Incomplete protection: rethinking criminal protection for vulnerable persons in Jordan

Vulnerability, a rooted human rights concept, facilitates the identification of risks to human dignity and demands a tailored legal response. The paper explores the legislative basis adopted by the Jordanian Penal Code (JPC) to ensure protection for vulnerable groups by evaluating the current legal framework’s adequacy to provide deterrence and protection. It is an analysis that combines the conceptual legal framework with an examination of court decisions regarding integrating vulnerability into the JPC through the development of innovative forms of criminal protection. We find that although the JPC has been amended several times to integrate various forms of criminal protection for some categories of vulnerable individuals, the precise use of ‘vulnerable persons’ as a concept in Jordanian legislation is hardly recognized.