Inflation of Criminal Laws in Iran, Causes, and Consequences

Abstract:Excessive recourse of the government to the topic of criminalization along with the imagination that the multitude of punishment and criminal titles are preventive has caused a phenomenon to be created as "inflation in the criminal laws" due to blending concepts such as crime, sins and deviance and technological advances. As a result, the criminal law system has typically been faced with a crisis, so that despite the use of severe penalties the criminal law has not only failed to prevent crime offenders and reform the criminals as its original mission, but also the ineffectiveness of punishment in the category of prevention has caused citizens dissatisfaction with the criminal system, and paved the ground for increasing the number of offenders in the community. Due to inability to detect the abrogating and abrogated laws, this issue weakens the value-ethical function of punishment among citizens, fluctuates to the concept of justice, and imposes the staggering costs on state budget. Since the international communities have come to the conclusion that the history of criminal law has proven the inefficiency of punishment, using strategies such as reducing the work load densities of the courts, increasing the amount of citizensʹ freedom using decriminalization from unimportant criminal titles, small crimes and offences, relieving punishment from criminal acts, and trying to handle social disorders non-criminally, putting judgments in a court aside and depositing the judiciary to address cases at non-judicial and administrative authorities, we should take our steps in line with the enforcement of social order and justice, which is the philosophy of criminal law. Hence, the conclusions that can be gained from this category include the necessity of reducing the governmentsʹ interference in the liberties of citizens and consequently reducing the criminal titles in different countriesʹ penal code in line with getting out of the crisis.