years old. His essay called out the barbaric and arbitrary ways in which the criminal justice system operated. Sentences were very harsh, torture was common, there was a lot of corruption, there were secret accusations and secret trials, and there was a lot of arbitrariness in the way in which sentences were imposed. There was no such thing as equality before the law. And powerful people of high status were treated very differently from people who were poor and who did not have a lot of status.

Beccaria’s ideas clashed dramatically with these practices. And I’ll go through some of the central principles that his work is based on.

Only the Law Can Prescribe Punishment

According to Beccaria, only the law can prescribe punishment. It is up to the legislator to define crime and to prescribe which punishment should be imposed. It is not up to a magistrate or a judge to impose a penalty if the legislator has not prescribed it. And neither is it up to a judge to change what the law says about how a crime should be punished. The judge should do exactly what the law says.

The Law Applies Equally to All People

In addition, Beccaria said that the law applies equally to all people. And so punishment should be the same for all people, regardless of their power and status.

Making the Law and Law Enforcement Public

Beccaria also believed in the power of making the law and law enforcement public. More specifically, laws should be published so that people actually know about them, and trials should be public, too. Only then can onlookers judge if the trial is fair.

Beccaria: Punishments Should be Proportional, Certain, and Swift

Regarding severe punishment, Beccaria said that if severe punishments do not prevent crime, they should not be used. Instead, punishments should be proportional to the harm that the crime has caused. According to Beccaria, the aim of punishment is not to cause pain to the offender, but to prevent them from doing it again and to prevent other people from committing crime. In order to be able to do that, Beccaria believed that punishment should be certain and swift. He believed that if offenders were sure that they would be punished and if punishment would come as quickly as possible after the offense, that this would have the largest chance of preventing crime.

Beccaria Argued Against the Death Penalty

As another controversial issue, Beccaria argued against the death penalty. In his view, the state does not have the right to repay violence with more violence. And in addition to that, Beccaria believed that the death penalty was useless. The death penalty is momentary, it is not lasting and therefore the death penalty cannot be very successful in preventing crimes. Instead, lasting punishments, such as life imprisonment, would be more successful in preventing crimes, because potential offenders will find this a much more miserable condition than the death penalty.

No Right To Torture

Similarly, according to Cesare Beccaria, the state does not have the right to torture. Because no one is guilty until he or she is found guilty, no one has the right to punish a person by torturing him or her. Plus, people who are under torture will want the torture to stop and might therefore make false claims, including that they committed a crime they did not commit. So torture is also ineffective.

The Power of Education

Instead of torture and severe penalties, Beccaria believed that education is the most certain method of preventing crime.

Beccaria: Controversy and Success

Beccaria’s ideas are hardly controversial today, but they caused a lot of controversy at the time, because they were an attack on the entire criminal justice system. Beccaria initially published his essay anonymously, because he didn’t necessarily consider it to be a great idea to publish such radical ideas. And this idea was partly confirmed when the book was put on the black list of the Catholic Church for a full 200 years.

But even though his ideas were controversial back then, his essay became an immediate success. In fact, Cesare Beccaria’s ideas became the basis for all modern criminal justice systems and there is some evidence that his essay influenced the American and French revolutions which happened not long after the publication of the essay. His ideas were not original, because others had also proposed them, but Beccaria was the first one to present them in a consistent way. Many people were ready for the changes that he proposed, which is why his essay was such a success.

Beccaria ends his essay with what can be seen as a kind of summary of his view:

“So that any punishment be not an act of violence of one or of many against another, it is essential that it be public, prompt, necessary, minimal in severity as possible under given circumstances, proportional to the crime, and prescribed by the laws.”

You can find Cesare Beccaria’s full essay “On Crimes and Punishments” here.

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