Crimes and Punishments

"Crimes and Punishments: Including a New Translation of Beccaria's 'Dei Delitti e delle Pene'" by James Anson Farrer is a treatise written by Cesare Beccaria which condemned torture and the death penalty and was a founding work in the field of penology. On Crimes and Punishments was the first critical analysis of capital punishment that demanded its abolition. Beccaria described the death penalty as the war of a nation against a citizen. Regarding the "Proportion between Crimes and Punishment", Beccaria stated that crimes of every kind should be less frequent, in proportion to the evil they produce to society, and that torture is cruel and unnecessary.