| Abstract:
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.
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