ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the establishment of a criminal justice system based on the Sharia Law. It shows that, for the first time in Iran's long history, women and even young girls have been involved in many of the types of crime that historically had remained, until the 1979 Revolution, the province of male criminals. At the same time, the suicide rate of women and young girls has risen dramatically despite the fact that, in Islam as a faith and in Iranian popular culture, suicide is denounced as a grave sin and anti-social act. During the 1960s and 1970s Iranian society entered into a period of modernization and industrialization that led to a general cycle of prosperity which, in turn, led to a relatively anti-criminogenic social and legal process in the 1970s. As a general rule, serious crime and misdemeanours were of an urban nature and were concentrated in a number of large cities that comprised the provincial capitals.
