نگاهي به مشكلات آمار جرايم در ايران

A Glance at the Problems of Crime Statistics in Iran

The paper starts with a definition of crime and crime statistics, thendescribes the types of crime statistics and assesses each in terms of its positive and negative points. The rest of this paper deals exclusively with crime statistics in Iran. The results of the present study demonstrate that there are three official sources for producing crime statistics in Iran: Bureau of Statistics and Data Processing at the Ministry of Justice, Bureau of Statistics at the Police Force Dept. of Plans and Programs, and The Iranian Prison, Security and Training Organization. For numerous reasons, including inefficiency of crime classification and its confusion with crime statistics and files statistics, the statistics concerning the convicted and the indicted, and restriction of the crime statistics to national and provincial levels, together with lack of distinction between urban and rural crime statistics, no realistic reports can be produced of the situation of delinquency, delinquency rates and estimation of the probability of crimes. The paper elaborates on the technical weaknesses of crime statistics in Iran and presents solutions for its modification.