Beccaria's Sentencing Theory

believed that every punishment should come from absolute necessity. He put the importance of each citizens liberty and fairness when it came to punishment first. Beccaria was against harsh punishment and did not support any kind of torture or cruel acts towards defendants especially with the goal for confession. Beccaria strongly stood against torture and presented his idea of any information received through torture not to be reliable and worthless. With that said it comes as no surprise that he was against capital punishment (death penalty). He explained that capital punishment violated the social contract. Social contract is the understanding between citizens and law enforcement basically stating that citizens willingness to give up their

He pushed the idea that education can lead to deterrence. It’s as simple as if you don’t know the existence of a law or don’t fully grasp an understanding of a certain law then you won’t know when you are breaking it. Another part of his belief in educating the citizens he believed that punishment should only take place in public meaning that a criminal justice system process should not be behind closed doors. This would give citizens the opportunity to get familiar with the system, how decisions are made and give them the chance to view the fair and balanced system for citizens. He believed education was a form of deterrence. Another theory which shed light on our justice system and impacted the Western world was his ideas behind defendants being able to cross- examine witnesses, meaning that he was against secret accusations during these procedures. Today defendants have this right in our legal system because of his work. His views on society's education and rights have come to play a great role in our criminal justice

It is no surprise that Beccaria's ideas live on and that many policies are based on the deterrence theory in our legal system. As (Tibbets & Hemmens 2015) explain the death penalty is one way we deter for committing crime however as we recall Beccaria believed that capital punishment is not the answer and not an effective way to deter crime. Based on research and studies Beccaria’s ideas turn out to be valid. Some studies also teach us about the brutalization effect which means there was an increase in homicides after a high-profile execution. We have concluded that the death penalty is not the solution. Next, we look at court and correctional strategies such as the “scared straight” approach. The goal of these programs is to give juvenile offenders a piece of reality by pulling them into the world of prison life for them to experience the brutality first hand. After these programs have been closely evaluated we learn that the results are ineffective way to deter. There was a reason Beccaria was against harsh punishment and did not believe that would lead us into any positive results. Another policy aspect that comes up from the Classical School model is the belief that increasing the number of police officers to deter crime can be effective. However, recent studies show that this doesn’t seem to be the case. Overall most strategies born from the classical deterrence theory don’t seem to always work for