Document Type : Research Paper

Author

• Hussein Gholami

Abstract

Defining the scope of criminal law and legitimated level of
intervention through criminal law over the rights and freedom of
citizens as the most serious kind of such intervention, is a complicated
and difficult matter. The principle of criminal law as the last and the
least resort as a basic principle of this knowledge, technique and
instrument of social control, as emphasizes upon the destructive
results of abuse of penal concepts, instruments and institutions, tries to
detennine the appropriate level of intervention through criminal law
and provide the possibility of usage for other kinds of social control
instruments and institutions. This article, as emphasizes upon the
necessity of considering this principle in more details, will discuss the
concepts, basics and implications of this principle for penal policy
(criminalization and penalization).

Keywords

• The principle of last and least resort
• Penal policy
• Criminal policy making
• Criminalization
• Penalization