Delegating of Punishment to Legislator from the Perspective of Psychological Teachings

Punishment and power are in a process of reciprocal interaction as two social institutions derived from human behavior. Power determines punishment and punishment determines the scope of power in this two-way interaction. Political power has the legislator as the determining institution of the punishment, so it has a high level of intervention in determining the criminal response. However, there are psychological factors that lead society to demand these reactions from a superior. Delegating the duty of the determining of the punishment to the legislator requires a chain of previous causes. Most of these factors go back to the innate of person and human’s nature react seeking and the other part is external factors that increase his/her tendency to suppress the guilty person. But how does this chain of factors play its role? The current research tries to examine the underlying factors of the demand for criminal response which have an internal origin and arise from human nature, in addition to examining the exercise of power established in punishment.