Erbay Ayhan, Buker Hasan
Ministry of Justice, Turkey.
Minot State University, ND, USA.
J Interpers Violence. 2021 Aug;36(15-16):7326-7350. doi: 10.1177/0886260519834088. Epub 2019 Mar 11.
This study aims to answer two major research questions: (a) What are the characteristics of the juvenile homicide offenders (JHOs) and their offenses in Turkey? (b) How do different risk factors vary across the JHOs and other violent and nonviolent juvenile offenders? The data set was derived from the court records of a group of adjudicated youth ( = 546) in Turkey. These records were coded to include information on both the offense characteristics of the homicides committed by juveniles (i.e., motivation, weapon of choice, victims' characteristics, etc.) and the individual and family-level risk factors available in JHOs and two other delinquent groups. Our findings indicated that most of the homicide cases committed by juveniles were motivated by a fight/argument and did not involve any criminal premeditation. The victims were mostly strangers and close in age to the offenders. JHOs were significantly different from other juvenile offenders in a number of aspects, such as age, number of siblings, effectiveness of intrafamilial communication, social mobility, having risky friends, being school dropouts, and working at a paid job. However, JHOs and other juvenile offenders were not significantly different in a majority of the assessed risk factors. The findings pointed out that the risks existing at JHOs were not reflecting the stereotypical perspectives about violent delinquents. For instance, JHOs had the lowest rate of having risky friends compared with other two groups of juvenile offenders. In addition, we found that a typical homicide committed by a juvenile in Turkey was not criminally motivated, in most instances, but the outcome of an instantly escalating personal conflict between youth. In light of the study findings, we proposed several policy implications such as keeping youth in a formal education system to prevent their exposure to culturally inherent adverse social values that promote violent and revengeful reactions to a personal conflict.
（a）土耳其青少年杀人罪犯（JHOs）及其犯罪行为的特征是什么？（b）不同的风险因素在青少年杀人罪犯与其他暴力和非暴力青少年罪犯中是如何变化的？数据集源自土耳其一组被判决青年（n = 546）的法庭记录。这些记录经过编码，以纳入有关青少年杀人犯罪的犯罪特征信息（即动机、首选武器、受害者特征等）以及青少年杀人罪犯和其他两个犯罪群体中可用的个人和家庭层面的风险因素。我们的研究结果表明，青少年实施的大多数杀人案件是由打架/争吵引发的，且不涉及任何犯罪预谋。受害者大多是陌生人，年龄与罪犯相近。青少年杀人罪犯在许多方面与其他青少年罪犯有显著差异，如年龄、兄弟姐妹数量、家庭内部沟通的有效性、社会流动性、有危险的朋友、辍学以及有带薪工作等。然而，在大多数评估的风险因素方面，青少年杀人罪犯与其他青少年罪犯并无显著差异。研究结果指出，青少年杀人罪犯存在的风险并未反映出对暴力少年犯的刻板印象。例如，与其他两组青少年罪犯相比，青少年杀人罪犯有危险朋友的比例最低。此外，我们发现，在土耳其，青少年实施的典型杀人行为在大多数情况下并非出于犯罪动机，而是青少年之间个人冲突瞬间升级的结果。根据研究结果，我们提出了若干政策建议，如让青少年留在正规教育系统中，以防止他们接触到文化中固有的不良社会价值观，这些价值观会促使人们对个人冲突产生暴力和报复性反应。
