The role of remand prisons in criminal procedure in Turkish Youth Justice System

My research focuses on the operation of law on the young prisoners that are in pre-trial detention in Turkey. I aim to revisit and explore the meaning of pre-trial detention in the existing literature on imprisonment and role of pre-trial detention as a control mechanism in Turkey’s youth justice system in relation to Turkey’s welfare regime. The young defendants on remand, who constitute the 70-90% of all prison population under 18, are received by closed-type, high security prisons that are specifically reserved for young defendants. I conduct interviews with these young prisoners within various prisons, as well as different youth justice professionals who are judges, prosecutors, lawyers and social workers. I also do critical discourse analysis on official representation of the system. Through employing these methods, I aim to analyse the role of remand imprisonment during criminal procedure in the whole youth justice system. In relation to this project, I am interested in imprisonment studies, criminal procedural law, courtroom studies, studies on everyday racism, sociology of deviance, governmentality studies and studies on welfare regimes. I work on my PhD project at University of Kent and Eötvös Lorand University.