Rural Crime Prevention

Theory, Tactics and Techniques

Alistair Harkness, Alistair Harkness

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780429862793
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Genocide & War Crimes
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Rural crime has long been overlooked in the field of crime prevention. Sustained academic interrogation is necessary, therefore, to reduce the extensive economic and social costs of rural crime as well as to challenge some of the myths regarding the prevention of rural crime.

Rural Crime Prevention: Theory, Tactics and Techniques critically analyses, challenges, considers and assesses a suite of crime prevention initiatives across an array of international contexts. This book recognises the diversity and distinct features of rural places and the ways that these elements impact on rates, experiences and responses. Crucially, Rural Crime Prevention also incorporates non-academic voices which are embedded throughout the book, linking theory and scholarship with practice.

Proactive responses to rural offending based on sound evidence can serve to facilitate feelings of safety and security throughout communities, enhance individual wellbeing and alleviate pressure on the overburdened and typically under-resourced formal elements of the criminal justice system. This book provides an opportunity to focus on the prevention of crime in regional, rural and remote parts of the globe.

An accessible and compelling read, this book will appeal to students and scholars of criminology, policing, sociology and practitioners interested in learning about the best-practice international approaches to rural crime prevention in the twenty-first century.

Chapter 1

Introduction

Rural crime prevention in theory and context

Tarah Hodgkinson and Alistair Harkness

Rural crime has long been overlooked in the field of crime prevention. Sustained academic interrogation is, therefore, necessary to reduce the extensive economic and social costs of rural crime, as well as uncovering some of the myths and challenges regarding the prevention of rural crime. Developing effective tactics and techniques to prevent, reduce, control and work to eliminate non-urban crime requires that a solid knowledge basis be built in this field. In recognising the diversity and distinct features of rural places – and the ways that these elements impact on rates, experiences and responses – this book critically analyses, challenges, considers and assesses a suite of crime prevention initiatives across an array of international contexts.

Crime results in lost output, harm and associated intangible costs. As noted by the United Nations (cited in Homel, 2009, p. 1), “in the matters of justice and the rule of law, an ounce of prevention is worth significantly more than a pound of cure … prevention is the first imperative of justice”. With approximately 45 percent of the global population living in rural areas (World Bank, 2019), a focus on crime prevention in these diverse communities is important for a large proportion of the world.

A proactive response to rural offending is necessary, and such responses can serve to facilitate feelings of safety and security throughout communities, enhance individual well-being and alleviate pressure on the overburdened and typically under-resourced formal elements of the criminal justice system. This book provides an opportunity to focus, primarily, on the prevention of crime in regional, rural and remote parts of the globe, in both fixed locations and in borderless zones.

This chapter introduces some of the issues of rural crime and its prevention by defining concepts, examining international trends and summarising current rural crime issues. It interrogates the contributions of each forthcoming chapter by weaving them into these narratives where appropriate to allow readers to understand both the current state of rural crime prevention and how each chapter supports pushing these conversations forward.

The ‘rural’ and rural crime

“The rural is evocative and familiar, but defining it is not easy”, declare Scott and Biron (2016, p. 15) and although a number of scholarly works have set out to define ‘rural’, it is permeated by disagreement as to any precise definition (Scott, Hogg, Barclay & Donnermeyer, 2007; Scott & Biron, 2016). “The term ‘rural’ is generally employed to describe non-urban or peripheral regions”, Scott et al. (2007, p. 3) observe, but in essence is “an imagined space” (Baker, 2016, p. 172). Given the diverse and non-homogenous nature of rural contexts, both within and across national and international jurisdictions, the lack of definitional precision precludes a meaningful and universal definition. This situation is not improved by the myriad of methods by which rurality is measured (Harris & Harkness, 2016).

Definitions of ‘rural crime’, too, are varied and problematic. As with other scholars, Carcach (2000, p. 2) notes that “in exploring rural crime, one must recognise that there is no single standard definition of rural, and that rural areas are incredibly diverse”. Nurse (2013, p. 205), too, observes that “practitioners and policymakers operate different classifications, thus no consistent definition of rural crime exists across the criminological or policy literature”.

To deal with these definitional issues and other constructs and responses to rural crime and victimisation, rural criminology has emerged as a distinct, specific sub-field of criminology. Donnermeyer in Chapter 2 assesses the trajectory of this emergence. In introducing readers to theoretical rural criminological paradigms, he notes that problematising the concept of ‘rural’ is “a headache without an aspirin potent enough to take away the intellectual pain”. Despite this frustration, Ceccato (2016) provides useful definitions of rural, rurality, rural space, rural community and agricultural-specific crime, harm, and safety and security.

Various police organisations have produced their own working definitions of rural crime. By way of example and typical of many policing definitions, Surrey Police (2019) in the United Kingdom define rural crime as “[a]ny crime of an agricultural, equine, wildlife or heritage nature”. Such definitions, though, are focused on the specific and largely farming and agricultural crime which occur in rural communities, but overlook the array of other crime types which occur regardless of demography or geography. Nevertheless, the National Rural Crime Network (2019) in the United Kingdom does concern itself with “all crime and anti-social behaviour occurring in rural areas”, not just those typically considered ‘rural’ but also with other crime types such as fraud, scams and the targeting of “isolated, vulnerable people”.

The focus on urban-located crime continues to predominate. In Britain, for instance, the period of the industrial revolution (1750–1900) resulted in mass migration of individuals from agrarian communities to the growing cities dependent on cheap labour for manufacturing. With poor wages and working conditions, and with no social welfare net, crime flourished and came to be seen as an urban phenomenon with a focus on ‘street crime’ of the unwashed masses, especially those engaged in violent crime (Harkness, 2017; Braithwaite, 1979; Mason, 1996; Graham & Clark, 2001).

It has been noted elsewhere, but important to reinforce again here, that rural does not equate to crime free (Harris & Harkness, 2016; Scott & Biron, 2016; Morgan, 2016b; Baker, 2016): we can dismiss (again) the existence of a rural idyll – a “fallacy” as Harris (Chapter 4) notes – as “misleading, and inaccurate and even dangerous” (Baker, 2016, p. 172). Weishert (Chapter 8) highlights that “[l]ong-held stereotypes of rural locales as free of crime and drugs have been called into question by research”.

Urban-based criminologists, other scholars and policymakers based in capital cities could be forgiven for this lack of attention to crimes beyond the cityscape – ‘out of sight, out of mind’ perhaps. But this lack of attention on rural offending and the paucity of empirical research and data collection impacts decision making and resource allocation. Ceccato (2016, p. 8) presents a list of ten compelling reasons why there ought to be greater care about rural crime and safety, amongst them that “[c]rime prevention is urban-centric”. The lack of attention to rural crime prevention, she argues, is influenced by perceptions that rural areas are less important than urban ones where populations are denser, interventions guided by national crime prevention documents are focused on the urban, and by lower crime rates and the enduring belief that rural areas are safer (Ceccato, 2016, p. 19). More focus on rural crime and its prevention is important to support rural people and rural spaces.

Crime trends internationally

Crime has been declining across most industrialised countries since the mid-1990s. The decline began in the United States in the late 1980s (Blumstein, Wallman & Farrington, 2006; Zimring, 2006). In Canada, property crime has declined by over 65 percent and violent crime has declined by over 20 percent since the early 1990s (Statistics Canada, 2019). Declines also began in New Zealand, Finland and the Netherlands at this time, and in England and Wales crime rates have been declining since the mid-1990s (Van Dijk, Tseloni & Farrell, 2012).

In Australia, and in other countries such as Sweden, Estonia and Poland, the crime rate began to decline somewhat later than other Western countries in the early 2000s. Vehicle theft, burglary and robbery have each declined over 50 percent in Australia since 2001 (Australian Institute of Criminology, 2016). Additionally, the International Crime Victims Survey, which conducts victimisation surveys in over 50 countries, has indicated an overall reduction in self-reported victimisation since its inception in 1989 (Kesteren, Dijk & Mayhew, 2014).

So, if crime is declining, why do we need an entire book about crime prevention? Let us consider five key reasons.

First, crime prevention is necessary, because crime has not been eradicated. For example, while property crime has seen marked declines internationally, violent crime has not declined as dramatically. In places like Canada, over 2.2 million Canadians over the age of 15 are victims of violent crime each year (Statistics Canada, 2014). In the United States, the cost of crime, including medical costs, loss of productivity and loss of quality of life, exceeds $USD470 billion each year (Waller, 2013).

In Australia, certain crimes like assault have increased around 10 percent during that time (AIC, 2016). Furthermore, in the 2010s, particular types of crime have begun to increase. For example, identity theft, internet fraud and mobile theft are on the rise (Symantec, 2013; Mailley, Garcia, Whitehead & Farrell, 2008). Interestingly, property crimes such as vehicle theft and burglary, which have demonstrated the most significant declines as part of the international crime drop, are no longer declining. Several of these crimes have, between 2016 and 2019, begun to show increasing trends again in certain parts of countries like British Columbia in Canada and Queensland in Australia (Hodgkinson & Andresen, 2019; ABS, 2018).

Second, crime data is problematic. Most crime goes unreported (Biderman & Reiss, 1967; Coleman & Moynihan, 1996). While property crimes such as motor vehicle theft have reporting rates as high as 95 percent (Wallace, 2003) because insurance claims require police reports, most crimes go unreported, particularly violent crimes such as interpersonal violence and sexual assault¹ (Tarling & Morris, 2010; Taylor & Gassner, 2010). Homicide is the only violent crime that is, for the most part, accurately captured in the data. However, beyond homicide, violent or ‘severe’ crimes are inconsistently recorded. A number of factors contribute to a lack of reporting. Soares’s (2004) study found that internationally, when controlling for several state-level variables, crime reporting is affected by certain variables such as a nation’s police presence, democratic stability, institutional development, inequality and level of corruption.

There are ways to triangulate data to address this lack of reporting. One way to determine the real extent of unreported crimes such as interpersonal violence and sexual assault is through emergency room admittance data. However, this data is often difficult for criminologists to access and has been rarely used in the field. Another way to collect this data is from victimisation surveys. The International Crime Victims Survey has been collecting victimisation data for 30 years and has found that victimisation has been declining internationally in parallel with crime statistics. Again, however, violent victimisation is reducing at a much slower rate than property crimes. Additionally, in Canada, the General Social Survey has found that rates of victimisation, until 2014, were stable, leading to questions about the accuracy of police-recorded crime statistics.

The third reason we need to research crime prevention is that, for crimes that are declining,...