The psychological impact of the rise in crime investigation bodies and urban landscape (A Case Study of Esferayen)

Identification of environmental and locational factors of criminality and making efforts to remove these factors or reduce their effects is a solution for immunity and prevention of known anomalies. Social anomalies, in every way that committed by humans, have a bed and a space and time backgrounds that distinguishes these behaviors from each other. Hence, difference in the locational structure and behavioral features of individuals, alongside the factor of time, lead to formation of different space-time patterns of crimes in the unit of place. Increase of crimes in the cities has not only led to insecurity, chaos and disturbance to the lives of citizens, but also the public sector of the society has spent a lot of budget and expenditure, forces and time on investigation of crimes, capturing of criminals, doing justice to them, holding them, and also on punishing them. The notable point is identification of crime centers in the cities, analyzing their structural problems, cultural and social characteristics of residents of these areas or users of such neighborhoods, so that in this way, by following the required policies and solutions, delinquents could be controlled. It is possible to prevent many of the crimes especially by creating fundamental changes in the forming or facilitating elements of crimes, and also by appropriate designing of vulnerable spaces in order to change them into resistant spaces against delinquency. Therefore, in this survey, the most attention in the crime areas is on the visual factors and on the structure of the city. According to what was said and with the objective of identifying crime centers in the delinquency of drug use and traffic in the city of Esfarayen, this article tries to answer these questions: 1. Have environmental and visual elements in the cities led to rise of crimes in different areas? What solutions could be planned to decrease crimes and existing anomalies?
Methods and Materials: In terms of objectives, this study is an applied study, and in terms of methodology, it is descriptive-analytical in which, data collection about the rise of crimes has been done by the use of library as well as field studies. Statistical population of the study includes all family heads in the city of Esfarayen who were 17049 members. Out of this population, 150 individuals were selected as the sample size by the use of simple random sampling. The Cronbach's alpha coefficient for determining the sustainabiity level of the questionnaire was 0.86 and the validity of the questionnaire tool was also confirmed by using the views of experts in this field and summarizing the dimensions, components and variables effective with Delphi collective wisdom and performing pre-test. Also, SPSS software was used as statistical analytical software to analyze the required data and ArcGIS software was used to draw up required maps.

The most important objective of the study is identification of crime-rising centers and regions that have the potentials for crimes and delinquency and also achieving results showing the relationship between structure and physical texture of the city with the level of crimes. Therefore, the most important crimes which were studied in the city of Esfarayen are fight, family disputes, robbery, addiction and social delinquencies. One form of the crimes within the five types of urban crimes is the crimes related to beating, injuring individuals, fight, etc. Mixture of different rural and urban lifestyles, existence of people with different ethnic backgrounds and different dialects, vastness of household dimensions, inappropriate structural patterns, and narrowness of alleys and pathways which makes them too much crowded, are some of the factors that have led to increase of committing different types of crimes including crimes against individuals. Another one of the crimes discussed in this study is the crimes related to families. It seems that economic weakness and inability to earn a livelihood, too much concentration of population, and cultural issues are some of the factors that are effective in highness of the percentage of these anomalies. Crimes such as robbery and burglary from cars, shops and houses are some of the important crimes in the city of Esfarayen. Crimes related to stealing have direct relationship with economic situation in such a way that as economic poverty grows higher, the crimes related to stealing also grow higher. The crimes related to addiction are another form of the important crimes in Esfarayen. In addition to that, lack of control and regular and effective police patrol in the crime-rising residential areas, inappropriate structural patterns, oldness of the texture of the areas, too much concentration in some areas, and specially unemployment are some of the factors that seem to be effective in this regard. Frustration could be mentioned as the most negative effect of the environment on the individuals. Many factors are effective on formation of frustration. The most important ones are related to lack of relationship between elements (element and background; element and the user; space and situation; and also material and application), hence, these elements should receive the most consideration in the urban environments.

The city of Esfarayen, as one of the big cities in the Northern Khurasan, includes many varieties in terms of the type of crime and its spatial distribution in different regions and areas. The urban environment is effective on committing illegal actions. This study shows that the most negative environmental effect has happened respectively in Imam Reza (A), Imam Khomeini (A), and Sheikh Azari streets; and the most positive environmental effect has appeared in Esfarayeni Street. Also, the most frequent types of crimes in the urban regions are respectively fight, household disputes, robbery, drug traffic, and social corruption. Frustration is the most outstanding reason for committing crimes. Therefore, if closer attention is paid to environmental factors by the city authorities, a considerable part of the urban crimes could be reduced, and steps can be taken for betterment of the urban environment and provided an environment suitable for human life for citizens.