Abstract

The present study aimed to analyze the ecological aspects of urban crime in Ahvaz city and attempted to investigate the relationship between environmental and social factors of urban neighborhoods and the level and type of crime. Ahvaz city, as one of the southern metropolises of Iran, has faced uneven physical expansion, rapid population growth, immigration, ethnic diversity, and increasing urban poverty in recent decades; factors that can play an important role in creating spatial differences in crime from the perspective of criminal ecology theory. The statistical population of this study included 292 prisoners in Ahvaz city, from whom information related to the type of crime, place of residence, and socio-economic conditions was extracted. The data collection tool was a 60-question questionnaire based on the Likert scale, whose validity and reliability were confirmed with a KMO index of 0.717 and a Cronbach's alpha of 0.73. Data were analyzed using chi-square, analysis of variance (ANOVA), and multiple regression. The results showed that there was no significant difference between the type of crime and the place of residence (p>0.05), but the descriptive findings indicate a concentration of violent crimes in underprivileged and densely populated neighborhoods. At a theoretical level, the results of the study confirm that the spatial and social patterns of Ahvaz can be explained from the perspective of criminal ecology, and that poverty, population density, and weak social cohesion play a role as risk variables in the occurrence of crime.