Geography of crime in Çanakkale

Crime is a universal phenomenon. It has been existed since old ages of history. It is expected that it will go on in the future with the emerging of new types of crime. Crime is a phenomenon that can be seen in every culture, but it sometimes includes different evaluations. In one way, crime is a contradiction between one?s manners and behaviors and the conventional codes of society in which one lives. As this contradiction necessarily exists everywhere and every time, it constitutes a general and universal phenomenon. In spite of the difference of crimes such as murder and theft, in one way crime conserves its existence with the necessity of being searched scientifically and being a part of science as a phenomenon.In this study, the city Çanakkale that we handle as a place in terms of geography and crime is placed Northwestern part of Turkey. It is located on the Biga Peninsula and Gelibolu Peninsula which are respectively placed on the South and the North of the Dardanelles that have a strategic importance. However, the place has been more localized and turned out to be Çanakkale city center because of the difficulties of the study subject. In our study, primarily the term crime, geography and criminology, the affect of some physical and humane factors on crime have tried to be explained with the examples from Turkey and World. Afterwards, this state has been evaluated for the city Çanakkale. The types of crime that we choose such as Traffic Accidents (resulting in material damage and injury), theft (house, office, car and other thieves), ınjury-murder, and Ill-treatment of family members-pounding-threat-affront have been examined in detail across the streets of Çanakkale city center by taking the geographic factors into consideration. Also, the distribution of the types of crime to the provincial-wide has been allowed. The places where the types of crime are committed have been compiled from Çanakkale Police Department in the direction of the daily reports of year 2007 and these places have been mapped with the help of CBS. The Classification Tree Test and the Frequency Test have been applied between the types of crime with the SPSS statistics programme and the meteorologic parameters that have been taken from State Meteorology Affairs. Afterwards, in the direction of determinated types of crime, Çanakkale has been compared to the other different cities. Lastly, the results have been evaluated and the proposals have been brought forward.With this study, it is designed that the types of crime are distributed according to the physical and the human geography of the place. It is indicated that many factors have an affect on crime, but socio-economic factors are the most effective ones compared to the others. The speedy urbanization process of Çanakkale becomes an important point in the formation of crime in this city. Furthermore, it is thought that this study will set an example for the following studies.Key Words:Çanakkale. crime, crime of geography, crime distribution,