Challenges of Whistleblowing in Iran's Criminal Justice System: A Focus on Detection and Prevention of Governmental Crimes

Abstract

Whistleblowing, a modern phenomenon, is considered a significant measure for exposing governmental crimes. In Iran's legislative framework, whistleblowing faces legal challenges and requirements that are explored in this study. The primary research question addresses the challenges of whistleblowing in Iran's criminal justice system and examines to what extent these challenges can contribute to the detection and prevention of governmental crimes. The objective is to elucidate the obstacles to whistleblowing and its impact on identifying and preventing such crimes. The present study employs a qualitative approach, adopting a descriptive-analytical methodology. Data were collected through detailed document analysis and thoroughly examined. Whistleblowing fundamentally refers to the exposure of crimes in a positive sense, aimed at uncovering and preventing the violation of majority rights by the ruling minority within society. Governmental crimes often occur covertly, and without whistleblowing, they remain undiscovered and concealed. The challenges of whistleblowing include ensuring protection for whistleblowers, preventing baseless whistleblowing and the resulting increase in defamation cases in judicial systems, strengthening immunity for whistleblowers, supporting whistleblowing through press laws, and legally preventing governmental crimes via whistleblowing. Essential strategies and requirements for utilizing whistleblowing to detect and prevent governmental crimes include promoting transparency in government operations, enhancing civil society and non-governmental organization participation and oversight, leveraging Islamic principles (e.g., enjoining good and forbidding evil), ensuring the right to free access to and dissemination of information through media, using constitutional capacities, adopting legislative policies, and uncovering organized governmental crimes in complex security layers.