Expansion of the 'Judge in School' Initiative in Iranian Schools

A judicial official in Markazi Province announced the initiation of a program called 'Judge in School' in the province, aimed at preventing 'internet crimes and specific virtual harms.' This initiative has previously been implemented in several other provinces. According to the Islamic Republic's judiciary news agency, Mizan, Saeed Jazai, the Chief Justice of Markazi Province, described the nationwide 'Judge in School' initiative as aimed at 'enhancing the legal literacy of students and reducing crime and delinquency among them.' He stated that the program is being executed 'with the focus of the Social and Crime Prevention Department' of the judiciary and 'in collaboration with the Education Department' in Markazi Province. According to this judicial official, 'judges will be present in schools during educational hours' and will provide students with 'necessary training' so that they become 'familiar with their legal rights and duties.' Although Jazai has attempted to present this initiative as a means to increase students' legal knowledge, his repeated emphasis on issues related to the virtual space and what he termed 'promoting immorality' suggests that the program has other dimensions related to recent developments, particularly the prominent role of Generation Z in social protests. The Chief Justice of Markazi Province noted the increasing use of virtual space among youth, teenagers, and even children, stating that 'easy access to the vast internet has led to the entry of aggressive subcultures from other countries,' which, according to him, 'has resulted in shamelessness, recklessness, carelessness, and even the promotion of immorality in cities, especially large ones.' The presence of judicial officials in schools begins at a time when many clerics were previously recruited by education officials to advance the ideological goals of the government. This initiative, known as the 'Amin Plan,' was discussed by Hamid Nikzad, a former advisor to the Minister of Education, who mentioned the hiring of three thousand clerics in the country's educational system, stating that the clerics collaborating with the Ministry of Education in the 'Amin Plan' are completely 'spontaneous' and 'jihadist' in their activities. The groundwork for the clerics' presence began during the previous administration, when Youssef Noury, in December 2022, requested assistance from religious seminaries to change students' beliefs following their significant participation in nationwide protests. He stated at that time, 'We must increase our interaction and communication with mosques and external institutions like religious seminaries.' In recent years, the Islamic Republic has intensified fundamental changes in schools by implementing extensive changes and gender segregation in textbooks, operationalizing this by introducing clerics into the educational system. It seems that we will continue to witness a prominent presence of judicial officials in schools as part of this trend. Implementing changes in the educational system and textbooks is one of Ali Khamenei's demands from governments, which he has repeatedly emphasized.