The Sociological Analysis of between formal criminal policy and punitive ethics of society (Case study: The degree of attribution of public opinion in Mashhad city in severe physical punishment)

The birth and transformation of the emergence of punishment comes from historical accumulation and the transformation of other social phenomena, and in particular the perception of public opinion about the nature and function of punishment. Due to this dependence, criminal law can’t be overlooked when it comes to criminal law. Field surveys are a way to decipher the criminal will of the community. The present paper aims at analyzing the degree of convergence of public opinion with physical punishment from the socio-cognitive perspective. This research is a descriptive-analytic type that has been surveyed. The statistical population is all citizens of Mashhad in 13 areas in 1395. Sampling was done as a combination of simple, clustering and simple random methods. Data collection was done field by using a researcher-made questionnaire. The respondents' views about non-crime punishments from different crimes were drawn up in the form of five Likert options. The results of the research show that the extent to which public opinion agrees with punishments that directly offend public feelings, such as rape, acidity, and embezzlement. On the contrary, in crimes based on satisfaction (sodomy) and in crimes that are the main cause of socioeconomic issues (drug and robbery), the rate of opposition to severe punishment is high. When legislating criminal, these diverse tendencies of public opinion should be considered. Not paying attention to these tendencies will trigger a chain of public opinion resistance against a formal criminal policy.