Gradation of Tazirat: from Innovation to Rethinking

Legislator's innovation in crime punishment gradation had positive effects in the legislative system. This innovation facilitates applying the principle of proportionality between crime and punishment, harmonizing criminal responses, and implementation of policy of individualization of the punishments. In addition to these advantages, there are disadvantages in the gradation system. After studying the gradation system in the legislation of some countries and the history of this system in Iranian legislation system, this article studies the advantages and disadvantages of Islamic Penal Code with content analysis method and makes suggestions to remove the disadvantages. These disadvantages are not all-inclusive degrees of punishment, the ambiguity of the degree of some crimes, illogical and contrary to the law criteria of judicial precedent, lack of clear criteria for determining the maximum punishment for multiple crimes, the imbalance of sanctions inside one degree and non-use or misuse of gradation system of sanctions in other laws. The solutions proposed include enumerating all instances of Tazirat under Article 19, and excluding other punishments, stipulating that relative fines are within eight-fold degrees of punishment, a proposal to amend Section 3 of Article 19, proposing a clear formula to determine the most severe punishment in multiple crimes, offering an unique and balanced criteria in order to amend the punishments inside one grade and proper use of gradation system on other laws.