Territorial analysis of crime in rural areas and its short-term forecast for 2022

Abstract

Objective: to analyze the criminological situation in the Russian Federation and the territorial differences in crime in rural areas, as well as to make a short-term forecast of this type of crime in the Russian Federation.Methods: dynamic, statistical, historical, systemic-structural and comparative-legal methods, as well as a specific sociological methodology of estimating rural crime.Results: the main trend of rural crime from January 1, 2019 to October 1, 2021 can be considered a uniform straightline decrease: a constant monthly decrease by 1.1 thousand crimes. This trend characterizes a situation when the effect of criminogenic factors is neutralized by the impact of anti-criminogenic ones. If we take the above-mentioned data as a basis and generalize them for the next year, we can assume that in 2022 from 331.2 thousand to 388.8 thousand crimes will be registered in rural areas of the Russian Federation. Meanwhile, it should be noted that official data on the state of crime in rural areas, as well as the criminal statistics in the Russian Federation as a whole, cause well-founded doubts. The landslide reduction in crimes in rural areas does not follow from the ongoing social changes in rural areas and gives reason to believe that such a reduction is due to a violation of accounting and registration discipline on the part of staff of the law-enforcement bodies.Scientific novelty: for the first time, a comparative legal analysis of the dynamics of registered crimes in rural and urban areas was carried out, as a result of which the features of crime in rural areas were identified and the author’s short-term forecast for 2022 was proposed. Despite the tendency to reduce the number of crimes registered in rural areas in 2009-2021, the criminal situation in rural areas remains complicated. Statistical indicators do not reflect the real state of this type of crime, since this trend is due to artificial regulation of the number of crimes reflected in statistical reporting towards understatement.Practical significance: as a result of the conducted criminological research, a high degree of public danger of crime in rural areas has been revealed, and its forecasting makes it possible to pay closer attention to the need to develop effective measures to combat and prevent this type of crime.