The punishment of criminals in Iran is sometimes carried out in public. Ahmed Shaheed, the UN special rapporteur on the situation of human rights in Iran, has reported several cases of public execution and the humiliation of criminals. According to his March 2013 report on human rights in Iran, Shaheed "joins the [UN] Secretary-General’s view that 'executions in public add to the already cruel, inhuman and degrading nature of the death penalty and can only have a dehumanizing effect on the victim and a brutalizing effect on those who witness the execution.'"

However, public executions constitute a small percentage of all executions in Iran, as is the case with criminals being publicly flogged or humiliated. In a recent case, three thieves were given 74 lashes in public. These occurrences have become more common and intensified since the launch of a police operation targeting petty criminals some eight years ago. In some cases, male criminals were stripped in public and forced to wear women’s clothing or have a toilet ewer hung around their necks.

The police and the Justice Department defend these punishments and have even called them necessary. Lt. Gen. Ahmadi-Moghaddam, the high police commissioner, has frequently defended the police's harsh and humiliating treatment of the street toughs, stating that these criminals' intimidating character and notoriety must be broken in front of the people they terrorize. 

Ahmadi-Moghaddam said that by mistreating criminals — including a case of forcing two convicts to wear women’s clothing in the city streets — the police were simply enforcing a court-ordered punishment. At the same time, he does not fully approve of these punishments and has encouraged judges to employ more deference when handing out such rulings.