Comparing the Role of Forgiveness in U.S. and Iranian Criminal Justice Processes

Much has been written on the spaces and potentials for processes of forgiveness within the American criminal justice system, without serious discussion of the meaning of forgiveness itself in the context of American justice. Culturally bound understandings of interpersonal processes of forgiveness play a role in defining social constructions of justice. I compare the different spaces created for these interpersonal processes between the U.S. and Iranian criminal justice systems, and interpret some moral assumptions that provide the foundations for these two divergent approaches to criminal justice. The structure of U.S. criminal justice prioritizes a removed and blind sense of justice, one that ultimately restricts opportunities for direct interpersonal processes of forgiveness. By contrast, criminal justice in Iran emphasizes relationships in general, and opportunities for forgiveness in particular, reflecting the dominant assumption that the capacity for forgiveness is inseparable from the societal pursuit of justice. I argue that future discussions of the role of forgiveness in justice must acknowledge foundational social assumptions about the meaning of the two. I finally suggest that further comparative structural analyses can be an essential basis of understanding for any reform movement that must contend with abstract popular assumptions or culturally bound moral domains, which have profound foundational consequences for modern structures of governance.