Crime and punishment have become an obsession these days. We have lots of videos of crimes as they happen. We see plenty of televised trials. We see verdicts and sentencing that range from right-on to outrageous. And since today commemorates the death of Italian scholar Cesare Beccaria in 1794 – the man who influenced our criminal justice system – he is a good lens through which to view current events.
We know of Beccaria because Thomas Jefferson read Beccaria’s 1764 book On Crime and Punishment, in Italian, while posted to Paris during the American Revolution. Jefferson bombarded his fellow Founding Fathers with notes on Beccaria, which planted the ideals we cherish today: speedy and public trials, punishment to fit the crime, no “cruel & unusual punishment” and social justice to prevent crimes.
These were new concepts not always popular with the royalty and elite of Europe. In fact, Beccaria was inspired to promote his philosophy after witnessing the execution of a man in Milan convicted of sodomy – unnatural sexual acts, probably homosexuality. The man was strangled in the public square and then burned at the stake. Clearly, the government and the Church, wanted to send a message to sexually active citizens.
To send a message is always a parallel goal in law enforcement. Ancient Jews publicly stoned adulterous women while the Romans just divorced them, Muslim Sharia Law still allows public amputation for theft. The Pilgrims once convicted a boy of “buggery” with some farm animals. He was executed along with the defiled beasts, and all thrown into the same burial pit. (That’s something you don’t talk about at the Thanksgiving table!)
The British were “drawing & quartering” traitors right through the 18th Century. Murderers and pirates like Capt. Kidd were “swung from gibbets” after execution – iron frames that held rotting bodies together for the public to see. Beside the odor and being food for insects and birds, the gibbets swayed in the wind, creaking and clanking eerily. They weren’t outlawed until 1832.
In light of these horrors Beccaria sought mercy, but he had his faults. He made no provision for mentally ill criminals – every human being had “free will” and therefore responsible for his crime. Maybe Beccaria figured the insane were already off the streets and in madhouses. Moreover, he thought minor crimes should not be seen as stepping stones to greater crimes. This is definitely at odds with the “broken windows” philosophy of today. Mayor Rudy Giuliani cleaned up New York starting with subway turnstile jumpers, Beccaria would be more like freewheeling Bill DeBlasio.
Surprisingly, Beccaria didn’t think much of Roman Law, which he considered unclear and imprecise. No matter that its four basic principles underlay modern law and are clear enough:
#1 – Everyone must be treated equally under the law.
#2 – An accused person is presumed innocent unless proven guilty.
#3 – The accused is allowed to face the accuser and offer a defense against the charge.
#4 – Guilt has to be established “beyond a reasonable doubt” using solid evidence.
But there was a fellow Italian criminologist that Beccaria definitely outclassed: “Cesare” Lombroso (1835- 1909). Born Ezechia Lombroso to Jewish parents in Verona, Lombroso believed criminals were born to be wild. They could be easily identified by physical traits like the shape of the skull, size of the ears, and so on. His premise was that criminals were subhuman throwbacks, unevolved brutes. As you can imagine Lombroso’s work was later popular in Nazi Germany and expanded to cover racial characteristics. Another corollary to Lombroso’s theory was that bad women were inferior to even male brutes, so their criminality made them prostitutes rather than murderers. There is evidence that Lombroso considered southern Italians inferior for resisting northern laws in post-reunified Italy.
On the 100th anniversary of Beccaria’s On Crime and Punishment in 1865, the Italian Parliament voted to abolish the death penalty in the kingdom and to erect a statue of Beccaria in Milan.
Cesare Beccaria didn’t have all the answers, but he was ahead of his time. –JLM
[Further reading in The Italic Way, issue V. Source material for this blog included an essay on Beccaria by Prof, Lorenzo Zucca of King’s College, London]
Lombroso’s pseudo-scientific theories on Southern Italians were very popular in the late 800s and early 900s. Today, they have been dismissed as racist nonsense.
His and similar theories were used by the Piemontesi (who unified Italy) to justify Northern invasion of the South and the following repression and mass killings of Southern Italians. The theories became popular in the U.S as well and were partly used as justification of the Immigration Act of 1924, which brought Italian immigration to the U.S to a halt.
Sadly, there is a museum in Northern Italy that celebrates Lombroso (or at least it gives him scientific dignity) – https://www.museolombroso.unito.it/en/. Some Southern Italian politicians have tried to have the museum closed but they have not been successful.
I wish David Chase and Spike Lee visit the museum one day.
You mention “mass killings” of southern Italians by northerners. This is a difficult subject, and we wrote about it in The Italic Way issue XLII “A Kingdom Lost.”
As for Lombroso, why he hasn’t been consigned to the dustbin of history may have more to do with his ethnic roots.
a fascinating reminder of some of the intellectual movers and shakers from the “boot” that have impacted modern thought……i am always amazed at the “unintended consequences” of taking some of these theories to their logical conclusion..as in the case of Lombroso….how ironic that 40 years later it would be used by the Nazis.
“Ponzi Scheme” is another example of the “staying power of Italian stereotypes. The media keeps using that term even though modern-day con artists have far surpassed anything he ever did via scamming people. Just as we now rename buildings, the media should rename their own brands. Yet, anti-Italian animus is like fly-paper.
The media is indeed very biased against Italians.
Two Italian men were stabbed yesterday in NYC (one died). The perpetrator is non-white. So far, no coverage by major national outlets. Imagine for a second if an Italian man had come from Italy and stabbed two non-white people in NYC.