Examining the factors that reduce criminal liability from the perspective of the requirements of structural order, comprehensiveness and usefulness

Haji Dehabadi, Ahmad; Shidaian Arani, Mehdi; Rahimi, Ahmad

doi:10.22054/jclr.2024.73311.2570

Examining the factors that reduce criminal liability from the perspective of the requirements of structural order, comprehensiveness and usefulness

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

Ahmad Haji dehabadi ¹

Mehdi Shidaian Arani ²

Ahmad Rahimi ³

¹ faculty member of Farabi School of Tehran University, Qom, Iran

² a member of the faculty of Farabi School of Tehran University, Qom, Iran

³ Ph.D. student of criminal law and criminology, Faculty of Law, Farabi College, Qom, Iran

https://doi.org/10.22054/jclr.2024.73311.2570

Abstract

In making the law, several criteria such as structural order, comprehensiveness, and usefulness should be taken into consideration by the legislator so that the result of the legislative process is of high quality. This importance is doubly important in the substantive criminal laws, especially the factors that reduce criminal liability. In fact, among the laws governing the society, the substantive penal laws are of great importance in that they represent the norms and values of the society and guarantee the fulfillment of the natural human needs such as justice, equality, stability and social order. In fact, substantive criminal laws, including the Islamic Penal Code of 1392, are established with the aim of creating and supporting social order and realizing basic values such as justice. It is on this basis that these laws have a stricter enforcement guarantee (penalties) than other laws. Among the different parts of this law, the second chapter from the fourth part of the first book, i.e. "factors that mitigate criminal liability", are of double importance considering that they were established with the aim of removing the criminal character of the act or removing the punishment. Therefore, compliance with the substantive and formal requirements of legislation is a worthy and necessary expectation for them. However, looking at the Islamic Penal Code of 1392 as an example of the most recent major substantive criminal laws, it seems that some legislative requirements have not been properly considered in some parts of this law. Among these cases, the second chapter of the fourth part of the first book of this law is "Factors mitigating criminal liability".
Based on this, the present research is intended to examine this part of the Islamic Penal Code in the light of the requirements of the legislation; However, due to the fact that there are many criteria and requirements in this regard and the assessment of this part of the law from the point of view of all of them does not fit in this area, therefore, in this article, an effort is made to evaluate this part of the law from the point of view of the requirements of "structural order". "Usefulness" and "Comprehensiveness" should be examined as examples of the superior measures of legislation. In this regard, the main question of the current research, which was conducted using the analytical-descriptive method and using library data, is how are the factors that mitigate criminal liability in the Islamic Penal Code of 2013 evaluated from the perspective of the requirements of structural order, comprehensiveness and usefulness of the law?
It is worth mentioning that due to the fact that it has not been a long time since the legislation/law writing technique has been paid attention to in Iran, therefore, not many researches have been done in this regard. Among the articles written in this regard, we can refer to the article "Examination of the New Islamic Penal Code in the Criteria of Legislation" written by Ruhollah Akrami, which was published in the 82nd issue of the Majlis and Strategy magazine. The distinguishing feature of the current research is that it specifically examines a part of the Islamic Penal Code from the perspective of the requirements of structural order, usefulness and comprehensiveness of the law, and in addition to the specific evaluation criteria, the scope of the investigation is also narrow and makes for a richer evaluation.
Examining the factors that reduce criminal responsibility from this point of view shows that there are many criticisms on the performance of the legislator; Including:

A) In relation to the need for structural order, considering the title "factors that mitigate criminal responsibility" and not dividing the articles under this part of the law according to the differences in factors that mitigate responsibility and justifiable causes of the crime are inappropriate. Therefore, the title "factors affecting responsibility" is suggested for this section. Also, the reference of reluctance ruling in Article 151 of this chapter has not been done properly and it is appropriate to amend this matter in the process of revising the law.
b) From the point of view of necessity and usefulness, it seems that the repetition of the verdict of committing a crime while intoxicated in Article 307 despite Article 154 of the Criminal Code, applying a limited punishment to a person who becomes insane after issuing a definitive sentence and repeating the age of puberty in Article 147 of the Civil Code despite Article 1210 of the Civil Code has not been necessary and useful. Based on this, it is appropriate that similar articles such as articles 307 and 147 are not repeated in the amendments of the law, and the punishment of the insane should be conditional on his recovery and recovery.
c) Regarding the requirement of comprehensiveness, despite the fact that expanding the scope of intoxicating substances in Article 154 is considered a positive and forward-looking measure, the lack of classification of insanity and the vagueness of the relative impairment of the will are considered to be in conflict with the requirement of comprehensiveness, and it is appropriate that the legislator revises the law with the possibility of reducing the punishment. In such an assumption to predict.

Keywords

comprehensiveness

usefulness

factors reducing criminal liability

structural order

Subjects

General and exclusive criminal law

Translated References into English

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1. Theses and treatises
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Rahimi, Ahmed, (1400), investigation of the factors that mitigate criminal responsibility in the Islamic Penal Code 2013 from the perspective of legal requirements, Master's Thesis, Qom, Farabi School of Tehran University. [In Persian]