A comparative study on effects of economic and social development on crime

In this study, the effects of social and economic development on crime were examined. For this purpose, the effect of social and economic development on offenses against property and offenses against sexual inviolability has been examined in the context of OECD countries for covering the fourteen-years period between 2005-2018 by using the Human Development Index developed by United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) and its sub-components which represents social and economic development. The panel vector autoregressive (Panel VAR) method is used for the analysis of human development and crime relations. n the research model, the impact of the human development index and its sub-components were evaluated separately for the two crime groups. The findings show that there is a one-way causality relationship between human development and crime. In other words, the findings show that the index values recorded in human development and its sub-components have a significant effect on the rates of crimes against property and crimes against sexual inviolability, and that crime rates decrease as the human development index values increase. The findings show that beyond judicial and penal measures, policies to be developed on issues that constitute the basis of human development can have affective results in the prevention of crime.