Forgivability of the Crimes in Light of the Basis of the Criminal Law

From theoretical perspective criminalization and penalization are mostly justified via objectives and concerns such as execution of justice or maintenance of social order. Accordingly, crimes and punishments serve public non-forgivable function and the “forgivable crimes” phenomenon, as provided in the Iranian criminal legislations, has not been adverted and is an outsider to the theorizing tradition. Even the novel restorative justice notion, regardless of its pure models, which basically focuses on the rights of the victim, includes crime as a public phenomenon unforgivable. Promoting compromising in the process of restorative meetings, regardless of the philosophical controversies behind it, does not omit punishments and the policy of some criminal justice systems lies upon implement of the mitigating constitutions or alternatives to imprisonment in case of reaching compromise. Excessively making crimes forgivable during the last years, the Iranian legislator has ignored the public interest. Such attitude being contradictive with the fundament of criminalization, may lead to the commodification and privatization of the criminal law and bargaining on the punishments by the parties and may in practice aggravate the pressure on the victims or deceive them. The proper alternative would be decriminalization of such acts along with civil adjudication or the application of mitigating constitutions in cases of forgiveness or reconciliation.