ABSTRACT

Probation implementation means criminals serve their sentences under surveillance and control inside the society instead of being sent to prison as a result of an imprisonment verdict given by a judge after they commit a crime. According to this, it can be said that probation is a kind of an execution system. It is aimed to evaluate the socio-demographic characteristics of the people who applied to our hospital within probation law and the treatment coherence of the cases according to the results of probation implementation.

Two hundred cases, applying to Recep Tayyip Erdoğan University, Training and Research Hospital, all of whom were decided to have probation implementation on 01.04- 15.11.2013 were included in the study. These cases consist of people, 13 of whom were from prison and 187 of whom were living out in the society. Probation implementation was carried out by having psychiatric interview and evaluating psychoactive substance in urine in three-week and six-week programs. On the other hand, the cases sent for mental evaluation were monthly followed in a period defined by probation implementation branches.

It was determined that totally 200 cases applied as required by Probation implementation during the study. Two of the cases were female, while 198 of them were male. Mean age was determined as 32.5 ±9.8 (18-69). It was also observed that 64 cases (23.0%) completed three week program and ten cases (5.0%) completed six week program, but twenty five cases (12.5%) showed in congruity to the treatment. Sixty-four cases (32.0%) completed their follow-up and treatment in the society instead of prison.

The number of applicants to the hospital within probation implementation is increasing day by day. However, it is obvious that the mentioned implementation will be accompanying some problems if the number of the hospitals where probation treatment can be implemented, even with minimum conditions is not increased and if there are not any infrastructures. These will provide the individuals with possibility to be treated where they are settled. Especially, the doctors and other staff will be the target of anger in case there is compliance problem or the patient can be sentenced with a medical report. It is required in our country that relevant regulations should be made and medical reports should be given by healthcare commissions instead of an only doctor to provide the standardization of probation implementations. Also, healthcare personnel should be trained.

Keywords: Probation implementation, Psychoactive substance use, Socio-demographical features, Treatment compliance.