Conceptualizing Criminal Maturity Through Psychology: Reconsidering the Theories of Imami Jurists and Iranian Criminal Law Scholars in the Context of Objectivism and Subjectivism

Abstract

Criminal responsibility, in its potential sense, comprises three elements: cognitive capacity, freedom of choice, and knowledge of legal prohibition. In criminal law, cognitive capacity refers to an individual’s ability to understand and distinguish the nature of actions and their moral and social consequences. The attainment of cognitive capacity depends, on the one hand, on the maturation of the faculty of reason and, on the other hand, on the absence of any impairment affecting this faculty. Throughout different periods of legislation, the Iranian legislature—unlike its treatment of insanity, the nature of which it has expressly clarified—has focused primarily on the criterion of criminal maturity. Consequently, criminal law scholars have devoted comparatively little attention to the concept of criminal maturity. However, determining criminal maturity necessarily requires a clear understanding of its meaning. Accordingly, using a descriptive–analytical method, the present study seeks to elucidate the concept of criminal maturity in offenses punishable by ḥadd or qiṣāṣ and, in doing so, to identify the approach adopted by the Iranian legislature.