Identifying and Prioritizing Crime Prevention Strategies in the Field of Offenses Caused by Football Spectators' Violence

Violent behaviors among football fans have been one of the most important aberrations and abnormalities that have occurred in sports fields over the past years. The purpose of the present study was to identify and prioritize strategies for preventing crimes caused by football fans' violence.

This study is descriptive in terms of type and in terms of its objectives it is of an applied research. The solutions were divided into two general statuses of situational and social categories. Situational components were classified according to Clark (2005) model and social components based on Shaw and Mackie (1992) model and research questionnaire was designed accordingly. Cronbach's alpha for the questionnaire was 0.90, indicating appropriate internal consistency of the questionnaire and validity of the questionnaire was also determined based on confirmatory factor analysis. The statistical population consisted of sport managers and faculty members who were aware of the field of study. The samples were selected using purposive and convenient sampling method; 117 individuals, including 82 sport managers and 35 faculty members. One-sample t-test and Friedman test were used for data analysis.

In the overall ranking, the social component of increasing the difficulty of committing a crime with an average rating of 4.71 was ranked first; the social component of improving amenities with a mean rating of 4.67 was ranked second; and the two situational components of increasing the risk and not stimulating to committing a crime were ranked third and fourth with average rating of 4.26 and 4.07, respectively.

In order to implement preventive strategies, a combination of situational and social strategies should be applied, with emphasis on situational strategies. To achieve optimal outcomes for situational remedies, increasing the difficulty of committing crimes, and for social remedies, improving the facilities must be taken into account as the priority measures.