An Inquiry on Changes of Beginning the crime in the Iranian Penal System

Attaching importance to incomplete crimes, the first step was criminalizing the beginning of the crime in absolute, and beginning the misdemeanors if specified, by the General Penal Code (1925). Then, the Criminal Amendment Act of 1973 was developed, through criminalizing the impossible material offence. The result of the continued silence in face of unproductive offences was that some people denied it with citing the principle of its legality and some others proved it, due to the conditions of the crime formation, including existence of criminal intent, criminal enforcement operations, and lack of result achievement through intervention of external factors. The law about the Islamic Penal System (1982) and then, the Islamic Penal Code (1992) decriminalized the act of crime beginning and ignored the subjective impossible crime, instead of completing the process; therefore, it began a retrogression movement. The Islamic Penal Code (2013) once again considered beginning of the offence as crime, and referred to the necessity of involvement of an outside factor will, in the offence commitment, in order to suspend offender's intention. In this way, the Code returned to the subject of the Criminal Amendment Act 1973, through giving a criminal description for the subjective impossible crime. However, the adopted approach has defects in some respects. First, inclusion of article 22 does not express clearly the unproductive offenses. Second, due to the nature and type of punishment anticipated in paragraphs (a) and (b) of this article, prosecution of the legal persons in relation to beginning the crime does not seem possible. Third, decriminalization of beginning offences such as forging a doctor's certificate -article 538, and beginning to bribery of judges, auditors and experts -article 588 would result in undermining of the social defense against those crimes. Fourth, despite of the importance of the issue, it has been refrained from criminalization of the crimes less than murder. Fifth, although imposition of Article 22 and considering one verdict for all cases of beginning the crime lead to expectation that the previous special regulations to be abrogated, except the regulations of the Expediency Council, the law-marker's expression in paragraphs (a) of that Article is such a way that it prevents experts consensus, concerning the decline of Article 613. This paper aims at explaining the defects and providing some suggestions to overcome shortcomings.