The effect of the law on reducing the punishment of imprisonment in increasing or decreasing the crime

The tendency of Iran's criminal policy and accordingly the penal policy is to reduce the prison sentence and the criminal population of the prison. In other words, Iran's key priorities are to reduce the prevalence of imprisonment. Based on this, the legislative and judicial approach seeks to de-incarcerate and use alternative institutions. This is why the dream of de-incarceration has become the main goal of criminal policy today, and the prediction of Arafaq institutions and the approach of the law to reduce the punishment of penal servitude confirms this approach. However, despite the movement towards de-incarceration, the synchronization of this approach with the discussion of deterrence and impunity or the goals of punishment is of great importance. Because with the reduction of punishments, the deterrence power of punishment is also reduced. This article, using a descriptive-analytical method, comes to the conclusion that the reduction of imprisonment without the development of a culture of legalism and paying attention to other factors affecting the increase in crimes will not be possible to reduce the criminal population of prisons. Therefore, the result of the law on reducing the punishment of penal servitude approved in 2019 is to reduce the deterrent power of punishment and help to impunity criminals. On the other hand, it does not have much effect on reducing the criminal prison population. Because the production of crime and imprisonment is not the only result of long punishments, which can achieve the desired result by reducing it from the criminal population. Rather, the main components that generate crime and pay attention to alternatives to imprisonment should be investigated.