Sociological analysis of subjects under the age of 18 who committed bagsnatcing and pickpoketing crimes in Diyarbakir city

ABSTRACT"Stealing by snatching" crimes have been existing for a long time in Turkey as animportant social problem but only recently started being discussed after being onmedia.It is important to note that the persons' birth place who committed or attemptedcrimes directed to property like stealing by snatching, pickpocketing, usurpationare from South Eastern Anatolia Region and particularly from Diyarbakır cityaccording to police investigations.Diyarbakır is the center of the region by many aspects. It is one of the mostinfluenced cities by the migration movement that started in 1990's as being thefirst destination of migrators. General view of the city has changed daramaticallywith the migration. Migrators has started determining many aspects of the city.Especially one of the requirements of urban life, "Living with rules" becamenearly impossible. There were twoobstacles in front of migrated families thatprevented accomodation to urban life: Their lower education levels and their lossof ecenomical income while migrating. Children of migrated families have beensocialized in the same negative environment.In our study we tried to make socio-economical analysis of 100 persons who wereconvicted with stealing by snatching and pickpocketing under age 18 inDiyarbakır during year 2005 with interviews and questionnaires based on theassumption that knowing this criminals' socio-economical properties was going toallow us to look deeper into the subject of migration and crime relationship. Thedata obtained was analysed using SPSS application and statistical results areevaluated after being converted to tables.