Beccaria's Ideas Of Punishment

There are both positives and negatives to Beccaria’s ideas of punishment. His idea was to prosecute and sentence an individual for a crime based on the severity of the offense. He did not see a need to explain the motivation for the act (Freilich 2015). This is a weakness in that an individual is incarcerated for a crime and there is no understanding as to why the crime was and no rehabilitation is done. Furthermore, in order for a program to work based on this idea, one would have to understand why the crime was committed in order to help the offender. Beccaria’s idea was that if the punishment is swift and severe, then there was no need to understand the motivation of the origin of crime, and this would deter crime (Freilich, 2015). Deterrence was Beccaria’s main idea of punishment as opposed to retribution and crime prevention was an important factor.
Beccaria argued that courts should use punishment to reduce crime and that the consequences should be made public. His perspective of thinking was that if the punishment matched the crime and criminals knew the consequences, then people would have a fear of offending (Freilich, 2015). This is a strength in that individuals make choices and if they know the consequences of the crime, they
He did not see any justification to measure crimes or the mental capacity of an individual (DePauley, 1925). There are many problems or issues with this idea. The main issue is that all situations are different and often times in a court of law, discretion has to be used by the judge. Another issue is with mental health which is a very sensitive subject within the criminal justice system due to the number of offenders who have or may have mental health issues. Often times these individuals are not evaluated or there is not a facility available for the offender who needs mental health