| Summary: | Considered as one of the staunchest supporters of the need to reform the eighteenth-century British penal system, the jurist Manasseh Dawes combines legal reflection with moral criticism. This union emerges from the reading of his works and in particular in a treatise published in 1782, entitled An Essay on Crimes and Punishments. In this work Dawes takes up and analyzes several aspects of Beccaria’s thought, paying special attention to the causes of criminal conduct in parallel with the theory of human freedom. Through other important English intellectuals such as Blackstone, Eden and Dagge, Dawes draws from Beccaria his critical and reformist approach to the study of criminal law.
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