On Crimes and Punishments

In this essay, Beccaria reflected on the convictions of the Il Caffè group, who sought to cause reform through Enlightenment discourse.

[6] The book's serious message is put across in a clear and animated style, particularly upon a deep sense of humanity and urgency at unjust suffering.

Suicide is a crime which seems not to admit of punishment, properly speaking; for it cannot be inflicted but on the innocent, or upon an insensible dead body.

In the first case, it is unjust and tyrannical, for political liberty supposes all punishments entirely personal; in the second, it has the same effect, by way of example, as the scourging a statue.

Mankind love life too well; the objects that surround them, the seducing phantom of pleasure, and hope, that sweetest error of mortals, which makes men swallow such large draughts of evil, mingled with a very few drops of good, allure them too strongly, to apprehend that this crime will ever be common from its unavoidable impunity.

[11] The book was read by all the luminaries of the day, including, in the United States, by John Adams and Thomas Jefferson.

[12][13] The book's principles influenced thinking on criminal justice and punishment of offenders, leading to reforms in Europe, especially in France and at the court of Catherine II of Russia.

[14] The reforms he had advocated led to the abolition of the death penalty in the Grand Duchy of Tuscany, the first state in the world to take this measure.

Thomas Jefferson, in his "Commonplace Book", copied a passage from Beccaria related to the issue of gun control: "Laws that forbid the carrying of arms .