Juvenile Delinquency and Slum Areas: A Critical Outlook on Chicago School With Specific Reference to Iran

This paper is resultedfrom a fieldwork research doing in Ahwaz City of Iran. The sample group of this study, consisting of 200 juvenile delinquents, is randomly selected from a population arrested between 1996 - 2001.As the majority of them belong to the lower class urban residents, they are mainly from the families living in the poor slum areas of Ahwaz. Assuming that the salient feature of slums to be the inadequate housing conditions (IRq, this research is conducted to study the relationship between the different levels of IRe and the relative intensity of delinquency. With a critical view on the Chicago School approach, it is maintained that the mere ecological elements, or even theshortcoming of social control, could not to be the independent factors making the "favourable place for commitment of crime and delinquency", but poverty, job instability, and lack of educational achievement, or depression as a whole, could be the determinant factors for delinquency commitment.