The Practical Challenges of the Mitigation of Punishment Concerning Imprisonment in the Judicial Procedure with an Emphasis on the Crime of Fraud and Theft

Kooshki, Gholam Hassan; Zandi, Rohollah

doi:10.22054/jclr.2024.70886.2535

The Practical Challenges of the Mitigation of Punishment Concerning Imprisonment in the Judicial Procedure with an Emphasis on the Crime of Fraud and Theft

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

Gholam Hassan Kooshki ¹

Rohollah zandi ²

¹ Associate Professor, Department of Criminal Law and Criminology, Faculty of Humanities, Allameh Tabataba'i University, Tehran, Iran

² Doctoral student of criminal law and criminology, faculty of humanities, Allameh Tabataba'i University, Tehran, Iran

https://doi.org/10.22054/jclr.2024.70886.2535

Abstract

The law "Mitigating Ta'ziri Imprisonment Punishment" was approved in July 2019 with the aim of de-imprisonment by accepting a relative standard to consider theft and fraud crimes as forgivable, leading to challenges and gaps in terms of form and substance. Today, with the identification of the disadvantages of deprivation of liberty and the failure of the prison system in rehabilitating criminals, penal systems, under the influence of criminological teachings and criminological findings such as the increase in recidivism and the crime-causing nature of prisons, are more and more limited in terms of punishment. They have become anti-freedom. On the other hand, the bad effects of this punishment were noticed by criminologists, and today, although many efforts have been made to improve the condition of the prison, the reformation and treatment of criminals, which was considered one of the main goals of this punishment, doubts still prevail. It became serious, and experience showed that, with the help of recidivism statistics, repeated professional crimes are more often committed by those who have had a history of prison. In this way, imprisonment is not only ineffective in rehabilitating and reforming criminals, but also harming the country's economy.
By approving the law on mitigating penal punishment, the legislator implemented the policy of de-imprisonment through the development of erfaq institutions, reducing the amount of imprisonment and increasing the range of forgivable crimes. Although the mentioned law is useful in mitigating the prison sentence, it has caused wide challenges and created gaps in the legal system and judicial procedure. The challenges related to the relative impossibility of fraud and theft crimes due to their amounts are one of the factors that have caused changes in the process of criminal prosecution. In the discussion of the initiation of prosecution and actions of the bailiffs in this field, despite the many differences between the jurists, it seems that the principle is that these crimes are unforgivable and the criminal prosecution by the bailiffs is based on the assumption of committing the above crimes.
In the matter of determining the appropriate order, the judicial authority should determine the monetary penalty for the issuance of the security order, regardless of whether the crimes are forgivable and based on the initial estimate, and after referring to the expert, he can determine the necessary amount. On the other hand, the most important challenge that has caused a strong difference in the judicial procedure is the issue of the number of crimes that can be forgiven and the appropriate criteria for determining the crimes that can be considered forgivable. It should be such that it justifies the application of the aggregate criterion, despite such a criterion, there is still a wide difference of opinion among the judicial authorities, and it is better to determine the task through a unanimous vote on the above issue. Among the other loopholes governing the law on reducing the punishment of imprisonment are related to the calendar of non-calendarable property, obtaining biometric records and interpreting the concept of the absence of a victim in fraud-related crimes, which should be addressed by the legislator. In addition to the above challenges, which mainly covered issues and cases related to formal matters, some challenges also governed substantive issues and cases. The results indicate that the formal challenges in this field are mainly related to the stage of starting criminal prosecution by the officers and the preliminary investigation stage that oversees the issue of paying expert fees and issuing orders to secure and calendar non-calendarable property and obtaining biometric records. Also, the substantive challenges are related to the criterion of considering the crimes as forgivable in the assumption of multiple crimes, determining the monetary punishment in the assumption of multiple and the resistance of the judges to the given law. In this talk, it has been tried to explain each of the above challenges and then solve them with a descriptive-analytical method.

Keywords

punishment mitigation

de-imprisonment

relatively forgivable crimes

theft and fraud

practical challenges

Subjects

Code of Criminal Procedure

Law No. 140037390000132766, issued by Branch 21 of the Court of Appeal of Khuzestan Province.
Prosecution No. 140041390001311558, dated 06/08/1400, issued by Branch 101 of the Criminal Court of two Bahmai cities.
Decree No. 9909976311200819, dated 27/05/2013, issued by Branch 102 of the Criminal Court of two Abadan cities.
Prosecution No. 9909977424455647, issued by Branch 101 of Criminal Court 2, Bahmai.
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Document No. 9909986139200147, issued by the 103rd branch of Do Behbahan Criminal Court.
Decree No. 9709986304001409, dated 29/02/99, issued by Branch 2 of the Court of Appeal of Khuzestan.
Prosecution issued by branch 105 of Ahvaz Criminal Court 2.
Prosecution issued by Branch 113 of Ahvaz Criminal Court 2, 08/14/1400
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