Critics on the Compensation Regime for "Unjust Imprisonment and Detention" In Iran's Legislative Criminal Policy

Subject Areas : فصلنامه مطالعات میان رشته ای فقه

Mahdi Khaghani Esfahani ¹ ( Assistant Professor of Criminal Law & Criminology, The Institute Research and Development in Humanities (SAMT), Tehran, Iran. )

Received: 2022-06-13 Accepted : 2022-12-03 Published : 2023-06-22

Keywords: Fair trial, judicial criminal justice policy, judicial compensation, unjust imprisonment and detention,

Abstract :

Compensation for innocent detainees and prisoners is a relatively new legal establishment. Compensation for damages by the government following judicial errors is a development in respect for human rights in the criminal process, which is influenced by developments in criminological knowledge, critical criminology, and related sciences. Articles 255 to 258 and 518 of the Iranian Code of Criminal Procedure and Articles 163 and 13 of the Islamic Penal Code provided a legal basis for compensation for innocent convicts. The instances specified in the law are exclusive and it is not possible to expand the scope of compensation for such individuals by developing the subject and comparing it to similar cases; However, the beneficiary and the victim will have the right to claim damages for invoking other jurisprudential principles and rules, such as the no-harm rule and the negation rule. Therefore, the principles of human rights and jurisprudential rules are one of the most important principles of compensation for innocent defendants and convicts.This article, after criticizing the legal provisions related to compensation for unjust detention from the perspective of Iran's legislative criminal policy in the light of jurisprudential principles and international documents, explains that the national and provincial commissions for judicial compensation, despite alignment with the idea Islamic Guarantee and Restorative Justice, Due to the Continuity of Punishment Overcoming the Judicial Sub-Discourse - Despite the Main Rehabilitative and Restorative Discourse - and Due to Legal and Structural Defects, They Have Not Been Transformed the Doctrine of Compensation into Improper Detention by the Judiciary Formation. In the end, it is suggested that the application and ambiguity of paragraph "c" of Article 256 of the Code of Criminal Procedure be restricted so that it does not become a platform for escaping from compensation.