The issues treated in this course comprise the difference between prisoners and those accused, as well as the distinction between incarceration and temporary detention, with attention to Iran’s new procedures for criminal trial law. Temporary detention orders are made for the sake of criminal provision, on the basis of which the accused is to be imprisoned for the complete or partial duration of a preliminary investigation or trial. This is the severest kind of criminal provision order; it can thus be said that, in criminal reform, temporary detention is synonymous with sequestering or imprisoning the accused during the course of preliminary investigation, and that this detention occasionally extends through the main trial and sentencing phases up until the beginning of sentence enforcement. Incarceration, however, is a form of punishment in which a final, actionable sentence results in deprivation of personal liberty. The principle of the freedom of the accused is nonetheless primary, and his or her detention should thus be treated as an exceptional affair. Save for cases of investigatory emergency or as a provisional measure in special circumstances, the detention of the accused should be foregone. Per new criminal trial regulations, the issuance of compulsory temporary detention orders has been nullified but for a class of crimes mentioned in the punitive law of the armed forces. As the course progresses we’ll examine the background and historical precedent of temporary detention and then proceed to the debate surrounding the Charter of the Rights of the Accused from a comparative, international perspective, with attention to the new procedural law for criminal trials.
In this session we treat the issue of confinement (or deprivation of liberty) as a form of punishment,...
