The Strategies to Reduce the Prison's Criminal Population; Studying The American Law and the Possibility of Applying the Strategies in Iran's Criminal Justice System

Nowadays, coercive criminal policy and harsh or terrible punishments have been replaced by friendship, adjustment and flexibility. Perhaps the reason for removing the death penalty (as an illegitimate child of royal governments) and turning to the deprivation of liberty (imprisonment) can be seen as the result of not fulfilling the goals of punishments, the usefulness and rehabilitation of criminals. Primiarily, the substitution of imprisonment for severe corporal punishment was very promising. The unfavorable use of custodial punishment turned this hope into despair. According to the Criminal Policy and Justice Department's research, until December 2021, approximately 11.5 million people have been in prison around the world! Therefore, criminal justice policymakers tried to provide strategies and policies to reduce the criminal population of prisons. This caused the emergence of new strategies in societies, including the First Step Act in US. The present article, with a descriptive-analytical method, aims to analyze the strategies of the above-mentioned law and the feasibility of its application in Iran's legal system. The research results showed that some strategies of this law, such as "risk assessment system, rehabilitation of prisoners, use of more facilities for prisoners, changing the status and serving the sentence outside of prison" are in accordance with the current policies of Iran and application of them, is considered as an effective strategy in reducing the prison's criminal population.