The Development of Policy and Inter-Agency Working with Juvenile Offenders in Turkey

Abstract

Both authors came from backgrounds of policy and practice in probation services from two countries — the Netherlands and England and Wales — with established organisational structures built up over decades and a wide range of juvenile offender programmes within residential and community-based settings. Although we had not met before, our preliminary contact by phone and e-mail before the Turkish assignment, indicated that we had a similar value base in relation to the management and treatment of young offenders and the importance of maximising community support from both formal and informal sectors in society for children and their troubled families. We both saw the use of custody as a last resort for juvenile offenders in terms of sentencing.