Suggesting A Stochastic Measurement Tool for Determining Crime and Safety Indexes: Evidence from Turkey

Abstract

Crime is a phenomenon that disrupts the welfare and structure of society and has become an important problem in both developed and developing countries. In recent years, in parallel with the increasing rate of urbanization all over the world, there has been also a serious increase in crime rates. With the increasing crime rates, the fear of crime has emerged in the individuals who are part of the society. Fear of crime is the degree of anxiety an individual feels about the deterioration of the social structure. This degree of anxiety is expressed by crime and safety indices today. In this study, a new measurement tool is proposed in order to eliminate the effects such as emotional preference, decision-making difficulty, etc. For this purpose, the Stochastic Multi-Criteria Acceptability Analysis-TRI (SMAA-TRI) method, in which the measurement can be made with interval and dispersed values, and the probability theory can be reflected as an effect on the decision analysis, has been utilized to measure the crime and safety indices, determined by online survey up to now, because of the fact that the experts/participants had difficulties in expressing their preferences clearly during their evaluations. It has been determined that the index values obtained as a result of the study coincide with the results of the surveys made with thousands of people and that the SMAA-TRI method can be used effectively in determining the crime/safety indices.