Penal Protection for Urban Environment in Criminal Law of Iran

In protecting important values of the society, legislators consider penal intervention and criminalization of behaviors that are in violation of that values. Urban environment is one of these values which is protected by the Iranian legislator’s penal law. In Iran's penal legislation policy, criminal protection of the urban environment has been considered in the form of criminalization of malicious behaviors against the trees, waste, air, water and soil besides noise pollution, and also anything known as a threat to public health. But when it comes to policy efficiency and effectiveness in Iranian penal system regarding urban environment, important challenges like dispersion and incoherence in penal regulations and the lack of alignment between them, appear. So, the present paper is trying to evaluate the legislator’s approach and challenges by analyzing documentary resources using analytic-descriptive research method.