The basic challenges of crime prevention law in Iran

Crime prevention, as a main active strategy of criminal policy in Iran, is based on a series of laws and regulations, acted with aiming at normalizing and systematizing active responses to crime. These rules and regulations, which are the most important source of "crime prevention law", have such limitations and challenges that seriously damaged the fundamentals and strategic principles of crime prevention law and faced it with an "identity crisis". Therefore ,  it is necessary to study these challenges in order to give identity to crime prevention law and maintain its position. This article, using a research method based on the logical and hermeneutic analysis of the contexts of these rules and regulations and taking into account the foundations and strategic principles of crime prevention, examines the nature and bases of these challenges and their solutions.

Nowadays crime prevention as a systematic strategy of criminal policy is based on a series of laws and regulations. These rules and regulations as well as practical procedures, which is so called as "crime prevention law", are approved and implemented with the aim of normalizing and structuralizing crime prevention. In Iranian legal system, there are many substantive and procedural laws and regulations including Article 156, Clause 5 of the Constitution, the Improving Administrative Health and Combating Corruption Act (2013), the Combating Goods and Currency Smuggling Act (2012), and the Crime Prevention Act (2016), which have passed with the aim of constitutionalizing, normalizing the preventive criminological doctrines and systematization of the active strategy of criminal policy to control crime. But analyzing the contexts of these rules shows that the legislator has ignored many of the principles, bases and strategies of crime prevention in the process of approving or amending them, which has faced crime prevention law with fundamental challenges in Iran. So that,  they have shaken the existence of crime prevention law and  raised  many questions such as: what are the bases of  these challenges, is it possible to talk about crime prevention law as an organized, scientific and systematic criminal policy strategy in the field of criminal policy? Are these challenges not the reason for the existence of "identity crisis" in crime prevention law? This article, taking into account the bases and strategic principles of crime prevention, examines the nature, foundations and solutions of these challenges in several axes of procedural, substantive and substantive-procedural ones.

This article examines the nature, foundations and solutions of the basic challenges of crime prevention law in Iran by using the method of logical and hermeneutic analysis of the contexts of crime prevention laws and regulations.

This article has examined the basic challenges of crime prevention law in Iran based on the foundations and strategic principles of crime prevention.The findings of this research shows that these challenges are of different nature, some of them are procedural, the other ones are substantive and  the third ones are procedural-substantive.  lack of comprehensive, integrated and independent monitoring and performance assessment system, lack of coherence and integrative policy-making and management system are the most important of first ones. Lack of adequate and effective implementation guarantee, risk and security-oriented crime prevention law are of the second ones. Non transparency of crime prevention law, duty or conduct (not-result) based preventive  obligations of the states  and non- independence of crime prevention law (dependence on classic criminal law and criminology and pressure and interest groups) are of. multiple nature ones.

The existence of strategic and fundamental challenges has faced Iranian crime prevention law with some of "identity crisis ". So that, we can not speak of crime prevention law as an organized, scientific and systematic active strategy of criminal policy. In order to give identity to crime prevention law and maintain its independence it is necessary,that the  structure of law-making institutions to be reformed in the first place. The legislator must pay attention to the fundamentals and strategic principles of crime prevention, especially of trans-sectoral, knowledge-based, participatory and solidarity, sustainability and human dignity principles in the second place. It requires that the legislator dissolves all institutions and parallel structures of crime prevention and strengthen the status and credibility of the Supreme Council for Crime Prevention. Two basic actions should be done in this regard: First, the Supreme Council for Crime Prevention, based on the strategic principles, be constitutionalized in the Constitution, and based on that, the normal laws of crime prevention, including the crime prevention act (2010) should be reviewed and reformed. Second, in the case of non-constitutionalization, the objections and substantive or structural problems of the crime prevention act and the Supreme Crime Prevention Council should be resolved by revising and amending the law based on the solutions mentioned in the article. Changing the nature of preventive duty-oriented obligations of governments to result-based ones and criminalizing state crimes and create the necessary judicial structures to deal with  the cases of violations of preventive obligations of governments at the national and even the regional or global level is another fundamental step to identification  of crime prevention law.