Comparative Study of the Sights of Family-centered Response to ‎Juvenile Delinquency in the Iranian and Scottish Legal Systems

Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

Department of Criminal Law and Criminology, Faculty of Law & Political Sciences, University of ‎Tehran, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Family, as the first society a person encounters from the beginning of life, plays a fundamental role in shaping people's behavior and personality. This important principle, which has also been proven in psychology, has drawn attention to the role of the family in children’s delinquency in many legal systems. As a result, the mentioned institution plays an important role and may be said to be one of the main actors in the criminal justice process, including sentencing. However, this issue has not been seriously considered in Iranian criminal law, in which the target of punishment and reaction is still delinquent juveniles, and the family is considered a "secondary actor" and is placed on the sidelines. This article has a comparative approach and seeks to compare the Iranian and the Scottish juvenile justice systems in this field. The reason for selecting the Scottish system is that it has a similar model of juvenile justice to Iran in terms of responding to juvenile delinquency. Therefore, the article scrutinizes these two legal systems and clarifies the role of the family and the type of responsibility of this institution, based on juvenile justice models. It finally concludes that the lack of some measures such as "parenting contracts" and "parenting orders," which are specifically directed at the parents and guardians of delinquent children, is noticeably felt in Iranian criminal law. The Iranian legal system has the potential to adopt such instruments in accordance with its principles.

Keywords

Main Subjects

References

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Comparative Law Review
Volume 16, Issue 1 - Serial Number 31
Spring & Summer 2025
June 2025
Pages 199-219

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