The Economic Models of Crime and Stagflation in Turkey

• In Event: Social Explanations to Violent Crimes

Abstract

Income inequality and unemployment as worsening social parameters deserve a closer look in crime studies. In the literature, the economic model of crime was subject to studies in different countries and wider timelines. Likewise, it provides substantial explanations, especially on property crimes which are the most common type of crime in Turkey. I suggest the stagflation started in 2018 affected crime rates and especially rates of property crime as it brought weakened purchasing power and hardened living conditions of wage workers and urban poor and eventually led to increasing precarity in marginalized sections of society.
Stagflation is a rare case in which economic parameters combined indicate an almost irreversible or hard-to-repair state. Turkey went under stagflation in 2018 with slowing economic growth, almost hyperinflation, and a high unemployment rate. As wages melted away against the reserve currencies, purchasing power of wage workers and the urban poor suffered the most. Meanwhile, the ongoing decline trend in crime between 2012 and 2016 was reversed at the start of the stagflation.
In this study, I will explore two versions of the economic model of crime. The first model is more conventionally based on the correlation between the crime rate and the unemployment rate. Regarding the general criticism of the evaluation of unemployment and wide skepticism towards Turkey's unemployment measurement, additionally, I will investigate the youth unemployment and the labor underutilization rate. With the second model, I will examine the relationship between crime rates and average annual net earnings. To give an in-depth analysis, I will also study the crime rates from the most urbanized and the most crowded area of the country, the Marmara Region as it includes the largest, the fourth, and the tenth biggest metropolitan areas and has higher than average total crime rates and property crime rates as well.

Author

• Arca Alpan, Istanbul Bilgi University