Search

Since the beginning of the 20th century, the concept of child and crime, named juvenile delinquency, has been mentioned together very often. The idea that some arrangements should be made to ensure rights of juveniles in the international community has given rise to the emergence of the understanding, of juveniles' protection from crime. There is no study explaining the source or giving the underlying rationale for the emergence of crime. Today, there is a reality that there are many factors that affect the emergence of it. In addition, it is not possible to completely prevent crime. However, it is possible to reduce crime to a manageable level. Thus, the fear of crime, which is one of the adverse effects of crime, may be reduced, and individuals' life quality can be enhanced. In this context, it is vital to prevent or minimize juvenile delinquency as much as possible because it is a well-established fact that most children who are drifted into crime at a young age, form a criminal career at later ages. In this article, Turkey's juvenile delinquency map is drawn, and the factors that cause juvenile delinquency are analyzed from a criminological perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The aim of this study is to develop a tool to measure the perceptions of professionals about criminals who are working with criminals or who can possibly work with them in the future. Methods: A 50-item preliminary scale was formed based on the review of the relevant literature, the pilot study and expert opinions. The scale was administered to 392 students. Results: Analysis was conducted with remaining 39 items after item-correlation analysis. The KMO value of the scale was 0.859 and the result of the Bartlett test was 1518.42. The results of the explanatory factor analysis yielded two factors and 12 items. In this scale, the first factor explained 32.42% of the total variance while the second factor explained 20% of the total variance (52.42% in total). The validity analysis of the scale was conducted on a sample of 310 students and the indices showed a good fit (χ2/sd=2.43; RMSEA=0.68; GFI=0.935; AGFI=0.905; NFI=0.902; CFI=0.94). In addition internal validity analyses were performed and the scale was found to have internal validity. In terms of the reliability analyses, Cronbach's alpha (0.82) and split-half analysis (0.80) were performed and the scale’s reliability was verified. Conclusion: The validity and reliability analyzes showed that the Perceptions toward Criminals Scale can be applied to professionals working with criminals or who can potentially work with them in the future [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]