Legal-Criminological Approach to Intervention of Observers in Crime Prevention

Observers’ intervention is one of the important procedure of informal social prevention, which seeks to ensure the security of society and citizens by institutionalizing the responsibility of individuals in society to help vulnerable individuals. Observers’ intervention in this new strategic concept is in the field of crime prevention, which is different from other crime prevention programs due to its unorganized nature. In Iran’s criminal policy, the legislator has recognized this strategy through the single article on refusing to help the injured and Article 295 of the Islamic Penal Code. Regarding this strategy, theorists in the fields of social psychology have mentioned several factors for the intervention or non-intervention of observers. According to existing theories, helping and empathizing with people in danger is one of the most important ethical principles that motivates observers to encourage them to intervene. But to achieve this, people in society need to learn the skills needed to intervene in order to overcome barriers such as ambiguity and the distribution of responsibilities, and to take effective and safe interventions to protect public and individual interests.