Pathology of Iran’s Criminal Policy during the COVID-19 Pandemic (Challenges and Solutions)

Abstract

The outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic confronted legal systems and criminal policy frameworks worldwide with profound challenges concerning the protection of public health, the preservation of social order, and the determination of the reciprocal responsibilities between the state and citizens. In the Islamic Republic of Iran, responses to this crisis were primarily implemented through a set of fragmented regulations, traditional criminalization approaches, and emergency executive measures that lacked legislative coherence and a unified theoretical foundation. The present study, employing a descriptive–analytical method based on documentary and library sources, provides a comprehensive examination of Iran’s criminal policy toward threats arising from epidemic diseases, with particular emphasis on COVID-19. The findings indicate that despite the existence of considerable jurisprudential, legal, and institutional capacities, Iran’s criminal policy in this field has faced multiple challenges, including ambiguity in the legal foundations for restricting individual freedoms, difficulties in proving causation in the transmission of contagious diseases, weaknesses in establishing criminal intent (mens rea), disproportionality of sanctions, overlapping institutional jurisdictions, and the absence of a comprehensive epidemic diseases law. At the same time, the experience of the COVID-19 crisis demonstrates a gradual shift in Iran’s criminal policy away from excessive criminalization toward the adoption of hybrid preventive mechanisms, participatory governance policies, non-custodial sanctions, and compensatory state responsibility. The study concludes that enhancing the effectiveness of criminal policy in confronting biosecurity threats requires a fundamental reconsideration of legislative approaches, the enactment of a comprehensive communicable diseases law grounded in the principles of necessity and proportionality, strengthened inter-institutional coordination, the development of rule-based executive policies, increased social participation, the establishment of coherent judicial practice, and the protection of fundamental rights alongside the safeguarding of public health.