Rural Police Research Articles

Relationships and responses: Policing anti-social behaviour in rural Scotland

Rural policing, with a few notable exceptions, has been largely absent from the geographic and criminology literature. Yet, examining rural policing is important for revealing details about rural society, and the role that the police play in controlling rural space. Using participant observation and interview data collected as part of a wider study exploring anti-social behaviour (ASB) in rural Scotland, this paper calls for a more nuanced understanding of rural policing. In order to fully conceptualise the response of the police to ASB in these rural locations, the role of discretion, negotiated order maintenance and police–community interactions need to be considered. These dimensions are considered to lie at the core of the response of the police to ASB in rural Scotland. Existing urban-based policing typologies are helpful for beginning to understand the multiple ways that the police control territory. Yet they are of limited relevance to some of the challenges identified with policing rural contexts, namely the scale of the environment, the lack of back-up and the forms of ASB that are common in rural locations. This paper concludes by arguing that the rural needs to be (re)conceptualised as a distinct, challenging and variable policing environment, with particular contextual factors that need to be considered.

Sustainability Patterns and Policy Fit: Evidences from a Mixed Approach Applied in a Euro-Mediterranean Area (Alento Basin, Campania Region, Italy)

Rural areas are characterized by highly heterogeneous landscapes; rural mosaics, which are home to varying intensities of land-use and processes of deactivation and abandonment. The study discussed in this paper proposes a method for the integrated analysis of these rural areas which combines the analysis of land cover dynamics, using GIS, with an assessment of socio-economic dynamics, reconstructed through the combined use of indicators and local history. The method, applied to a socio-ecological system which is representative of the Mediterranean basin, is proposed as a tool to support sustainability processes and the territorialisation of rural polices. Le aree rurali sono caratterizzate da paesaggi fortemente eterogenei, veri e propri mosaici rurali, all’interno dei quali coesistono forme di uso del suolo a diverso grado di intensita e processi di disattivazione e abbandono. Il lavoro propone una metodologia per l’analisi integrata del territorio rurale che combina tecniche di analisi delle dinamiche di land cover in ambiente GIS con la valutazione delle dinamiche socio-economiche ricostruite attraverso l’uso congiunto di indicatori e di elementi della storia dei luoghi. La metodologia, applicata ad un sistema socio-ecologico rappresentativo del bacino del Mediterraneo, il bacino dell’Alento, si propone come strumento capace di favorire processi di sostenibilita e supportare la territorializzazione delle policies di sviluppo rurale.

The police service quality in rural Taiwan

Purpose– The purpose of this paper is to investigate the perceptions and satisfaction between police officers and citizens on Kinmen Island (of Taiwan), using an analytical framework that combines five primary dimensions and 25 corresponding determinants.Design/methodology/approach– It considers recent developments in the application of performance measures and management to public and, particularly, police services. It goes on to assess comparative rural police performance which suggests that the application of targets could ultimately serve to provide the overall satisfaction with police services.Findings– The findings of the study suggest that perceptions and satisfaction of both citizens and police staff may result in the success of the policing management, and that police managers have to satisfy their citizens with a high level of service quality based on different localities.Practical implications– From managerial perspectives, police managers should consider both the service quality and customer satisfaction constructs as determinants of behavioural intentions, based on the fact that satisfaction can be a strategic key to maintain long term relationship with citizens as it is found of significant impact on the intentional behaviour.Originality/value– This research adds empirical support to this vein of literature and has identified the five main dimensions and the 25 sub-dimensions as important constructs for police service quality.

Rigorous evaluation research among US police departments: special cases or a representative sample?

This study considers whether police departments’ characteristics relate to the methodology and results of the evaluations that they participate in, and contrasts police departments that have carried out rigorous crime prevention research to comparison groups of US police agencies. Findings include departments that participate in quasi-experimental crime prevention research are larger and more likely to find statistically significant successes than those that participate in experiments, and evaluators differ in composition and practices from most US police departments. This suggests that researchers and policy makers should involve smaller suburban and rural police agencies to increase the generalizability of evaluation research.

Boomtown Blues: Long-Term Community Perceptions of Crime and Disorder

Natural resource development has led to rapid population growth in rural areas throughout the globe and this frequently results in a corresponding number of social ills, including increased levels of antisocial behavior, disorder, and crime. This study uses data from five waves of surveys, involving a total of 3,000 respondents, conducted in a Canadian boomtown between 2008 and 2012, to shed light on how community residents perceive crime and disorder. Inconsistent with expectations, we found that residents were not typically worried about violent crime, but expressed concern about the reductions in quality of life due to anti-social behavior, drug use, and aggressive, impaired or dangerous driving. This research extends our understanding of the downsides of resource-based booms and has implications for rural policing and, in particular, the importance of traffic enforcement in these places.

Beyond the Ghetto: Police Power, Methamphetamine and the Rural War on Drugs

Viewing police as important cultural producers, we ask how police power fashions structures of feeling and social imaginaries of the “war on drugs” in small towns of the rural Midwest. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork and a collection of interviews focusing on police officers’ beliefs about the causes of crime and drug use, we locate a narrative of rural decline attributed to the producers and users of methamphetamine. We argue this narrative supports punitive and authoritarian sensibilities and broader narcopolitical projects more generally and ignores long-standing social inequalities observed in rural communities. As such, the cultural work of rural police provides important insight to the shape and direction of late-modern crime control beyond the familiar terrains of the city and its “ghetto.”

The Long Goodbye: A Note on the Closure of Rural Police-Stations and the Decline of Rural Policing in Britain

This research note documents the recent controversy surrounding the closure of police stations in the UK between 2007 and 2012. It examines the statistics as reported in the press and discusses the rhetoric used in the debate to draw conclusions about how the closure of police stations will affect rural policing and rural crime.

Measuring police integrity among urban and rural police in Armenia: from local results to global implications

This paper explores variations in police integrity between police agencies within a centralized police system. The respondents surveyed in this study are 460 Armenian police officers assigned to work in two large police departments, Yerevan and Lori. Yerevan is the Armenian capital and Lori serves the Lori Region, one of the rural parts of the country. The respondents evaluated 11 hypothetical scenarios describing cases of police misconduct. We found relatively few differences between the police officers serving the capital and police officers assigned to a rural region in their knowledge of official rules, views about misconduct seriousness, views about appropriate discipline, and their expressed willingness to report misconduct. On the other hand, despite identical official rules, we found consistent and large differences in the perceptions of the disciplinary environment prevailing in the two police agencies. Our research expands the existing knowledge of centralized police systems and suggests that, despite many shared features, police agencies within the same system can develop different expectations of integrity.

Professional learning in rural practice: a sociomaterial analysis

Purpose – This paper aims to examine the professional learning of rural police officers.Design/methodology/approach – This qualitative case study involved interviews and focus groups with 34 police officers in Northern Scotland. The interviews and focus groups were transcribed and analysed, drawing on practice‐based and sociomaterial learning theories, by members of the research team.Findings – The two key skills for effective rural policing were mobilising available human and material resources in the moment, and learning how to police and live in a rural community. The professional learning of rural police is spatial, emergent, embodied and deeply enmeshed in specificities, and is developed through interactions between human and non‐human actors.Practical implications – This paper argues that, in order to understand professional learning, it is imperative to examine how work practices are fully entangled in social and material relations.Originality/value – Applying sociomaterial approaches to issues of ...

Kamu Yönetim Sisteminde Köy Koruculuğu ve Kırsal Alan Güvenliği

Village guards work in village administrative area where public security services and village security are responded its’ area. Village Law and Urban Guard system has been used in Turkey since 1924. Villagers have to rent guard is under Village autonomous mukhtar responsibility, this propose aim is villages’ order, security and unity. In security concept urban, province and rural areas are include and covering policing actions, there should be work and to think on each one. Rural are policing is highlighted security activity to work in narrow area. Today Like Europa, America, Canada developed countries have got rural policing best practice which provided serious benefit. Rural police solve the minor events with social ties whom works close to community as themselves is mentioned security officers. In work, urban policing concept which held on, despite the poor both national and international resource, with the help of urban policing and its’ theorical body, It is handled from wide perspective.

Rural Policing and Policing the Rural: A Constable Countryside? – Edited by Rob I. Mawby and Richard Yarwood

Rural Policing and Policing the Rural: A Constable Countryside? – Edited by Rob I. Mawby and Richard Yarwood

Policing the changing landscape of rural crime: a case study from Scotland

Although the notion of rural crime has an idyllic aura to it, crime occurs in a changing social landscape and is affected by demographic changes, changing crime trends and by the introduction of new policing practices. Similarly, exactly what constitutes rural crime is also open to debate and changes over time. Likewise, we only have a fuzzy notion of the stereotypical rural criminal and find it difficult to acknowledge the existence of a rural criminal underclass. As a result, crime in a rural context is more difficult to police than crime in an urban landscape because it requires a different set of skills and practices from policing the urban landscape. The closure of rural police stations and the reallocation of scarce policing resources to urban hotspots have inevitably led to a deskilling of the archetypal ‘country bobby’. Consequently, this quasi-longitudinal case study examines changes in policing practices in a (fictionalised) subdivision in rural Scotland over a 40-year period. This enables consideration of the changing rural landscape of crime and from this mapping process implications and conclusions in relation to good practice on rural policing can emerge.

The impact of rural policing on the private lives of New Zealand police officers

The impact of rural policing on the private lives of New Zealand police officers

Patrolling the peaks and the plains: an examination of big sky game wardens

Policing is a dangerous and sometimes deadly occupation. Given the remote areas patrolled as well as the presence of fewer officers, rural law enforcement officers face unique dangers on the job. Conservation law enforcement is one type of rural and specialized policing. The purpose of this study was to extend our understanding of the game warden occupation. Little research has been directed toward the study of game wardens and the dangers they encounter on the job. This research took a qualitative approach to data collection and examined dangers and occupational hazards faced by state game wardens in Montana. Causes of game warden deaths in the state were also identified. The findings suggest game wardens in Montana encounter several distinct dangers when performing their jobs, including humans, motor vehicles, and environmental factors. Game wardens receive training that helps them minimize the risk of assault on the job.

Boomtown Policing: Responding to the Dark Side of Resource Development

Rapid economic and population growth resulting from resource development presents a number of challenges for rural police services, including responding to higher levels of disorder and serious crime. The cycles of anticipation, development, plateau—and sometimes bust and recovery—in boomtowns have long been recognized, but seldom have the claims of increased crime and disorder been empirically examined. This study analysed the deployment of the police in the Canadian city of Fort McMurray, Alberta, from 1986 to 2009. During this era rates of crime per law enforcement officer were three times the national average while the ratio of police to city residents was less than the national average for nearly two decades, which is similar to a lag in protective services that has been reported in other jurisdictions experiencing booms. Implications for rural development and policing are discussed.

Female police officers in Ireland: challenges experienced in balancing domestic care responsibilities with work commitments and their implications for career advancement

This paper resulted from a study which gave voice to female police1 officers who work full-time and try to combine this with their domestic caring responsibilities by focusing on their perceptions of work, their domestic caring responsibilities and their aspirations for career advancement. It was based on ten semi-structured interviews, with officers who work in urban and rural police stations in the North West of Ireland. Results established inequality in the top echelons of the Garda Síochána; through self-exclusion; officers experienced promotional disadvantage as well as disadvantage with regard to how domestic responsibilities were managed. Findings suggest a need for change both in orginanizational and work policies for female police in Ireland.This paper discusses caring responsibilities and the effects of same on female officers. Keywords: female, police, caring, policy, officers.

Battered Women: Victims or Survivors?

AbstractFrom 1970, research into women’s responses to marital violence became much more intense than ever before. Academic literature emphasizes two explanatory perspectives: of the woman as passive victim and of the woman who uses strategies to protect herself. The main goals of this study were to explore the effectiveness of personal strategies that women use to survive violence, the factors that influence the recurrence of violence, and the demand for shelter and the role of shelters in the process of recovery and healing. We interviewed eight battered women, from rural areas, all of whom had taken refuge in shelters, some of them several time. We identified a number of psychopathological consequences of domestic violence against women. Regardless of the severity of the attacks, the assumption that women are passive in face of violence doesn’t hold water. Women’s effort to survive violence is often hampered by inefficient response of rural police and the apathy of the community at large. The study concludes with suggestions for practice.

Rural Policing and Policing the Rural. By Rob I. Mawby and Richard Yarwood (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate Publishing, 2011, 261pp. 60.00 hb)

As the editors explain, this volume is aiming to cross geographical and criminological barriers. As outlined in their introduction, they have drawn authors from geography and criminology, using ‘international, inter-disciplinary perspectives’. This mix appears to enrich the text in terms of both academic disciplines and what is known about policing in various places and spaces across the world. The book is more than a ‘niche’ publication in the world of policing texts, however. It provides an insight that says a great deal about policing in general. For example, it explores how police priorities alter in terms of crime volume and powerful voices who demand attention. It is illustrative of the way police culture will find a group, such as travellers or Gypsies to ‘other’ if no black, Asian or visible ethnic minorities are available. It also shows how the police believe themselves to be ‘in charge’ of law and order and how they ‘know best’ how areas should be policed.

Surviving the shift: Rural police stress and counseling services.

Surviving the shift: Rural police stress and counseling services.

Police responses to diversity: A social representational study of rural British policing in a changing representational context

AbstractIn the first decade of the 21st century, British policing faced two new challenges in how it responded to social diversity: As well as instituting reforms in response to a highly publicized report describing the British police as ‘institutionally racist’ (Macpherson, 1999), they faced challenges associated with rapid increases in numbers of immigrants into the UK. Studying social representations at such times of change allows access into processes, themes and value systems that may otherwise remain hidden. This paper uses social representations theory to explore interview accounts provided by regular police officers of interactions with members of minority groups. Empirically, we focus on an area of diversity policing that has received relatively little previous attention: Police work in a rural context that has recently played host to large numbers of migrant workers. Our analysis shows that interviews operate as a site of resistance in which respondents attempt to rework hegemonic representations of the police as prejudiced and to re‐present themselves and their work as able to respond appropriately to diversity. Fairness as a defining characteristic of good police practice is a central representational theme that links identity construction processes to police work with minority groups. Recent immigrant groups are represented as both needing and deserving help to assimilate into British culture: Their lack of acculturation and language difficulties provide additional challenges to police work and to how this is judged as ‘fair’. We discuss the broader origins and implications of police officers' understandings of fairness and the use of social representations theory to study representational fields within organizational settings. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.