An investigation of child criminal institutions and evaluation of psychosocial services for those children

03. Summary The aim of the study is to investigate the trend of child crimes in terms of time and psycho-social programs serving to child criminals in child courts. For this child crimes are investigated in terms of types and any psycho-social services provided to them between 1999 and 2001. The study is in a case study form in which documentation, semi-structured interview and demographics information sheet were used to collect the data. Some of the documentation and data were provided by National Statistical Institute and Deparment of Justice. For this purpose, all the statistics related to child crimes were gathered from General Security Directotare, Gendarme General Headguarters, Justice Deparment, DGM, ACM, AC, ACS, SC, IC, T and CM. The effectiveness of psycho-social services for child criminals was searched on five lawyers, six justices, and five police officers. The case study method was used to investigate on the above mentioned personnels. At the same time 30 child criminals were also determined to get their view on psycho-social services. The data analysis of the study is twofold, both qualitative and quantitative. Quantitative methods were used to determine developmental trend of child crimes by years and the effectiveness of psychosocial services. The results of the study showed that child crime rates were increasing years from 1999 to 2001. In general, psychosocial services provided to child criminals were not found to be satisfactory. This might be result of both lack of personnel and quality of these services. The results were discussed in terms of previous findings and future research directions. X