The Criminal Policy Against Children and Juvenile Delinquents in the Judiciary of the Islamic Republic of Iran

This article deals with a specific and differential criminal policy against criminal children and adolescents in Iran. Not recognizing the necessity of a specific and effective criminal policy against children and adolescents created a problem that bothered our legal community. However, the legislator finally paid special attention to the criminal behavior of criminal children and adolescents and according to their particular situation, several peculiar solutions and responses stipulated in penal laws. One of these responses in the substantive provisions on criminal children and juvenile relates to the selected responses to this kind of delinquency and this change should be considered in the context of Iran's accession to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, adopted on November 20, 1989. In this regard, corrective, social, educational, corrective criminal and alternative responses of the recent legislation to punishment may be mentioned. In the same vein, new institutions for dealing with such developments are created and this paper is to examine such responses and institutions.