Theft Prevention strategies in Rural Settlements of Zanjan

Rural areas of the country face various economic and social problems, including crime. The development, creativity and social mobility of rural communities depends on security and peace and is the most important indicator of crime prevention. The purpose of this study was to investigate the crime occurrence in rural areas of Zanjan and to develop strategies for preventing these crimes.

This study is an applied descriptive-analytic research. The statistical population of the study was 293 villages in Zanjan. In the strategy formulation and selection, a set of elites (n = 32) were selected. Multivariate decision-making or TOPSIS in MATLAB software was used to analyze the data.

Findings showed that Zanjan had the highest incidence of theft crimes in the province and 32.19% of rural theft crimes occurred in this province. The most important theft was in rural areas of the city with 53.66 percent of the total crime.

The results show that based on five criteria for evaluating strategies including importance in terms of prevention, efficiency and effectiveness in prevention of rural crime and budget and cost and time required for implementation, education and awareness sector strategies with highest score in technology. TOPSIS is the most effective approach to preventing rural crime in the city.