Proportionality between Crimes and Punishments
idea · 1 work · 2 mentions · 8 anchored passages
a fixed proportion between crimes and punishments · a scale of crimes and punishments · proportion · the atrociousness of crimes
in the texts
An Essay on Crimes and Punishments
The doctrine that punishments should be graduated in strict proportion to the harm a crime does to society, forming a coherent scale.
Therefore there ought to be a fixed proportion between crimes and punishments.
If there were an exact and universal scale of crimes and punishments, we should then have a common measure of the degree of liberty and slavery, humanity and cruelty, of different nations.
If an equal punishment be ordained for two crimes that injure society in different degrees, there is nothing to deter men from committing the greater, as often as it is attended with greater advantage.