Judicial Punishment of Minors (Children and Adolesscents) in Cases of Re-Offence

An established principle of the Islamic penal code is the intensification of the punishments applying to offenders above the age of puberty who repetitively commit crimes subject to hadd (legal punishment). Article 38 of the Bill for Offences Committed by Minors (Children and Adolescents) lays down that “the regulations relating to cases of re-offence are not enforced in the cases of children and adolescents.”In this paper, the author presents jurisprudential opinions of the Twelve Imami School on verdicts of theft committed by minors, and proves the hypothesis of judicial correction of underage offenders in cases of re-offence by uncovering the criterion [for this offence] and applying it to all offences committed by minors in general. [Based on this], the author proposes the following modification of Article 38: “Re-offences committed by minors are subject to judicial correction and appropriate crime prevention schemes, which the court can enforce after taking into consideration the young offender’s upbringing, the correction of his/her behaviour and the interests of society.”In order to prove this hypothesis and to formulate the proposed changes to Article 38, the author employs the logic of jurisprudential methods of research, namely, interpretive reasoning (ijtihâd) and deduction (istinbât) from evidence, together with library research.