Abstract

Chapter 6 analyses the parameters of a penal policy that is derived from theocratic normativity as a coherently designed set of roles and functions, and systematically confronts these findings with existing international human rights standards and universal legal norms. The chapter discusses how the theocentric world-view taken by the Iranian theocracy reacts to the notion of a ‘right to be/do wrong’ within the framework of criminal law. It explores the ravenous criminal law thanks to the lack of legal clarity about the features of wrongdoing and wide-open-to-interpretation wording of offense descriptions in the Islamic Penal Code. It argues that the paternalistic penal policy and intrusiveness of the criminal law system functions as a barrier to the applicability of criminal law as a last resort (ultima ratio), within the framework of ideological penal policy. This chapter closes with an examination of how capitalizing on the docile body of the condemned through public punishment has resulted in a penal Machiavellianism through well-founded fear of justice.