Against the Death Penalty: Writings from the First Abolitionists-Giuseppe Pelli and Cesare Beccaria

The first known abolitionist critique of the death penalty—here for the first time in English

In 1764, a Milanese aristocrat named Cesare Beccaria created a sensation when he published On Crimes and Punishments. At its centre is a rejection of the death penalty as excessive, unnecessary, and pointless. Beccaria is deservedly regarded as the founding father of modern criminal-law reform, yet he was not the first to argue for the abolition of the death penalty. Against the Death Penalty presen...