A draft report prepared by a parliamentary committee on the prevention of juvenile crime was recently wrapped up and includes diverse suggestions to authorities.
In 2025, Parliament set up the Committee on Children Driven to Crime, a legal term for underage individuals committing crimes, after several murders of children committed by their peers grabbed headlines, along with the rise of criminal gangs recruiting minors as hitmen.
The report proposes a myriad of measures to curb the disturbing phenomenon. Among them are screening programs among preschoolers and primary school students to assess their mental health and social factors affecting their upbringing. Other proposals include broader surveillance of schools and legal amendments for minors involved in crimes to ensure “social justice.”
The draft report will be presented to Parliament’s presidency after more input by lawmakers. The report is composed of six chapters and 691 pages. In an introduction to the report, the committee’s chair, Müşerref Pervin Tuba Durgut, said the issue was tackled by the committee not as a mere judiciary matter but a multi-layered phenomenon affecting society. Durgut said they assessed risk factors driving children to commit crimes within a wide scope of interactions, from the impact of families, schools and peers to neighborhood ties, the digital world and public policies.
For months, the committee heard academics, experts and those affected by crimes committed by children driven into crime and made field visits.
Explaining that a cross-sectional study was also carried out with 610 children selected via stratified random sampling from 4,989 children in juvenile closed penal institutions and juvenile education houses, Durgut said they examined the risk factors the children were exposed to.
“The findings obtained from these studies have clearly demonstrated the need for inter-agency coordination, the importance of early intervention mechanisms, the dissemination of best practices developed at the local level, and the necessity of holistic policies that center the child in crime prevention. The committee's work has contributed to understanding the multi-dimensional structure of juvenile delinquency and has revealed the importance of holistic, interdisciplinary and practice-based approaches in policy development processes,” she said.
The report also included official statistics and academic studies regarding juveniles dragged into delinquency in Türkiye.
Stating that juvenile delinquency has become a rising trend, the report stated that research on judicial incidents involving children and adolescents has generally developed in an upward direction.
According to the official data, the number of incidents involving children who came or were brought to security units due to an alleged crime rose from 133,829 in 2015 to 202,785 in 2024. The report stated, "Accordingly, an increase of approximately 51.5% occurred in the number of incidents involving children in the last 10-year period. This increase reveals that children's contact with the judicial system has become more widespread."
Among other suggestions in the report are mandatory hospitalization and treatment for children (if the court rules in favor) with anti-social behavior, disorders and substance addiction, effective public service models for psychological counseling and crisis intervention for at-risk families. Lawmakers suggested that families at risk should receive employment support and be included in income-generating programs, to prevent children from turning to crime to support themselves or their families.
The report also proposes the installation of camera systems in all schools and the introduction of electronic passes for entry to schools, in light of recent school shootings that have emerged as another threatening aspect of the phenomenon.
