Organized crime and terrorism taking place in the Turkish provinces get more attention in the public agenda than other type of crimes. Although property crimes receive less attention, they pose a serious threat to public order and the social welfare of Turkish society. Academic researchers have also paid little attention to the analysis of property crimes at the macro level in Turkey. For these reasons, this study focused on the analysis of property crimes for three years period, 2005, 2006 and 2007 in Turkey, using a conceptual model of social disorganization. Provincial level data from Turkish governmental agencies were used. The findings of multivariate analyses showed that social disorganization approach, as measured in this study, provided a partial explanation of property crime rates in Turkey. Family disruption and urbanization had significant effects on property crime rate, while remaining exogenous elements of social disorganization (i.e., SES, population heterogeneity and residential mobility) did not have any expected effects. In mediation analysis, using faith-based engagement and political participation rates as mediators between the structural factors of social disorganization and property crime rate provided marginal support for the theory. Political participation rate partially mediated the relationship between property crime rate and urbanization rate, while …

Every day, individuals commit acts which are considered immoral, unethical, even criminal, often to gain material advantage. Many people consider cheating on taxes, cheating on tests, claiming false benefits, or avoiding transport fare to be wrong, but they do them anyway. While some of these acts may not be formally illegal, they are, at best, considered morally dubious and is labeled “everyday crime.” Anomie theory holds that individuals make decisions based on socialized values, which separately may be contradictory but together, balances each other out, producing behavior considered “normal” by society. When one holds an imbalanced set of values, decisions made on that set may produce deviant behavior, such as everyday crime. RD theory holds that individuals who perceive their own deprivation, relative to someone else, will feel frustration and injustice, and may attempt to ameliorate that feeling with deviant behavior. Data from the 2006 World Values Survey were analyzed using logistic regression, testing both constructs concurrently. An individual was 1.55 times more likely to justify everyday crime for each calculated unit of anomie; and 1.10 times more likely for each calculated unit of RD. It was concluded from this study that anomie and relative deprivation were both associated with …

Using the 2009 National Survey of Substance Abuse Treatment Services (N-SSATS), this paper uses logistic regressions to explore the effect of facility ownership on a facility’s show of altruism. Facility’s show of altruism is operationalized as a facility offering free treatment to all its clients, free treatment to some of its clients, or a facility offering a sliding fee scale to its client base in order to absorb some of the cost of treatment based on a potential client's income. Region, receipt of public funds, and religious affiliation are added as covariates in order to gauge whether the potential relationship between facility ownership and a facility’s show of altruism is genuine. Results indicate that private, for-profit ownership status of a facility is associated with a lower likelihood that a substance-abuse treatment facility would engage in altruistic behavior. However, receipt of public funds acts as a mediating variable, in that, its inclusion raises the likelihood that a private, for-profit facility would engage in shows of altruism. Furthermore, it appears that religious-affiliation increases the likelihood that a facility would display altruism by providing free treatment, to some of its clients, or to all, but less likely to display altruism by employing a …