Role of Religious Institutions in Preventing Crimes (Challenges and Solutions against it

In the recent decades, criminal policy as a set of measures to control criminal phenomenon has been changed remarkably influenced by the approaches of law schools and theories of criminologists and its widespread concept has been taken into consideration. However, this view is not unprecedented in criminal law history and it has been considered in the Islamic criminal justice especially during the reign of Imam Ali (Peace be upon him). The concordance of findings of contemporary criminologists and law schools with the viewpoints of that criminologist jurist shows this fact. His attention to the categories of prevention, rehabilitation, civil society capabilities, the principle of legality and minimal intervention of criminal law and in brief, special attention to human dignity has caused his penal policies to still meet the needs of modern human beings and to be considered as a unique policy. Therefore, regarding the peaceful coexistence of Imamiyeh criminal law with criminological theoretical data and practical experiences of criminal policy, it’s worthy that the policies of modern criminal jurisprudence follow all the accepted and emphasized principles of Islamic law system for the title “criminal policy of Islam” to be applied.