Social factors affecting petty theft in Mazandaran province

One type of criminal theft is petty theft, in which thieves in the capacity of measuring the cost-benefit of the crime, are led to commit it by obtaining financial benefit in the fastest possible time and with minimal risk. Today, petty theft has become a critical phenomenon in the country and its statistics are increasing. In this way, the objective of this work is to investigate the social factors effective in committing petty thefts in Mazandaran province.

This work is conducted via qualitative design and systematic grounded theory. The participants included all petty thieves imprisoned in Tonekabon, Amol, and Sari prisons who met the criteria for this article. Using targeted and available sampling until reaching theoretical saturation, the interviews were analyzed with 15 male prisoners. Then, based on the findings, the conceptual model of the underlying crime factors is determined.

According to the findings of the research, the causal conditions for committing crimes are: "addiction to drugs and their continuous usage" and "long-term and continuous association with abnormal and delinquent friends". Intervening factors in committing crimes include "unfavorable family structure", "inappropriate parenting methods", "low social status of family" and "deterioration of the individual's bond with society". The background conditions of the crime include "life in the prison environment", "poverty and poor economic status", "criminal label", "unemployment" and "low risk of petty theft and ease of selling stolen property". The response or strategy of criminals in dealing with these conditions is "adopting a criminal lifestyle". Finally, the consequences of crimes are: "individual, family and social consequences".

The results of the research indicate that social factors play a significant role in the occurrence of petty theft and identifying these factors facilitates the prevention of the mentioned criminal phenomenon.