Feasibility study of applying alternatives to prosecution against legal entities

Considering the benefits of alternative entities for the prosecution of infractions, the legislator has accepted their use in four mechanisms. However, since most of the accused are legal persons and the criminal responsibility acceptance for the legal entities is a subject of recent attention of the Iranian legislator, the law is silent about utilizing possible alternative entities for prosecution in the case of juridical persons. Therefore, the present descriptive-analytical research, evaluating the bases of prosecution alternatives and the legal conditions for their application, concludes that from the philosophical, criminological, and practical perspectives, according respectively to utilitarianism, labeling, and reducing the use of bail for legal sanctions theories, the possibility of applying prosecution alternatives to legal entities can be justified, from a legal point of view, some of the conditions foreseen in the alternative entities of prosecution, such as the suspension of penalty, and plaintiff pardon in pardonable crimes, can be applied to legal entities. However, applying other conditions such as crime-grading in cases where the punishment has not been sentenced for the legal entity, the record of an effective criminal conviction, the appointment of a competent person to declare consent, or the application of alternative entities on behalf of the legal entity in the cases stipulated in the law and applicable orders in the suspension of prosecution according to the nature of the legal entity is associated with challenges and uncertainties which by providing solutions suggests the urgency of differentiating alternative prosecution entities relative to legal entities.