Reconsidering the Definition of the Concept of Co-perpetration for tackling Coordinated Group Criminal Activities

In Iranian criminal law, physical or causal attribution of the offense to the joint effect of the behavior of each co-perpetrator is generally held to be a necessary element for defining co-perpetration, but not any common plan or coordination among the perpetrators. Following this approach, the criminal liability of each actor is limited to his/her own actions, and beyond the direct effects of his/her behavior, this liability would not normally cover the consequences of his or her common criminal plan shared by other offenders. Meanwhile, those offenders having no part in carrying out the physical elements of the offense are often legally labeled as mere accessories who do not have the main liability, no matter how vital their contributions may have been. As this approach causes some difficulty in tackling group criminality, the law has devised a number of limited measures to address this problem, including a reference to the notion of organized criminal group. Apart from underlining the insufficiency of these measures, ausing a comparative law, the authors recommend reforming the law in this area. Hence, the notion of joint control over the execution of the criminal venture is preferred over the current objective approach based on mere physical causation.