Çocukların Suça Sürüklenmesinde Fiziksel Ve Sosyo-mekânsal Faktörlerin Etkisi

Abstract

Suç, tüm toplumları ilgilendiren; içindehukuki, sosyolojik, psikolojik, ekonomik, dini, ahlaki ve kriminolojik unsurları barındıran bir kavramdır. İnsanlık tarihi kadar eski olan bu kavram, her toplumda farklı değerlendirilmekte ve farklı uygulamalara tabi tutulmaktadır. Ancak toplumlar arasında ortak bir tanım geliştirmenin zor olduğu suç kavramıyla mücadelede tüm devletler için birlikte hareket etme zorunluluğu kaçınılmazdır. Bu birliktelikteki en hassas ve ciddi ele alınması gereken konu ise şüphesiz suça sürüklenen çocuklardır. Suça sürüklenen çocuklar bir anlamda toplumsal sorunların yansıması olarak ortaya çıkmaktadır. Bu yansıma sosyo-kültürel, ekonomik, demografik ve mekânsal faktörler etkisiyleşekillenmektedir. Söz konusu çocuk olduğu zaman mekânsal faktörler hem kendi dinamikleriyle hem de diğer faktörlere ortam hazırlaması itibariylediğerlerine göre ön plana çıkmaktadır. Mekânsal faktörlerin günümüzdeki belirleyicisi isekentleşmenin hızıdır. Giderek daha fazla insanın bir arada yaşamaya başladığı kentlerde sürdürülebilirliğin sağlanabilmesi için odaklanılması gereken öncelikli konu çocuklardır. Çünkü kentler, içinde barındırdığı sayısız suç fırsatlarıyla çocuğun suça sürüklenmesineortam hazırlamaktadır.Bununla mücadele yöntemlerinden biri,çocuğun yaşadığı kenti sahiplenmesini ve kente karşı aidiyet duygusunun gelişmesini sağlayacak mekanların oluşturulmasıdır. Suç ile yapılan mücadele yöntemleri kısa ve uzun vadede olmak üzere iki düzeyde gerçekleşmektedir. Kısa vadeli yöntemler daha çok kanun düzenlemeleri ve emniyet birimleri aracılığıyla olmaktadır. Uzun vadeli yöntemler ise farklı kurumların birlikte hareket etmesi ve mekâna yönelik sosyal ve ekonomik çözüm önerileri sonucunda gerçekleşmektedir. Mekâna yönelik alınan tedbirler, çocukta kentlileşmesi açısından katalizör görevi üstlenmektedir. Bu sayede çocukta,kente özgü davranış kalıplarını öğrenmek ve boş zamanlarını doğru değerlendirmek suretiyle kentlilik bilincinin oluşmasımümkün olacaktır. Çocukların suça sürüklenmesinde, mekânsal faktörlerin etkisini ortaya koymak adına yapılan bu tez çalışmasında, İstanbul’da suça sürüklenen çocuklarda bir anlamda kentlilik bilincinin oluşması için kentsel donatıların rolü irdelenmiştir. Bu kapsamda İstanbul’da 2008-2013 yılları arasında hüküm giyen çocuklar ile kentsel donatılar arasındaki ilişki doğrusal regresyon analizi ile test edilmiştir.Regresyon analizi sonucunda suça sürüklenen çocuk sayısı ile eğitim tesisi, sosyal tesis, spor tesisi ve yeşil alanlar arasında olumlu; kültür tesisi ile olumsuz ilişki kurulmuştur. Sonuçlar üzerinden genel olarak suça sürüklenen çocuk istatistik oranlarınınarttığı İstanbul’da,planlama süreçleri yeniden gözden geçirilerek çocuk dostu kentler oluşturmak plancıların öncelikli görevi olmalıdır.

Crime is a concept that concerns all societies and that embodies elements of law, sociology, psychology, economy, religion, ethics and criminology.This concept, which is as old as the human history, is viewed and subjected to different practices in each society.However, although it is difficult to find a common definition between different societies, it is a must for different states to work together against crime; because all scientific studies conducted on crime, all symposiums held, and all statistics show us that the crime rate is increasing in the globalizing world.This increase in crime is such that it can affect states' social, economical and political futures. In parallel to the crime rate, juvenile crime also faces us as an important issue.The priority of treatment policies and putting protective-preventative policies to the background especially in developing countries, insufficiency of applications in developed countries, and - added to these - urbanization working as a catalyst increases the number of children that are pushed into crime.Therefore, to be able to talk about sustainability of cities in long term, juvenile crime is the first concept that should be focused on. A child's interaction with crime is different than an adult's. This subject must be examined thoroughly to keep the juvenile criminals who have mostly joined this world of crime by coercion of their trusted ones out of new criminal activities, to keep them from becoming prone to violence individuals and to decrease the crime rate. Therefore the reasons for development of crime must be clearly identified. The factors that constitute crime can be classified as socio-cultural, economical, demographical and environmental.However, when the subject becomes children, time-environment factors - both with their own dynamics and for preparing the environment for other factors - take the foreground. The importance of location for children can be seen in Crime Opportunity Theory which mentions opportunities for crime in more and more growing cities; Social Bond Theory which pays attention to rapidly diminishing social values in cities; Differential Association - Reinforcement Theory which describes the interaction between the new peer community and the children who escape parental control in the chaos of the city; Subcultural Theory which mentions class conflicts in a society; Labeling Theory which says labeling causes continuity in crime; and Social Disorder Theory which stresses the environmental-ecological factors. Besides these theories, Routine Activities, Situational Crime Prevention, Broken Windows and Hotspots theories also stress the importance of location in pushing a child towards crime. The current determinant of environmental factors is the speed of urbanization.Especially the loss of parental control due to the chaos of the cities in families that have migrated from rural areas and the abundance of opportunities for crime in the city are the biggest issues caused by urbanization. Furthermore, ostracization by the society of the areas where juveniles pushed to crime commonly live and/or existence of bad examples that can guide the child to crime in these areas increase the speed of pushing to crime.Thus, considering the children's psychological status during adolescence, it would not be wrong to say environmental factors are more effective than even family factors. In accordance with all this information, crime fighting exists in two stages that can be called short and long term.Short term methods are usually applied with preparation of laws and security units.On the other hand, long term solutions are realized by coordination of different institutions and social and economical solution suggestions for the environment.These suggestions begin with the correct design of the juvenile's house, its surroundings and environment, since it is easier for a child that is unhappy at house, neighborhood and city to show inclination towards deviation. To avoid this, egalitarian - in all senses - practices must be implemented.Among these egalitarian practices, quality design of the area where the child lives, which has a greatest share in pushing to crime, comes first. The concept of environmental quality does not only mean design criteria beginning with neighborhood, but also means existence of easily reachable urban facilities of sufficient size where the child can express himself and adapt to the city.This way, it will be possible for the child to be affected less by the problems caused by the city and live healthily. In Turkey, where the alarm bells are ringing loudly on the subjects of crime and sustainability of cities, crime fighting mostly consists of short term solutions that does not go beyond the point of legal regulations. In this study, which will serve as a basis for long term solutions, showing the effect of environment on delinquency on juvenile delinquents of İstanbul and contributing to environmental criminology was aimed.Thus by showing the effects of environment on crime it was aimed to stress that without the facts of urban planning discipline, Turkey's policies cannot work correctly. To this aim, the sample set of this study consists of convicted children in İstanbul between the dates of September 2008 and January 2013 (14546 children).A great majority of these children are males.According to the United Nations' crime classification system, most children are convicted on drug related crimes.This is an important finding in parallel to official drug usage statistics for showing the seriousness of the subject. When the locational distribution of these convicted children are examined via their residential addresses, it can be clearly seen that there is an accumulation on the European Side.Both the first three districts on number of convicted children (Bağcılar, Küçükçekmece, Esenyurt) and the first three districts with the highest ratio of juvenile crime in consideration of the total children population (Beyoğlu, Fatih, Şişli) are located on the European Side.The results stay the same even if we were to conduct the investigation on different crime classes.In districts containing municipal adjacent areas or villages, the residential addresses of children are distributed randomly with long distances between. However, in districts that are located in the center geographically, locational density in some neighborhoods are remarkable.In these regions, the children live in close proximity of each other and this brings to mind the importance of interaction between children. Environmental interaction risk maps were prepared by starting with the interaction between children and by using different distances as a reference.According to these interaction maps, Beyoğlu is indisputably the riskiest district in terms of juveniles pushed to crime.All districts with mid-level and high level risk are located in the European Side. In comparative physical pattern analysis conducted on two different regions other than Beyoğlu with high level risk, no differences whatsoever were found.In comprehensive interviews on social structure of the region, conducted with the elders of the same regions, it was observed that the awareness levels on the importance of the juvenile crime and its potential solutions were high.Furthermore, the importance and need of locations that the children can spend time in to avoid getting involved with crime was stressed by all interviewees. In this study, the existence and accessibility of community facilities which have critical importance in avoiding juvenile crimes and easing their adaptation to the city were tested by regression analysis.To this end, educational facilities, social facilities, cultural facilities, sports facilities and green field facilities were chosen as the urban facilities that will allow children to utilize their free time properly and ease their adaptation to the city. According to the simple linear regression analysis conducted on a total of 8834 urban facilities, there is an inverse proportion (favorable) between the number of juveniles pushed to crime and the number of urban facilities except cultural facilities. That means as the numbers of educational facilities, social facilities, sports facilities and green field facilities increase, the number of juveniles pushed to crime decreases.However, no meaningful correlation was found between the number of juveniles pushed to crime and the number of cultural facilities.In the multiple linear regression analysis where the urban facilities were considered as a whole, while an inverse proportion (favorable) between the number of children and the number of sports facilities was found, there was a direct proportion (unfavorable) when we replaced sports facilities with cultural facilities. In İstanbul, where according to the results the statistic ratios of juveniles pushed to crime are increasing, planning processes should be reviewed again and the determination of facility locations should be made more carefully in accordance with large scale urban planning decisions.Furthermore, preparation of socio-environmental programs that will increase the usage of these facilities by the children is at least as important as the decision of location.Forming child friendly cities and talking about sustainability of cities can only be possible thus.