Evaluation of Lenient Institutions in Iran’s Criminal Policy (By Emphasis on Extreme Expansion and Inefficient)

Lenient institutions, which encompass a wide range of exempting and mitigating provisions have a long history of playing a role in Iran’s criminal policy. The tendency towards these institutions in recent years due to the overcrowding of the criminal population and the difficulties of the prison administration has accelerated after the enactment of the Law of Commuting Sentences of Taʿzīr Imprisonment (2020) and a large number of crimes were subjected and included to these regulations with new developments that in the past did not include commutation or suspension or probation or electronic monitoring. Inflicting and imposing aggravating circumstances of punishment such as plurality and recidivism of the crime will not prevent resorting to lenient institutions. The increasement of these institutions and their diversity which sometimes conflict with each other and especially the conditions for having them based on general and subjective propositions have disrupted the coherence and efficiency of the criminal policy. In addition, most of the lenient institutions are optional and subjected to the discretion and opinions of judicial authorities and the confirmation and ascertainment of the mandatory cases are done by the judge. The lack of guiding principles for resorting to these institutions in practice has caused the diversity of perceptions of the law and adoption of different procedures and it has made their application unpredictable. Reducing the lenient institutions that are conflicting with or limiting them to a specific area of judicial process, eliminating ambiguous conditions and predicting objective and manageable propositions as well as limiting judicial discretions can affect the cohesion and effectiveness (efficiency) of the institutions of lenient.