Typology of Environmental Crimes in Iran (Case Study: Crimes Related to Environmental Pollution)

Abstract

The purpose of the research is to identify the types of environmental pollution crimes in Iran. This research is a theoretical type that has been done by survey and analysis and has been done in 3 stages. Initially, an initial list of environmental crimes was used by a semi-structured interview method. Sampling was determined by the targeted method and the sample size was 169 people. All interviews were implemented and coded as text. In the next step, using expert opinions and the method of pairwise comparison, environmental crimes of weighting and their importance coefficient were determined. Then, by inquiring from the legal offices of the relevant organizations, the statistics of violations and environmental crimes by the provinces of the country between the years 2017 to 2019 were obtained. The results showed that the main crimes of environmental pollution in Iran can be divided into 8 main categories. Also, 23 criteria were determined for them. Among the eight crimes of environmental pollution, the highest weight belonged to air pollution (0.876) and then water pollution (0.797). Also; the lowest weight was allocated to wave pollution (0.114). A comparative comparison between environmental pollution crimes showed that between 2017 and 2019, statistically, the highest rate of crime was related to waste pollution and then water pollution. Mazandaran province with 6674 cases of environmental crimes in the top provinces of the country and Khorasan Razavi province was introduced as the last province with 223 cases of environmental crimes.