While Iran’s regime has spent much of its resources and capabilities over more than four decades suppressing opponents, silencing advocates of freedom, executing critics, and demonizing the opposition, the consequences of these policies are now visible not only in the political sphere but also in social and criminological indicators. Rising theft, expanding social harms, increasing divorce rates, weakening social cohesion, and deepening economic crises are not phenomena that can be attributed solely to the individual behavior of citizens.
For years, social sciences and criminology have emphasized that crime and social harms are less the product of individual morality and more a direct reflection of governing structures and the social relations they create. In this context, legal expert Kambiz Norouzi, in an article published on June 10 in the state-run Shargh newspaper, warned about the social consequences of accumulated economic and political crises and wrote: “Data from criminology and criminal sociology show that this situation is extremely fertile ground for the growth of weeds called crime and social harm.”
This assessment effectively confirms one of the fundamental principles of modern criminology: crime does not emerge in a vacuum but develops in environments shaped by poverty, inequality, economic instability, corruption, and the mismanagement of government institutions.
In the article, Norouzi points to a notable statistic: despite harsher punishments and intensified policing measures, theft in the country increased by 600% between 2006 and 2023. He emphasizes that during the same period, the country’s population grew by only 21%. In other words, the growth in theft was nearly 30 times greater than population growth, and this trend has shown a significant correlation with inflation and unemployment rates.
These statistics reveal an important reality: policies based solely on repression and punishment are incapable of resolving social crises. If expanding security forces and increasing penalties were effective solutions, such a dramatic rise in crime rates would not have occurred after four decades of expanding control and surveillance institutions.
What Makes a Society Vulnerable to Crime?
Émile Durkheim, the prominent French sociologist, viewed crime as a social phenomenon and believed that its prevalence depends on the health and cohesion of social structures. In his theory of anomie, he explained that whenever society experiences economic disruption and the breakdown of shared norms, conditions become favorable for increased deviant and criminal behavior.
Meanwhile, Jürgen Habermas, the German philosopher and political theorist, has repeatedly emphasized that the legitimacy of governments depends on their ability to solve public problems and build social trust. The greater the gap between government and society, the more social capital and public cohesion will erode.
Norouzi also refers to the rising trend of divorce and writes: “In 2018, the ratio of divorces to marriages was 26.7%… This figure reached 39% in 2025, and in Tehran the divorce-to-marriage ratio increased to 52.5%.”
These figures indicate that the economic crisis has not only reduced people’s purchasing power but has also had direct effects on the institution of the family. Rising living costs, job insecurity, diminishing hope for the future, and psychological pressures caused by chronic economic and social crises are among the factors identified by social research as major drivers of family breakdown.
Norouzi further warns: “The persistence of these crises leads to the development of criminal or harmful behavioral patterns across different social groups, and their continuation will result in the institutionalization of criminal and harmful behaviors as part of everyday survival.”
This statement describes a stage that many social theorists consider the most dangerous point of a crisis: when social harms cease to be exceptional and become part of everyday life.
The reality is that after 47 years of rule characterized by the suppression of freedoms, imprisonment, torture, executions, structural corruption, a rent-seeking economy, and the plundering of public resources, statistics on theft, divorce, and other social harms reveal more about the performance and record of the ruling system than about society itself.
The increase in crime cannot be attributed solely to the people, because crime and social harm are, above all, products of the conditions imposed on society by political, economic, and social structures. When inflation, unemployment, corruption, discrimination, and hopelessness become chronic conditions, society ultimately pays the price through rising crime, family breakdown, and the weakening of social cohesion.
