Craig 1
Aeriela Craig
POL 67
Professor Indira
08 June 2017
TOPIC: Is capital punishment an effective/not effective deterrence of crime in the United
States?
Beccaria’s most famous work, On Crime and Punishment, had a central theme: To
substitute the existing legal system, that was characterized by superstition, unfair privilege given
to the nobles and monarchs, and hereditary rights, with a criminal justice system that was a
centralized and rational system of justice that was equal for all and grounded in the rule of law. I
completely agree with Beccaria when it comes to reforming the use of the death penalty. The
death penalty was not justified during his time, and it is not justified now. It is a horrendously
unjust act, and for a state to assume the right to capitally punish its citizens is for a state to
delegitimize its purpose and formation.
One of Beccaria’s main focuses were human motivation and morals. One of the
theories he felt strong about was that pleasure and pain are the motive forces of all sentient
beings. Given the fact that Beccaria agrees with this, he goes further and claims that all acts are
proportional in strength to the pleasure or pain that gave rise to said act. Moreover, he believes
that the proximate and efficient cause of actions is the flight from pain; their final cause is the
love of pleasure, man rests in good times and acts when in pain.
Craig 2
In “On Crimes and Punishments”, Beccaria considers the critique that permanent penal
servitude is as grievous as death, and therefore as cruel. He contends that penal servitude is a
greater deterrent than the death penalty but rejects the notion that it is as grievous a punishment,
since capital punishment is a lesser deterrent than the idea of a permanent loss of liberty. He also
maintains that, if we add up the pains from an entire lifetime of servitude, they may very well be
greater than the pain of the death penalty, which lasts only a moment. Given this, while weighing
the potential outcome of his or her action, a criminal will be more deterred by the prospect of
everlasting pain then by the potential of momentary pain. Although this counterargument may
leave room for questioning the proportionality of punishment, it conforms to the idea that murder
is a savage act and that neither the state nor its citizens should be involved in this type of
conduct. For Beccaria, the move away from the cruelty of capital punishment is crucial for the
