Cesare Beccaria (that”s “bake-uh-REE-uh”) [1738-1794], was a famous Italian economist and jurist. Top of his time. I haven”t read anything of his; but, what little I”ve read about him makes me think that in his thought regarding crime and punishment, he did not allow for any difference in criminals. Like Karl Marx, he took his clientele according to their function and situation and arranged them. He considered criminals important but not complex.
To be more wrong than this would require a Ph.D in misapprehension. I”m surprised the man ever failed to recognize his own extreme complexity and thereby that of others. Every criminal is a human being, and every human being is extremely complex.
We can”t even understand ourselves. It”s the most randomly mixed, least logical and most incredibly complex of memories that form our characters and personalities like a sculptor sculpts a glob of clay. And it”s not just the sculptor forming the clay; the clay also forms the sculptor. The sculptor finds the clay, takes him to the end of his creative limits and puts him repeatedly through the memories of his past failures and successes, all of which have affected his character and personality, making him personally a little different with every such crisis; for all experience is formative.
The study of criminals and what to do about them is balked by the dilemma imposed by the money system, necessary for its function as servomechanism (expending great power at the expense of very little power.) Money generates a dilemma by its extreme versatility vis-?-vis its vulnerability to almost all kinds of theft. Like Bertrand Russell”s antinomy (a statement that contradicts itself, apparently validly) about the barber who shaves every man in town who doesn”t shave himself, the money problem bifurcates into two valid and contradictory solutions: it”s both necessary and crime-prodigal. The solution (if any): study the criminal.
Dean Sparks
Lucerne
