Penal populism has affected criminal policy of many countries in recent years. Under the impact of this approach, policymakers try to pass and enforce publicly admitted crime control policies, regardless of their scientific and theoretical basis. Penal populism has rooted in many factors such as media representation of crime, rising of public fear of crimes, nothing works idea, and election competitions. Its manifestations can clearly be seen on media representation of sex criminals, tendency to punitiveness, criminal policy making based on unpopular criminal events, and infringing of basic principles of criminal law. This article tries to in addition to describing and analyzing the conceptualization of penal populism, the contexts of arising and its manifestations in the penal policy of Iran, do a comparative study of penal systems in this regard.

Keywords: Penal populism, Sex crimes, Punitiveness, Media representation of crime, Basic principles of criminal law