Public Implementation of Punishment; Justifications and fallouts

One of the important and challenging issues in the criminal law is the manner of punishments implementation. Deterrence as one of the main objectives of the criminal sanctions enforcement has prompted some criminal law operators to pursue this goal through the public execution of punishments. In the Islamic penal jurisprudence and consequently in the Iranian legal system, there is such a tendency. To jurisprudential justify of this tendency, the Quran and Sunnah is referred. It seems that Quran and hadiths, implying no obligation or recommendation to public invitation to watch the suffering inflicted punishment to the convicts. The purpose of what some of the Quranic verses on the presence of several people when implementation of Hudood (Islamic Prescribed Punishment), emphasizing the certainty enforcement of punishments, after proofing. The Hadiths about positive effect of execution of Hudood don’t indicate directly or indirectly, the public implementation of Hudood, that’s to say invitation of people to watch that openly. The public execution of penalties in contemporary methods may be in conflict with the primary and religious principle of unpublic execution of punishment and with important rules such as protection of people’s honor; prohibition of double pain, prohibition of making religion-hate and prohibition of weakening of religion. On the other hand studies in some countries on the death penalty and how to execute it - as the most severe punishment that can be done in public, has not proved its deterrence and usefulness. On the one hand it seems that the lack of a correct conception of deterrent policies and on the other hand retribution, penal Instrumentalism and populism lead enforcement of criminal justice to public implementation of punishments in line with organizational and institutional goals.