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Limitation of Death Penalty for Drug Offenses in Iran's Penal Policy From Volume 1, Number 5, 2017 Iranian journal of educational Sociology | 172 __________________________________________________________________ Iranian journal of educational Sociology (Interdisciplinary Journal of Education) Available online at: http://www.iase-idje.ir/ Volume 1, Number 5, August 2017 Limitation of Death Penalty for Drug Offenses in Iran’s Penal Policy from the Perspective of Criminal Sociology Mehdi Sheidaeian 1*, Mohammad HusseinBeyki2 1. Assistant Professor of Criminal Law and Criminology, University of Tehran, Farabi Campus, Qom, Iran. 2. Ph.D. student of Criminal Law and Criminology, University of Tehran, Farabi Campus, Qom, Iran. Article history: Abstract Received date: 17 April, 2017 The legislator has adopted a policy of repression and aggravation of Review date: 22 may 2017 punishment in drug offenses. Undoubtedly, the legislator has adopted Accepted date:16 June 2017 such measures due to the obscenity and severity of these crimes, as Printed on line: 28 March 2018 well as their danger to society. However, it seems that this penal policy is not useful for many reasons and does not move the legislator toward its goal (prevention of crime, recidivism, and reform of the offenders); It is probably due to the fact that imposing heavy punishments is reasonable and correct regardless of the causes and factors of the Keywords: crime, as well as the circumstances in which the person committed the Criminal Sociology, Death Penalty, crime. The thing that prevents offenders and people from committing Penal policy, Drug. or repeating offenses is the speed and precision of executing the punishment, not the heavy ones. Hence, with regard to the shortcomings of this policy and the weakness of the deterrent theory against social, economic, cultural, and political crime factors at some periods of time, and in particular recently, the legislator has tried to moderate its penal policy. In 2017, an article was added to the Counter-Drug Law to undergo a fundamental change, including the Downloaded from iase-idje.ir at 15:17 +0330 on Sunday September 26th 2021 significant reduction in cases of execution and life imprisonment. The moderation of penal policy against drug and psychotropic crimes plays a major role in the elimination of death sentences from the Iranian criminal justice system and promotes human rights status of Iran in the international community. This moderation is originated from the post- revolutionary criminal sociological study as well as internal and external criticisms of strict penal policy; internal criticism was from jurisprudential, legal, human rights, criminology, and criminal sociology circles. Please cite this article as: Sheidaeian M, Beyki M H. (2017). Limitation of Death Penalty for Drug Offenses in Iran’s Penal Policy from the Perspective of Criminal Sociology. Iranian journal of educational Sociology. 1(5), 172-180. * Corresponding Author e-mail: [email protected] 173 | Limitation of Death Penalty for …Volume 1, Number 5, 2017 __________________________________________________________________ 1. Introduction Regarding doubts about the permission to execute capital punishment among lawyers, the legislator after the revolution has resorted to the terms such as "Mofsed-e-filarz" (corrupt on earth) or "Muharab" wherever it faces a problem of determining the death penalty. One of the cases is Article 9 and 45 of the Amendments to the Counter-Drug Law, which stipulates that the death penalty in this law is fundamentally skeptical in accordance with Article 9 of the Constitution. According to the above principle, the legitimate rights and freedom of individuals cannot be negated even on the pretext of the independence and territorial integrity of the country. Also, there is a controversy about the definitive or discretionary nature of the death penalty in the Counter-Drug Law: Apparently, those who determine this punishment resort to the term “corruption on earth,” and this is why the death penalty is not included in discretionary punishments in the Islamic Penal Code of 2013. Since the death penalty is not prescribed as a definitive punishment in religious references and the corruption on earth is described as an independent crime in article 286 of the Islamic Penal Code, the legislator used the terms "widely", "severe disruption" and "extensively" as a criterion for the detection of the corruption on earth in order to limit the scope of the crime to specific cases. However, in the Amendments to the Counter-Drug Law, the death penalty is considered for drug trafficking, producing, cultivating, distributing, exporting, importing and selling without mentioning the condition of "confrontation with the authorities." In some cases, such crimes cannot be in line with Article 286 of the Islamic Penal Code as instances of corruption on earth so that, inevitably, the legitimacy of execution is set forth as the discretionary punishment. Given that Iran's penal policy provides for the possibility of the death penalty for drug offenses in a wide range, it has made Iran as one of the focal points for human rights organizations. The question now arises whether the penal policy proposed by the legislature in our society has reduced the commission of drug-related crimes? It seems that the penal policy in the Counter-Drug Law is always based on repression, the severity of punishments and the disproportionate nature of the punishment with respect to the death penalty for some drug offenses. In this context, the enormity of the punishment, human dignity, human rights standards and the principle of justice are not considered. Over time, these internal and external critiques increased and persuaded the legislator, along with critics, to make a fundamental change in the penal policy and reform the law. In this framework, the parliament proposed and approved a plan to reduce the death penalty for drug offenses, and it was communicated and enforced by the President after the defects were resolved by the Guardian Council; a law that could be considered the most important step towards the elimination of death penalty for drug offenses in the country. Downloaded from iase-idje.ir at 15:17 +0330 on Sunday September 26th 2021 Such a measure has been unprecedented until today; A law that seems to be not the end of the road, but the beginning of a path that will gradually be followed up to restrict the execution to the prescribed and unconditional cases, and maybe only to the blood vengeance if the theory of recession of definitive punishments in the absence of Imam Zaman is accepted. The blood vengeance can also be converted into blood money along with the moral development of society. 2. Methodology The present research is applied in terms of purpose and content analysis method. In the organization of research, the documentary and library methods have been used and the information analysis has been obtained qualitatively and based on the inference of the researcher on the sources and texts. Volume 1, Number 5, 2017 Iranian journal of educational Sociology | 174 __________________________________________________________________ 3. Findings The concept of Criminal Sociology :Criminal sociology examines the social feedback of criminal law institutions. In fact, criminal law, sometimes referred to as "sociology of criminal law" or "sociology of criminal justice," aims to study criminal institutions and techniques as social phenomena and their effects in society and then sociological judgment about them (Najafi Abrandabadi, 2012: 8). In criminal sociology, for example, the freedom of body is considered as a fundamental social value and the deprivation of which is called imprisonment in the private criminal law (the legislative birth of prison sentences). In other words, what is the perception of law about the social phenomenon of imprisonment? Thus, studying the legislative, judicial and social nature of prison is relevant. The tendency of Iran's penal policy towards the death penalty in fighting against drug offenses from the perspective of criminal sociology: The issue of drugs has many dimensions, from the economic, social and legal dimensions to the issue of dirty money, but the human dimension is above all. Despite the fact that the statistics of prisoners and death sentences in the field of drug offenses are reported annually, the human tragedy that lies behind it is underestimated. In the legal system of Iran and some countries, the death penalty is considered the most severe criminal response to drug trafficking. There are no precise, scientific and rational assessments indicating that the death penalty was deterrent and that it was able or could help reduce drug offenses. Sometimes, some studies show that when the risk of drug trafficking changes, its distribution not only does not change but also increases (Zebhi, 2013: 67); because when the risk goes up, the price difference in the destination will increase and this increase in prices creates more profitability in the field of drug. Hence, people enter the illicit drug market with high tendency; if the action is taken according to the current official rules of the country and drug smugglers are sentenced to death on the basis of the amount of material they carry, the number of executions would increase. It is while we know that according to official statistics in the country the number of executions is not as many as the traffickers, and the number of executions is lower than that of traffickers. It shows that we currently have laws in the country that have lost their effectiveness and we have to set the rules according to the facts. The execution-oriented culture of society and public opinion: Reports from several countries over the past decades have shown that people have become punishment-oriented; they are less likely to support corrective programs; they call for more serious sentences (Miyazawa, 2008). P77). Public opinion is a complex and multidimensional issue; public opinion is properly shaped and integrated if a particular topic is discussed by people in an interactive atmosphere and a collective mind will be formed through this process.
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