Dissertation for Master's Degree in Geography and Urban Planning
Chapter One:
General Research
1- 1- Problem Statement
The expansion of urbanization and its relationship with social and economic damage is one of the main characteristics of the country's urban development pattern in the last few decades, and the rapid growth and development and unbalanced distribution in the new era is one of the main factors of the occurrence of social damage. goes If the rapid growth of urbanization and the development of megacities has resulted in many social and physical harms, especially megacities, which have been one of the most important centers and foci of various social anomalies and crimes. The concentration of 41.7 percent of the urban population in the nine metropolises of the country and the uneven distribution of the urban population in the country is one of the characteristics of Iran's urbanization, which is closely related to social phenomena (Rahmani, 1389: 157). In other words, the increase in the population of the country's cities in recent decades has made the cities face many issues and problems. One of the important issues in this field is the issue of citizens' security, which has been one of the main challenges of urban residents in recent years. In fact, in most of the urban areas and regions, crimes are controversial and challenging issues for people's lives, personal and financial existence, and the increase in committing crimes in urban places, apart from being in conflict with the basic values ??and principles of a society, has caused insecurity, fear, chaos in the lives of citizens, spending large financial, human, and spiritual budgets and the unfortunate state of the quality of life. This is the most important and the most complex problem of most cities in the country. Drug addiction and its abuse, apart from the effects it has on the health and social issues of societies, creates organized crime networks that organize the commission of many other crimes at the city level, and over time, drug trafficking is only a part of the activities of these people, and sometimes as hidden but active elements, they play a destructive role in the economic, social and cultural structure of urban society. Due to its proximity and having the longest common border with the two countries of Afghanistan and Pakistan, as two important drug producing countries, Iran has been constantly under the threat and abuse of drugs.
The issue of drug-related crimes is one of the most complex challenges that the Iranian society is currently facing, so that since the beginning of the victory of the Islamic Revolution, more than three million people have been arrested in connection with drug crimes, of which about 2.7 million people have been arrested in the last fifteen years. is 65% of these arrests are drug addicts and 34% of them are illegal drug suppliers and traders. In addition, the increase in drug-related crimes in Iran has led to the growing awareness that Iran is facing a major social problem. Estimates based on UN reports show that 1.5 to 2% (about 1.3 million people) of Iran's population have a serious problem with drug abuse. In Iran, there are about 80,000 drug-related prisoners, which means that more than half of the country's prison population has been arrested, tried and sentenced to prison in connection with this sinister phenomenon (Abbasi, 2017: 3-4).
Tehran province has the highest crime rate among the country's provinces due to its special spatial and geographical conditions. So that the investigation of the number of crimes and crimes in Tehran province in the past years shows that the prisoners of this province have increased by 67% during an eight-year period from June 1372 to June 1380 (Prisons Organization, 2019: 27). On the one hand, this issue causes insecurity, fear, disturbance, and. among the people, and on the other hand, it endangers the public comfort of the city and causes the country's law enforcement and security officials and managers to bear huge costs to detect crimes, arrest, rehabilitate, prosecute and punish criminals. At the same time, considering the role and position of Tehran metropolis in the centralized political-administrative system of the country and the leadership of the national economy, the occurrence of any security instability in Tehran can endanger the national security. For this reason, it is necessary to pay more attention to urban crimes in Tehran and provide solutions to reduce the occurrence of crime and insecurity (Poormusoi et al., 2010: 62)..
Since a long time ago, identifying the environmental and spatial factors that cause crime and trying to eliminate these factors or reduce their effects has been known as the most important strategy to increase safety and prevent the occurrence of anomalies, because social anomalies, regardless of how they occur to humans, have a background and space and time characteristics that distinguish these behaviors from each other. Surveys show that some urban spaces have a higher crime rate due to their physical, social and economic characteristics; And on the contrary, some spaces prevent and prevent the commission of crimes within themselves. On the other hand, research has proven that criminals often make rational choices when committing crimes and look for the easiest, least dangerous, and most suitable opportunities and conditions in place and time to commit crimes (Kalantari, 2010: 89), for this reason, they choose the most suitable place to commit their criminal act within the limits of cities. In this way, areas are formed at the level of cities that have more opportunities and criminal goals and, as a result, a higher number of crimes, and they are referred to as "criminal centers[1]". The important point in this regard is to identify these centers and analyze the physical problems, cultural and social characteristics of the residents and users of these areas, so that in this way it is possible to adopt the necessary policies and measures to control criminals. More importantly, by making fundamental changes in the factors that create or facilitate opportunities for crime and the appropriate design of vulnerable spaces to transform them into crime-resistant spaces, it is possible to prevent the occurrence of many urban crimes (Kalantari et al., 2009: 42).
Zone 2 of Tehran Municipality, as one of the largest areas of Tehran Municipality, has issues and problems such as immigration, rapid population growth, physical expansion of the city, heterogeneity and lack of social cohesion. Areas with worn texture such as Derkeh, Evin, Tarasht, Farahzad and marginal areas of Islamabad, South Islamabad and East Javedabad. According to the investigations, drug-related crimes are one of the most important crimes committed in the 2nd district of Tehran Municipality, which has the highest statistics among the 22 districts of Tehran Municipality. Therefore, this research tries to identify the hot spots of drug-related crimes in Region 2 of Tehran Municipality, examine and analyze the physical-spatial conditions and some social, economic and cultural characteristics of committing crimes in this area, and propose and propose scientific and executive measures to eliminate these conditions or reduce their effects. It begins, the main goal of scientific research should be to find out the unknown, in other words, to solve the problem and find an answer for it (Hafez Nia, 1387: 16). It is obvious that every research study should pursue goals and these are the research goals that guide the research process. The general objectives of this research are:
Providing a clear and logical model in understanding the complex and changing issues of Tehran in general and Region 2 in particular.
Geographical identification of crime centers of drug-related crimes in Region 2 of Tehran according to the type and amount of crimes, in order to eliminate or reduce the set of factors affecting the crimes committed in this region. Crimes committed related to narcotics in the 2nd district of Tehran. 1-3- Necessity of research. The increase in the commission of all kinds of crimes and perversions, including the complex issues and problems of the world's metropolises, has caused insecurity, fear, disturbance, and fear of victimization in these cities. On the one hand, this issue has caused an increase in financial costs and the spending of large budgets, and on the other hand, it has caused the questioning of the efficiency of the country's judicial and law enforcement managers and officials in reducing or eliminating the amount of crimes despite extensive security efforts and activities. One of the current problems of the judicial system of the country and perhaps many countries of the world is that in most cases they deal with the crime itself in an abstract and isolated way and consider this undesirable phenomenon apart from the crime and the local, social, economic and cultural conditions governing it. Surely, if the different social and economic conditions of the crime and the living environment of the criminal in committing the crime are contemplated, the result will take a different form.