Cesare Bonesano Beccaria was an eighteenth-century Italian philosopher of law and economics. His writings on crime and punishment were enormously influential in both academic and government circles well into the nineteenth century. Beccaria's views influenced U.S. criminology. Thomas Jefferson drew much of his proposed criminal law reforms for Virginia from Beccaria. A product of the Enlightenment, Beccaria valued rationality and believed that the law could be applied more efficiently to the problem of crime.

Beccaria was born on March 15, 1738 in Milan, Italy. The son of an aristocratic family, Beccaria as a young boy was sent to Parma to study with Jesuits. He graduated from the University of Pavia in 1758 with a law degree, upon which Beccaria returned to Milan and became part of its literary society.

Beccaria wrote his first pamphlet on monetary reform in 1762 and began his major work on criminal law the next year. Though...