From Wikipedia: “Beccaria was born in Milan on 15 March 1738 to the Marchese Gian Beccaria Bonesana, an aristocrat of moderate standing from the Austrian Habsburg Empire.[7] Beccaria received his early education in the Jesuit college at Parma. Subsequently, he graduated in law from the University of Pavia in 1758. At first he showed a great aptitude for mathematics, but studying Montesquieu (1689–1755) redirected his attention towards economics. In 1762 his first publication, a tract on the disorder of the currency in the Milanese states, included a proposal for its remedy.[8]

In his mid-twenties, Beccaria became close friends with Pietro and Alessandro Verri, two brothers who with a number of other young men from the Milan aristocracy, formed a literary society named "L'Accademia dei pugni" (the Academy of Fists), a playful name which made fun of the stuffy academies that proliferated in Italy and also hinted that relaxed conversations which took place in there sometimes ended in affrays. Much of its discussion focused on reforming the criminal justice system. Through this group Beccaria became acquainted with French and British political philosophers, such as Diderot, Helvétius, Montesquieu, and Hume. He was particularly influenced by Helvétius.[9]”

However, although his works are extensive, made clear in this collection of his life’s work, available this collection, Beccaria is most famous for his Treatise On Crimes and Punishments, its several versions appearing in Volume I of his collected works DELLE OPERE DI CESARE BECCARIA (The Works of Cesare Beccaria).

This collection of Cesare Beccaria's writings, conducted with critical rigor and, as far as possible, complete, was promoted by Mediobanca to honor the memory of Adolfo Tino (1900-1977), its president for twenty years, who abandoned the profession of journalist so as not to serve despotism, was a great lawyer, one of the founders of the Action Party, animator of the Resistance, inflexible supporter of the ideals of justice and freedom.

The Edizione Nazionale Beccariana is not only a complete collection of texts, but it is also a critical edition, with philological notes, appendices for manuscripts and outdated drafts, commentary notes, critical essays aimed at giving an account of previous editions and the criteria followed, and traces a history of each of Beccaria's writings, from the first draft to the last printing supervised by the author. The corpus will ultimately be composed of 16 volumes, to which will be added a final one of addenda, documents, indexes. This collection, now published in its entirety,documents the intense activity of management of public affairs that took place within the magistrates of the State of Milan at the end of the 18th century, as well as Beccaria's fundamental contribution to that new cultural and political climate in which public administration and economic reflection were becoming increasingly important.

VOLUME I. Dei delitti e delle pene Scritti filosofici e letterari.(20.7 MB)

VOLUME II. Scritti filosofici e letterari (14.7 MB)

 VOLUME III. Scritti economici (21.4 MB)

 VOLUME IV. Carteggio (17.8 MB)

 VOLUME V. Carteggio (20 MB)

 VOLUME VI. Atti di governo (Serie I: 1771 - 1777) (13.4 MB)

 VOLUME VII. Atti di governo (Serie II: 1778 - 1783) (16.5 MB)

 VOLUME VIII. Atti di governo (Serie III: 1784 - 1786) (16.5 MB)

 VOLUME IX. Atti di governo (Serie IV: 1787) (14.1 MB)

VOLUME X. Atti di governo (Serie V: 1788) (10.9 MB)

VOLUME XI. Atti di governo (Serie VI: 1789) (15.1 MB)

VOLUME XII. Atti di governo (Serie VII: 1790) (3.5 MB)

VOLUME XIII. Atti di governo (Serie VIII: 1791) (2.3 MB)

VOLUME XIV. Atti di governo (Serie IX: 1792) (2.7 MB)

VOLUME XV. Atti di governo (Serie X: 1793) (4.9 B)

VOLUME XVI. Atti di governo (Serie XI: Gennaio - Dicembre 1794) (1.9 MB)

VOLUME XVI bis. Atti di governo (Serie XI: Gennaio - Dicembre 1794) - (2.2 MB)

By Cesare Beccaria. Translated by James Anson Farrer.

This translation contains a 100 page introduction. From the opening page of the treatise: “To the Reader …The ill-conceived criticisms that have been published against this book are founded on the confused notions, and compel me to interrupt for a moment the arguments I was addressing to my enlightened readers, in order to close once and for all every door against the misapprehensions of timid bigotry or against the calumnies of malice and envy…”

Chatto & Windus, Piccadilly. 1880. 299p.

Cesare Beccaria. Translation, Introduction and annotations by Graeme R. Newman and Pietro Marongiu.

Cesare Beccaria's influential treatise On Crimes and Punishments is considered a foundational work in the field of criminology. Three major themes of the Enlightenment run through the treatise: the idea that the social contract forms the moral and political basis of the work's reformist zeal; the idea that science supports a dispassionate and reasoned appeal for reforms; and the belief that progress is inextricably bound to science. All three provide the foundation for accepting Beccaria's proposals.

It is virtually impossible to ascertain which of several versions of the treatise that appeared during his lifetime best reflected Beccaria's thoughts. His use of many Enlightenment ideas also makes it difficult to interpret what he has written. While Enlightenment thinkers advocated free men and free minds, there was considerable disagreement as to how this might be achieved, except in the most general terms.

The editors have based this translation on the 1984 Francioni text, the most exhaustive critical Italian edition of Dei delitti e delle pene. This edition is the last that Beccaria personally oversaw and revised. This translation includes an outstanding opening essay by the editors and is a welcome introduction to Beccaria and the beginnings of criminology.

New Brunswick. Transaction. 2016. 191p.

By Sophus A. Reinert

The Milanese Marquis Cesare Beccaria (1738-1794) dedicated his life first to theorizing a more just and equal society grounded in individual rights, anchored in secular political economy rather than in religious dogma, then to realizing this bold vision through decades of administrative and regulatory work for the Milanese state. His project was not merely to reform the criminal system of the Old Regime but to challenge the very inequalities—legal, economic, educational, and so on—which drove crime to begin with.2 During his lifetime, however, his fame as a “friend of humanity” derived mostly from his impassioned pleas against torture and capital punishment, though on the basis of his temperament and his ideas it would also be easy to count him as part of what, for the later eighteenth century, the late Yves Bénot dubbed the “internationale abolitionniste.”3 This is, in large parts, also how he is remembered, but not only. It is of course a truism that ideas can have ironic, even sarcastic afterlives, but there is nonetheless something slightly perverse about Beccaria’s treatment in parts of American historiography.4 I have previously highlighted how his paternity has been claimed for both libertarian atheism and Catholic social democracy, but his name now appears ever more frequently in contemporary debates over “gun rights,” the “carceral state” and the rise of “racial capitalism.”5 We often hear of the “centrality of penal slavery” in Beccaria’s thought, for example, to the point where he repeatedly has been given the rather unenviable title of “father of prison slavery” and “father of penal servitude.”6 Some of these commentators are generous enough to admit that Beccaria can “be credited with voicing some humanitarian concerns,”

Boston, MA: Harvard Business School, 2021. 49p.

By Coleman Phillipson.

THE following three essays are not intended to be considered as separate, independent studies; they are meant to be taken together as supplementing each other, and as constituting one whole. With this intention in view, the author has been able to avoid a good deal of overlapping and repetition, which would otherwise have been inevitable. Though three men and their works are here discussed, we are concerned with but one epoch, one movement, one phase in legal evolution, which represents in many respects a turning-point in European history, and is of the utmost importance in the development of our modern civilisation. Beccaria, Bentham and Romilly are among the greatest law reformers of modern times. In their assault on the folly, injustice and cruelty of the then existing criminal jurisprudence, in their trenchant criticism of outworn codes, obscurantist traditions, blind superstitions, dogmatic technicalities, oppressive fictions, and useless relics of the past, in their proposal of rational substitutes, in their pointing the way to the light, they were intimately united. Their resemblances, like their differences, are as striking in their work as they are in their personal characteristics. In the case of Beccaria—a diffident Italian youth, shrinking from the struggles _ of men, whose small work was almost forcibly extracted from . him by his friends, and whose guarded oracular utterances soon arrested the attention of the world—we shall see vital conceptions and principles of penology in the process of germination and crystallisation; we shall see them in their triumphant conflict with the prevailing régime of sanguinary laws and barbarous methods of procedure. In the case of Bentham—that myriad-minded man, the dauntless explorer of institutions, the arch-legislator ever ready, in his jealously guarded “‘hermitage,”’ to make laws for all the nations of the earth—we shall see a prodigious multitude of ideas, schemes and systems, lavishly given to the world from a rich mine that could, surely, never be exhausted; we shall see this prolific progenitor scattering them broadcast, infusing new life into many barren places…

London: J.M. Dent, 1923. 344p.

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By CESARE BECCARIA. Translated, with an introduction, by HENRY PAOLUCCI

On Crimes and Punishments is a seminal treatise on legal reform written by the Italian philosopher and thinker Cesare Beccaria between 1763 and 1764. The essays proposed many reforms for the criminal justice system, including prompt administration of clearly prescribed and consistent punishments, well-publicized laws made by the legislature rather than individual courts or judges, the abolition of torture in prisons and the use of the penal system to deter would-be offenders, rather than simply punishing those convicted. It is also one of the earlier, and most famous, works against death penalty. The main reason put forward against that measure is that the State, by putting people to death, was committing a crime to punish another one.On Crimes and Punishments is widely considered one of the founding texts of Classical Criminology.

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By Cesare Beccaria. Edited and with an Introduction by Adolph Caso

The first systematic study of the principles of crime and punishment. Originally published: London: Printed for E. Newberry, 1775. viii, [iv], 179, lxxix pp. Infused with the spirit of the Enlightenment, its advocacy of crime prevention and the abolition of torture and capital punishment marked a significant advance in criminological thought, which had changed little since the Middle Ages. It had a profound influence on the development of criminal law in Europe and the United States, especially among the founding fathers. Originally published anonymously in 1764.

Kessinger Publishing, January 17, 2007, ‎244 pages

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Translated from the Italian in the Author's Original Order With Notes and Introduction by David Young

On Crimes and Punishments is a seminal treatise on legal reform written by the Italian philosopher and thinker Cesare Beccaria between 1763 and 1764. The essays proposed many reforms for the criminal justice system, including prompt administration of clearly prescribed and consistent punishments, well-publicized laws made by the legislature rather than individual courts or judges, the abolition of torture in prisons and the use of the penal system to deter would-be offenders, rather than simply punishing those convicted. It is also one of the earlier, and most famous, works against death penalty. The main reason put forward against that measure is that the State, by putting people to death, was committing a crime to punish another one.On Crimes and Punishments is widely considered one of the founding texts of Classical Criminology.

Indiana. Hackett Publishing. 1986.