The Application of Warning and Caution in Criminal Procedure: A Comparative Study of Iranian and English Law

The concepts of ta'zir preaching in Islamic criminal procedure and caution in the English law share fundamental similarities. These similarities include diverting cases from the formal process of criminal justice, reducing the economic costs of the criminal justice system, preventing stigmatization of offenders, warning the perpetrator about past behavior, cautioning against future conduct, shaming the rehabilitator, etc. Despite the positive effects of preaching in Islamic judicial proceedings, which are based on judicial expediency in the field of penalties and the principle of ta'zir as guided by the Imam, and despite the abundant advantages of caution in English judicial proceedings, the Iranian legislature has neglected these two approaches. Although the notion of preaching as one of the degrees of ta'zir punishment has been mentioned in scattered laws enacted before the Islamic Penal Code and subsequent Criminal Procedure Code of 2013, this institution has been neglected in the aforementioned two laws and has never had a place in Iranian judicial practice. The utilization of this institution in the Iranian judicial system, which is faced with an inflation of criminal cases, especially in less significant offenses, can bring about the realization of the aforementioned effects and enable the judicial system to focus on more important cases. In this article, through a descriptive and analytical method of collecting library data, we first describe the status of admonition and caution and then provide the necessary conclusions.