Iran has carried out at least 88 public executions between 2011 and 2023, according to a review published by the daily Shargh, which said the practice -- often witnessed by crowds including children -- has failed to reduce violent crime despite declining in recent years.
Shargh described familiar scenes at public hangings: spectators arriving hours early, jostling for a view, with teenagers and children in tow as a crane and rope are readied.
The report cited legal experts and psychologists as saying that public hangings, though permitted under certain judicial conditions, risk normalizing violence and inflicting long-term psychological harm, particularly on young observers.
The practice declined to zero in 2021 before returning from 2022, with Fars, Khorasan and Kermanshah provinces accounting for the largest share, and smaller numbers in cities including Yasuj, Arak, Ahvaz, Marvdasht and Isfahan, the newspaper reported.
Many events occurred in provincial centers with large populations or cases that drew unusual media attention, the newspaper added.
“Public executions can have broad negative effects on society. They are not deterrents and instead strengthen violent behavior while harming the mental health of children and adolescents,” lawyer Abdolsamad Khorramshahi told the daily.
Under Iran’s judicial principles, executions should ordinarily be conducted out of public view, Khorramshahi noted.
“Article 4 of the Islamic Penal Code allows a public execution only in specific circumstances, when the executing prosecutor proposes it and the prosecutor general approves.”
Repeated exposure to violence in public desensitizes society and fosters imitation, social psychiatrist Amirhossein Jalali Nadoushan told Shargh.
“When violence becomes a spectacle, it seeps into families and daily life,” Jalali said. Public executions can stir what he called “collective anger” -- repressed frustration that surfaces when citizens lack lawful ways to express grievances.
Deterrence needs equity, not spectacle
Severe penalties have not curbed crime despite heavy sentences for drug traffickers, murderers and thieves, jurist and former Central Bar Association chief Ali Najafi Tavana told the daily.
“No country has managed to control delinquency through executions or corporal punishment.”
Punishment, according to him, only works within a framework grounded in meeting basic needs -- work, housing, social security and psychological calm -- and in visible fairness. When poverty, corruption and discrimination persist and elites flaunt privilege, fear of punishment erodes, he added.
Shargh also cited two public executions in July and August -- one in Larestan and one in Golestan -- where onlookers applauded and whistled at the conclusion, stressing the paper’s finding that the display does not reduce violent crime.
Iran’s execution rate surges in 2025
Twenty-eight inmates were executed nationwide on October 22, bringing the total number of executions that month to 280, the Iran Human Rights Society wrote on Wednesday.
The group called October “the bloodiest month for prisoners since the mass executions of 1988.” The deaths, it said, mostly linked to drug offenses or murder, included several Afghan nationals and were sometimes carried out without notifying families or allowing final visits.
Amnesty International on October 16 also urged an immediate halt to executions, saying more than 1,000 had been recorded so far in 2025, many following unfair trials aimed at silencing dissent and persecuting minorities.
“UN Member States must confront the Iranian authorities’ shocking execution spree with the urgency it demands. More than 1,000 people have already been executed in Iran since the beginning of 2025 -- an average of four a day,” Amnesty said.
