Make-up On Crimes and Punishment Week 14

In class, when discussing On Crimes and Punishment, I chose to talk about the chapter Errors in the Measurement of Punishment. The three main topics in the chapter are intention, measuring dignity of injured party, and gravity of sin. Intention, according to Baccaria should not be taken into consideration when assessing the punishment for a crime. This is because of all the factors that go into judging a man’s intentions and the impossible task of getting inside a man’s head. He says that the only way to measure punishment is by the harm done to the nation. Another mistake made when measuring a crime is by considering the dignity of the injured party. Instead, the public good should be the main concern when making a judgment. This means to me that heinous crimes on individuals should not be considered more important than crimes committed on a large group of people. I feel like our society could benefit from thinking about this concept, because it seems like the wealthy and famous constantly receive more attention when having a conflict with the law than an average person who performs an offense on many poor people. Lastly, gravity of sin is tied into the previously mentioned error in measurement. Baccaria states that if dignity should be considered than any offense to God should be the most severely punished crime, even more so than killing a monarch. Along these lines, he also addresses the judgment of sin by humans. Again, this is a mistake because that would place a human on the level of God when judging.