Effectiveness of alternative methods to imprisonment in Turkish law

Alternative methods to imprisonment in criminal law are developed for reducing the negative effects of imprisonment. These practices aim to prevent those convicted of petty crimes from going further astray within the prison conditions and to take constructive steps on the prisoner's personality by eliminating the deprivation of the opportunity to socialize. Such alternative sanctions are implemented for providing professional, educational, social and psychological support to the prisoner, evaluating and minimizing the reasons of crime and thus rehabilitating the prisoner instead of taking the prisoner to penal institutions, which can be described as a crime university. These practices ensure that the criminal is released into society in a supervised and controlled manner. The slightest setback in these practices means that the criminal will repeat his/her crime. This will create outrage in the society and undermine the society's trust in justice. Therefore, it is crucial to implement such measures meticulously. Alternative methods offered to prison sentence can be alternative sanctions for short-term imprisonment, probation, conditional release or suspension of prison sentence. The implementation of such practices requires many actors to work together. In the conceptualization, improvement and implementation of these procedures especially criminal law actors and professionals from different disciplines such as psychologists, sociologists, social workers, criminologists and penologists have a lot of work to do. In this process, it is not enough for each discipline to address the issue within its own scientific framework. Interdisciplinary studies and comprehensive research on how to get the highest benefit from these practices are required. In this study quantitative, qualitative and statistical studies that are conducted in the fields of sociology, psychology, criminology, penology law and social work regarding practices of alternative methods to imprisonment will be analyzed. After evaluating all the interdisciplinary studies, problems in the practice will be identified, possible solutions will be suggested and by improving alternative methods to imprisonment it is intended to contribute to criminal law doctrine.