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.
The uncertainty of the extreme points of this scale, hath produced a system of morality which contradicts the laws;
Punishments, which I would call political obstacles, prevent the fatal effects of private interest, without destroying the impelling cause, which is that sensibility inseparable from man.