Rural Crime Research Articles

NSW Police Force and rural crime

Rural crime has a financial, emotional and physical impact on its victims, their family and the community. Often the victims are isolated, their livestock and equipment are extremely valuable and their rural properties are a family business handed down from generation to generation, with the families working hard and making large sacrifices to keep their business profitable and able to supply the greater community with quality produce.
 The direction of the NSW Police Force towards rural crime has evolved over the past 70 years. The renewed focus and creation of the Rural Crime Prevention Team is a significant enhancement on our ability to target rural crime within NSW.
 This article discusses the history of the NSW Police Force involvement in rural crime and, particularly, the approaches taken by the Rural Crime Prevention Team since December 2017

Rural crime and law

This paper discusses the nature and extent of rural crime and suggested solutions to rural crime; providing the author’s opinion on mandatory sentencing, increased penalties, certainty of detection, and reduction of the profit motive. Particularly, the article discusses the issues of stock theft, abalone poaching, firearms offences, traffic offences, logging protest cases, pastures protection – legal principles, proposed solutions, practical issues. The article also touches on changes in law enforcement, technology and the administration of justice, as well as police interviews with suspects, DNA, video surveillance, domestic violence issues and women in courts.
 The paper concludes with a description of the experiences of a magistrate who lived and worked in rural NSW, discussing issues that arise as a result of inevitable relationships with accused and others in the town.

A comparison of rural crimes in Australia (NSW) and South Africa

Rural criminology as a topic of scholarly study, neglected over the past two to three decades, has bounced into the spotlight, with claims now being made that rural criminology is receiving justified attention among the academic fraternity. This paper presents a comparative analysis of the major challenge facing two countries with different levels of development as identified by the United Nations Human Development Index. A predicament for rural criminology is that the world is not equal: rural crimes is researched in developed countries but not in developing countries. This paper compares the types and prevalence of agricultural crimes in Australia (NSW) and South Africa to determine whether significant differences or similarities exist.

The business of farm crime: evaluating trust in the police and reporting of offences

Annual estimates of the total cost of farm crime to the UK economy amount to the region of £45 m (NFU in NFU Rural Crime Report 2018. https://www.nfumutual.co.uk/news-and-stories/rural-crime-report-2018/, 2018). The purpose of this study was to assess the extent, effects and responses to farm crime from key stakeholders, principally the police and farming population. Survey responses were collected from farmers (n = 96) in rural Wales. Key findings suggest that the main categories of farm crime including machinery and livestock theft were similar to national patterns. Perceptions of organised crime groups from outside the local area being responsible for criminal activity were also prevalent. Satisfaction and trust in the police was generally healthy, despite awareness that the investigation and prosecution of farm and/or rural crime was often not being adequately resourced. The implications of this research propose that a broad lack of police training/experience, insight into farming issues generally, and wider organisational resource commitment, all hinder effective policing of farm business crime.

Horizon scanning rural crime in England

Despite increasing levels of research addressing rural crime, this field of academia remains under-researched across the world, and the impact crime has upon rural communities continues to be underestimated. In particular, levels of rural crime research in England pale in comparison with the amount of research that is taking place in other developed countries such as the USA and Australia. This paper provides a horizon scan of emerging rural crime threats in England, and considers how this methodology could help practitioners in the UK and other countries. This study illustrates that there are a number of emerging crime trends affecting English rural communities. By identifying these evolving issues, this paper contributes to future research and guidance within the English rural crime arena.

Leading and recognizing public value

This article examines the relationship between leadership and public value, which is particularly challenging in a context of explicit contest and conflict. The theoretical framework is illustrated through a case study of policing rural crime. The study reveals that the police worked with multiple and competing publics rather than a single homogeneous public, and that part of their leadership role was to create and convene a public space in which different voices and divergent views could be expressed. The study notes that research needs to pay attention to the loss and displacement of public value, not solely its creation and recognition. The need to convene multiple publics required the police to lead, as part of a leadership constellation, and with political astuteness. The findings have wider relevance for other public services, and for studies of leadership and public value at the intersection between the state and civil society.

The Relationship Rural Development and Crimes

The Relationship Rural Development and Crimes

Does Shale Energy Development Mean More Crime? The Case of the Bakken Oil Boom

AbstractThe rise and fall of shale oil production in recent years have led to tremendous economic growth and challenges to shale communities in the U.S. In this study, we attempt to address the inconsistent results in previous studies and shed light on the relationship between rural crimes and shale oil development at the Bakken using county‐level data for Montana and North Dakota from 2000 through 2014. Our results indicated statistically significant evidence of increased aggravated assaults, burglaries, larcenies, and motor vehicle thefts in shale‐oil producing counties during the boom. However, the regression results suggest that the rise in certain violent crime, such as murder, rape, and robbery, is not statistically attributable to the shale oil boom or oil activity, but to increased population in the two states. The crime effect of the boom also grew larger especially after 2008. The results point to some evidence of social disruption in rural communities undergoing rapid shale oil development. More importantly, the Bakken's crime experience also suggests a number of critical needs for shale energy regions nationwide.

Reimagining Rural Crime in England: A Historical Perspective

Rural England is still perceived by many as a crime- free idyll, despite increasing evidence to the contrary. This paper provides a brief history of the emergence of rural crime as we currently understand it, from the dissolution of the monasteries under King Henry VIII (1536- 1540), through to the early twentieth century. Some of the persistent myths surrounding rural crime that are particularly relevant to England will also be considered. This review shows that, despite being seen as a recent issue, rural crime in England has a long and chequered past. As a result, such misunderstandings may have led to the persistence of the myths surrounding rural crime , which means that the problems faced by rural communities continue unabated. By addressing these myths, whilst rural crime is not a recent issue , it has evolved into a modern phenomenon. This paper aims to show that rural crime research as a distinct academic field in England is a necessity.

Illegal diversification strategies in the farming community from a UK perspective

Illegal diversification strategies in farming contexts are neglected in research terms. There are endogenous and exogenous factors that influence the potential strategic capability and activity of illegal entrepreneurs and criminal farmers. Internal factors include the personal characteristics of the farmer–qualities and skills. External factors, outside the control of the individual illegal entrepreneur, include the activities and processes undertaken by them, the characteristics of the illegal enterprise, government policies, markets and environmental factors. Using a documentary research methodology of 210 case studies, located on the internet, from across the UK (where farmers had been charged with criminal offences relating to their occupation), the article contributes to the literature on farm diversification and rural crime.

The Place of Rural in a Southern Criminology

A substantial proportion of the world’s population remains rural, despite decades of urbanisation. Further, most of this rural population lies south of the equator. Therefore, it is incumbent on the emerging fields of rural criminology and global southern criminology to mutually reinforce each other’s scholarly development. To this end, this article engages three selected issues associated with agriculture and food – agricultural victimisation, food security, and farmworker abuse and trafficking – and discusses them in terms of the advancement of a global southern criminology. The article concludes with acknowledgement of many more rural crime issues that have particular salience to the global South and warns of new dangers in the development of hegemonic binaries (Carrington, Hogg and Sozzo 2016) and homogenous categories of knowledge (Connell 2007) if they fail to inform each other.

Social Deviance Theories: Can They Explain Rural Vandalism in the Twenty-First Century?

ABSTRACTRural crime is a heavily misunderstood and marginalized area of criminology. In the United Kingdom in particular, there is limited scholarship on the issue and even less on particular types of rural crime, such as rural vandalism. With this in mind, this article reviews the applicability of five deviance theories to several forms of rural vandalism, through a less traditional lens that challenges criminological and rural norms. The article concludes by arguing that most of the theories examined are relevant to explanations of rural vandalism. However, it also emphasizes the need for a solid definition of rural crime, and an overall move away from the urban focus of criminology.

‘Unwomanly practices’: Poaching Crime, Gender and the Female Offender in Nineteenth-Century Britain

Abstract:Studies of poaching in the nineteenth century have tended to understate the involvement of women in this archetypal rural crime. This article will suggest that female offending was both more significant and more widespread than previously assumed, but it will also highlight how in a variety of complex ways dominant conceptions of gender shaped perceptions of female poachers and often influenced their treatment before the courts. It will argue that alongside more widely effectual assumptions about appropriate male and female spheres and behaviours, the response of the authorities to female poachers was also shaped by powerful and increasingly culturally embedded notions about the sexually exclusive nature of hunting.

Rural Crime from A Global Perspective

Rural Crime from A Global Perspective

Book Review: Rural Crime and Community Safety

Book Review: Rural Crime and Community Safety

Traditional coppice in South East England: the importance of workforce engagement for development

This paper describes research into the historic importance of the coppice industry, now largely restricted to south east England and the relevance of this to current rural development policy. The economic and social contexts have altered significantly over time with product substitution and changing consumer aspirations, and particularly the availability of alternative fuel sources. Over the last fifty years the “value” attached to coppiced woodlands has shifted away from resource exploitation and towards a greater appreciation of them for wildlife, recreation, amenity and cultural heritage. This has increased wider public awareness of and appreciation for coppicing as a management technique and, consequently rising concern over the reduction in area managed. This was assumed to be due to market failure but attempts to reverse this by creating new outlets failed. The reason for this has been explored by engaging directly with the workforce, both individually and in focus groups. Coppice workers were found to be more numerous, active and enterprising than previously thought, and many were found to be working in family groups servicing traditional markets. They were unaware of concerns about decline in the area coppiced or initiatives to address it. Issues currently affecting their businesses included housing costs, rural crime, harvesting restrictions, loss of yards and training needs. It is concluded that Government policies to promote woodfuel are not likely to succeed without active engagement with the workforce to understand their perspectives and enabling them to participate in policy decisions is recommended.

Depictions of youth homicide: Films set in rural environments

This paper, Depictions of Youth Homicide: Films Set in Rural Environments, reviews portrayals of youth homicide within six films that are set in rural environs. It examines depictions concerning the environment or setting of the film, including how media may explore notions of formal and informal social control as a means by which to explain some aspects of rural crime. The findings suggest that though films that depict youth homicide in rural settings encompass stereotypes often associated with rural crime, such as perceived police incompetence and the importance of informal social control in regard to community ties. However, there are still some instances in which rural homicide was framed in a realistic light, for example, the fact that rural firearm use for their actual purpose is common and firearm accidents are common, but firearms as a means of homicide are rare.

Kowalsky, Sharon A Deviant Women: Female Crime and Criminology in Revolutionary Russia, 1880–1930 (review)

SEER, 94, 3, july 2016 554 his religious feeling is certainly evident, but he also comes across in this volume as a man capable of independent thought, rather than a blinkered reactionary. The impression is one of considerable military competence, coupled with an increasingly subtle political sensibility; the latter was also evident in his cautious role in the civil war period, and in the emigration. This is a valuable and balanced study which increases our knowledge of a dead end in Russian history. It is well researched using archives in the Russian Federation, the United States and elsewhere, in addition to a wealth of published documents and memoir material. The text is supported by sixty pages of valuable endnotes, and accompanied by maps and photographs. University of Glasgow Evan Mawdsley Kowalsky, Sharon A. Deviant Women: Female Crime and Criminology in Revolutionary Russia, 1880–1930. Northern Illinois University Press, Dekalb, IL, 2009. xii + 314 pp. Tables. Notes. Selected bibliography. Index. $42.00. This is a book of two halves. The first is dedicated to a history of Russian and Soviet criminology, tracing the development of the field from the late Imperial period into the early years of the Soviet regime. Sharon A. Kowalsky traces the evolution of various schools of thought regarding criminality, discussing European influences, as well as Russian-specific intellectual perspectives. She also outlines the establishment of the institutions of criminology and the professionalization of this field of study. The second half is devoted to a series of case studies in which Kowalsky explores the way in which Russian and Soviet criminology was applied to understand and punish particular crimes including prostitution, illicit alcohol production and infanticide. Crossing the revolutions of 1917 and the crises of the Civil War years, the case studies make clear the continuities in explanations for women’s criminality, as well as highlight the ways in which these theories were adapted to suit the new political regime and the changed gender relations it sought to foster. The central thread of the book which unites both halves is the analysis of the gendered perspective which criminologists took towards female criminality. At its heart, women’s biology was used to explain both the low levels of women’s crimes, but also the nature of crimes which they did commit. Women were viewed as the weaker sex, physically, mentally and morally, due to their experiences of menstruation, pregnancy, child birth and menopause, and to the fact that their biological role as bearers of children confined them REVIEWS 555 to the domestic realm. As a result, it was argued, women did not experience the struggles of the public domain which led men into criminal behaviour. On the other hand, that very domesticity meant they were most likely to commit crimes against their family or crimes which could be conducted in the household, like illicit alcohol production. If women were removed from that domestic sphere by circumstances, they were more prey to the influence of other criminals, but once again most likely to commit crimes related to their sexuality, like prostitution. Kowalsky demonstrates how such expectations of women’s criminality continued into the Soviet era, but were over-layered with socialist theory and expressed in the language of the new regime. Prostitution was understood as a crime born of the last vestiges of the old economic system and, after the Civil War, of the capitalistic elements of the New Economic Policy. Illicit alcohol production was framed as a rural crime committed by backward peasant women who, due to their biological and gender-related frailties, had not embraced socialism. The rural nature of this crime remained even if committed by women living in urban areas, the assumption being that they were new arrivals in the cities who had yet to integrate fully into socialist modernity. Similarly, given the new laws outlawing illegitimacy and legalizing abortion, criminologists viewed women resorting to infanticide as tending to still adhere to the now obsolete moral code of Imperial Russia. Women’s backwardness and their criminality were so conflated in the minds of criminologists that they actually viewed positively any diversification of women’s crime from the ‘domestic’ to the more ‘general’, that is to the...

Noble Robbers, avengers and entrepreneurs: Eric Hobsbawm and Banditry in Iran, the Middle East and North Africa

ABSTRACTBanditry has been endemic across the Middle East and North Africa. Yet the Middle Eastern experience of banditry has thus far failed to receive sustained academic attention. In particular, the debates stimulated by Eric Hobsbawm's thesis of social banditry have elicited only a few responses from scholars of the Middle East and North Africa, and these largely negative. This article asks to what extent the recent work done in the field of ‘Bandit studies’ helps to elucidate the experience of the Middle East and North Africa. Why has there been such a lack of interest in banditry when the phenomenon itself, and rural crime in general, was so widespread? Why are so few individual bandits celebrated or reviled? What do we mean by banditry in the Middle Eastern context, who became a bandit, why and in what circumstances, what did bandits do and how was this perceived by elites and subalterns, what were the connections between bandits and peasants and between bandits and the worlds of power and, perhaps most importantly, who has written about bandits and what sources have they used?

Rural Crime in Developing Countries: Theoretical Framework, Empirical Findings, Research Needs

Anecdotal evidence and selected information from the International Crime Victims Survey suggest that crime is higher in developing countries than in developed countries and that there are regionally big differences. Explanations and solutions to the persistence and prevalence of rural crime in many developing countries are needed as rural crime undermines sustainable development to a large extent and may even affect social cohesiveness in rural communities. This discussion paper therefore calls for research which helps to shed light on this phenomenon in support of improved policies. For this, representative and good-quality data is needed. It is suggested to disentangle the complex research topic and allow for a more systematic approach by focusing on a certain type of crime. Research on most of these types is very selective and scarce. As mentioned, data is almost nonexistent and evidence on individual types is largely missing. The routine activity approach is suggested as a conceptual framework for further analysis. The paper concludes that research and policy design should focus on how to reduce opportunities to commit a crime in rural areas in developing countries in order to reduce environmental and social costs of crime, promote sustainable development and improve rural livelihoods of the often deprived and poor in rural areas in developing countries.