Volume 14, Issue 52 (4-2014)                   refahj 2014, 14(52): 201-226 | Back to browse issues page

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Abstract:   (5001 Views)

  Introduction: One of the most important topics in sociology is the study of offense and social deviations. Along the offense idea, which disrupts social discipline, social capital is a complicated idea, which is known as one of the most important indexes for growth and development in every society. Social capital is the source of participation and cooperation among society members, which results in formation of rationalized social, trust and participation among people of a society.

  Method: This study is conducted with survey method between two groups of criminals and noncriminal of above 18 years old. In the present study 230 people were criminals and 230 were ordinary people. To choose the control group (ordinary people), the classification was conducted, at first according to the got frequency of criminal people and the homogenization of ordinary people with criminals in terms of gender, age and employment status The Logistic regression was used to find out the relation between dimensions of social capital and crime commitment. Therefore, the variable of crime was considered as a two-categorical variable, and then, by the Enter method, the dimensions of social capital were inserted in the model. Meanwhile the frequency of those people in terms of age, gender and employment status was considered. The data analyzed by SPSS software.

  Findings: Among criminals, 66.8% were unemployed and 33.2% were employed, and, 72% of non-criminals were unemployed and 28% were employed. As it is observable, the number of employed criminals (before being imprisoned) is more than the unemployed ones. Thus, the number of employed and unemployed people is equal in two groups.

  Among all the remained variables in the equation, the variable of social participation has the maximum explication. According to the table results about this variable, the ratio of superiority for the social participation variable is 1.972, which shows that by a two-time change in social participation, the probability of becoming criminal would decrease. The second effective variable is doing social norms by responders. The increase in this variable would decrease the probability of becoming criminal.

  Discussion : The results showed there is a significant and negative relationship between the social capital and offense commitment of the responders. As the social capital increases, the probability of becoming criminal would decrease and it had been confirmed in Fukuya’s study. He had mentioned there is an inverse and negative relationship between social capital and crime commitment and the increase in social capital would lead to the decrease in the offense commitment. The other studies such as Kang J (2009), Hawdon (2009) had confirmed this relationship. Totally, in theoretical social capital, the offense commitment is under the influence of social capital and most of the studies conducted in this realm have confirmed their negative and inverse relationship. Because a person with high social capital, has higher relations, participations and trust however, the negative dimension of social capital, which is found out by theorists such as Putnam, should not be neglected. Basically, social capital can be used against social purposes. It is important to recognize and flourish the positive social capital, which is advantageous to the growth and development.

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Type of Study: orginal |
Received: 2014/08/13 | Accepted: 2014/08/13 | Published: 2014/08/13

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