Analysis of the European Union Countries and Turkey in Terms of Criminal Tendencies

Abstract

This study uses criminal tendencies data to reveal the relations between the member states of the European Union and Turkey. The relations between these countries and criminal tendency trends are of vital importance for our future. Eight factors in our research are used to show the impact of criminal tendencies for countries. These factors are homicide, violent crime, robbery, domestic burglary, motor vehicle theft, drug trafficking, number of police officers and prison population. It is possible to find many sources in the literature related to each of these factors for the member states of the European Union and Turkey. However, there is a need for studies to take all of these factors into account. So we can clearly identify the relations among countries in terms of criminal tendencies in a highly variable space. We use correspondence analysis method and clustering method based on chi-squared distance which is used for categorical data to analyze the relationship between these countries in terms of criminal tendencies. As a result, we can say that robbery, domestic burglary and motor vehicle theft trends in Estonia, Germany, Denmark, France and Ireland are similar. Also Turkey, Luxemburg, Slovenia and Croatia are in the same group. Mainly, these countries have homicide and drug trafficking trends. The other striking finding is that the trend of violent crime is high in the countries such as England, Sweden, Finland, Netherlands and Belgium which have a good level of education and income.