Rural Policing and Policing the Rural

A Constable Countryside?

Rob I. Mawby, Richard Yarwood

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781317060758
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Physical Sciences
• Subtopic: Geography
• Index: Geography

Policing reveals much about rural society. It refers to the way that the police, the public and other agencies regulate themselves and each other according to the dominant ideals of society. This can be formally, through the ever-growing spectrum of policing partnerships in neo-liberal countries, or informally, through the performance and enforcement of moral codes and values. This book draws on international inter-disciplinary perspectives to examine the range and consequences of policing across different rural localities. Rural Policing and Policing the Rural is organised into two sections: the first examines who is policing rural areas, while the second examines the nature of rural policing by considering, on the one hand, the policing of rural space and, on the other, how ideas of rurality are regulated. In doing so this book provides a survey of rural policing that will be valuable to academics, students, policy makers and those policing rural places.

Chapter 1
Introduction

Rob I. Mawby and Richard Yarwood

‘What you like to be when you grow up?’ a teacher asked her pupil.

‘I’d like to follow in my father’s footsteps and be a policeman,’ he answered.

‘Was he a policeman too?’ she questioned.

‘No,’ came the reply, ‘he was a burglar’.

If studies of policing have been on the edge of geographical investigation (Fyfe 1991, Herbert 2009), then studies of rural policing have fallen off the edge of many research agendas (Moody 1999). Despite renewed and sustained interest in rural studies (Cloke et al. 2006), rural policing has received little attention from social scientists (Dingwall and Moody 1999; Yarwood 2001). Rather like the boy in the old joke, academics with an interest in rural policing appear to be following in the tracks of other researchers rather than forging paths on their own.

Yet a focus on rural policing can reveal much about rural society. Policing is a broad concept that refers to ‘an intricate, almost unconscious network of voluntary controls and standards among people themselves and enforced by people themselves’ (Bowling and Foster 2002, 981). Policing is how the police, public and other agencies regulate themselves and each other according to the dominant ideals of society. This can be formally, perhaps through the ever-growing spectrum of policing partnerships in neo-liberal countries, or informally through the performance and enforcement of moral codes and values. Within these broad policing frameworks, it is important to distinguish between demands to reduce crime and demands to exclude activities or people that are threatening to elite rural ideals. It is therefore crucial to realise whose standards are being policed and by whom (Bowling and Foster 2002; Herbert 2009). To achieve this, it is necessary to understand how rurality and criminality are socially constructed and the way that policing affects, and is effected by, these ideals.

This book draws on international, inter-disciplinary perspectives to examine these issues in a range of rural localities. Its authors are drawn from the ranks of geography and criminology. Geographers have a tradition of studying rural society (Cloke et al. 2006) yet policing has been ‘conspicuously absent from the landscapes of human geography’ (Fyfe 1991, 249; but see Herbert 2006, 2009; Yarwood 2007a). Hence the chapters written by geographers in the book reflect a strong engagement with the concept of rural space and who controls it. Their concerns focus more on who is being policed and the implications of this for rural society. By contrast, criminologists focus more directly on those who are engaged in policing, especially the police themselves. Many of their chapters provide rich empirical assessments of policing methods and techniques in rural spaces. Taken together, perspectives from geography and criminology combine to provide important theoretical and empirical views on policing.

The book is organised into two sections. The first examines who is policing rural areas, both in the UK and further afield, and the second examines the nature of rural policing by considering, on the one hand, the policing of rural space and, on the other, how ideas of rurality are regulated.

Part I: Rural Policing

The first section focuses on who polices rural areas by considering the nature of the public police in rural areas in a range of western industrial societies. As policing is conducted by a variety of agencies in addition to the public police, the second group of chapters in this section considers the nature of the policing mix.

In Chapter 2, Rob Mawby offers a broad-brush comparative overview of rural police systems. The nature of the public police varies between societies, but equally the nature of the public police often varies within societies, with differences between rural and urban areas sometimes marked. However, although the Anglo-American image of the rural police is one that has frequently drawn on a perception of the rural as idyllic, and consequently favoured rural police as a model to which urban areas should aspire, he argues that elsewhere rural areas are often policed very differently and indeed that there are significant contrasts between Britain and the USA. The latter exemplifies a system where rural areas commonly have their own autonomous police organisations. In some other countries, such as France, exemplar of a continental police system, and Canada, where the nature of policing was influenced by its former colonial status, rural areas are under the responsibility of a central police agency that tends to be more militaristic than its urban counterparts. Elsewhere, in Australia and England and Wales, regional police systems incorporate the urban and the rural, but in contrasting ways. Mawby argues that the nature of rural police systems depends to a large extent on the social and political circumstances that underpinned the formation of the police, and the extent to which rural issues created particular problems for ruling elites. However, differences between the current situation in Australia and England demonstrate the additional importance of geography, where the sheer size of rural districts and sub-districts in Australia’s regional structure restrict the influence of the urban on the rural that is increasingly apparent in Britain.

Chapters 3 to 5 provide more details of the nature of rural police systems within this group of countries. In Chapter 3, Joseph F. Donnermeyer and his colleagues also emphasise the sheer size of Canada and the USA. In each case a large majority of the population is urban-based, with the remainder spread across most of the land mass. Donnermeyer et al. note a number of similarities between these rural areas, containing as they do affluence and poverty, growth and decline, and populations of long-standing residents and commuters. They also note the extent of crime and disorder problems, often hidden from view at a time when a decreasing share of resources are being allocated to rural policing. But in other respects, the nature of policing by these close neighbours differs markedly, with the USA providing much more localised services.

The policing of Indigenous peoples is another theme discussed by Donnermeyer et al., and it is one reiterated by Elaine Barclay and her colleagues in the context of Australia. Again, the sheer size of the country, and the implications of policing scattered rural populations, are underlined. But Barclay et al. also highlight the complexity of social relations in rural Australian and how this impinges on police work. One particular feature of rural Australia is the presence of Indigenous peoples. Echoing Hogg and Carrington (2006), Barclay et al. depict these original inhabitants of the rural as ‘outsiders’ within their own territory, a problem to be policed rather than a public to be served. Thus, they argue, rural spaces should not be seen as homogenous entities, but instead as diverse and pluralistic settings with competing normative communities, within which the Aborigine population has traditionally received low priority.

The continuing influence of history is also evident in Chapter 5, where Christian Mouhanna considers the evolving position of the gendarmerie in rural France. Following Mawby, Mouhanna draws a distinction between the Police Nationale, responsible for policing the cities, and the gendarmerie, traditionally responsible for policing the countryside, and acknowledges the more militaristic features of the latter. However, in an insightful insider critique, he argues that in reality the gendarmerie has traditionally provided a service more akin to community policing than their urban counterparts. There were, he suggests, at least three reasons for this. Firstly, the organisation of the gendarmerie, spread as it is across the country, meant that the granting of local autonomy to territorial squads based in rural districts was, in practice, inevitable, making the gendarmes into paramilitary ‘street level bureaucrats’ (Lipsky 1980). Secondly gendarmes had to live in the district where they work, making them – and their families – a part of community life. Thirdly, the lack of resources meant that they were pressured into building good relationships with better resourced local agencies. However, Mouhanna argues, changing expectations among gendarmes and their families, and the imminent merging of the Police Nationale and Gendarmerie Nationale, mean that this, possibly unique, relationship is under threat.

While these four chapters focus upon the public police, there is, as Rob Mawby notes in Chapter 6, a clear tendency in western industrial societies towards a greater reliance upon policing alternatives, a trend towards plural policing (Crawford et al. 2005) or multilateralisation (Bayley and Shearing 2001). This is particularly so in countries such as the USA, Canada and Britain, less so in some European countries like France (Jaschke et al. 2007; Jones and Newburn 2006). Many of these policing alternatives are provided by the private, for-profit sector, although the use of volunteers and efforts at community self-policing are also common. However, while a number of authors focus on the expansion of plural policing, none address the broader spatial components of this shift. Mawby argues that in the British Isles policing alternatives that engage the public as volunteers, such as the Special Constabulary, have developed successfully in many rural areas but have been more problematic in cities, and that other forms of multilateralisation, such as the introduction of police community support officers (PCSOs), complement these in an urban setting. Consequently, while plural policing is a feature of both urban and rural areas, the components of this policing mix vary markedly between city and countryside.

In Chapter 7, Daniel Gilling steps back a level and considers the governance of community safety in rural areas. He notes that while a raft of policy measures over the last 25 years have focused upon shifting the emphasis in the policing of crime and disorder – from crime control by the police to crime and disorder reduction through partnership work – government emphasis has been directed at urban, particularly metropolitan, problems. As a result, rural crime has been trivialised or marginalised. Gilling suggests that key players at local government and service provider level have to a certain extent collaborated in this process by either denying that there is a rural problem, blaming the problem on outsiders, or seeing the problem as one of fear rather than risk: representations he describes as the ‘Idyllic Countryside’, the ‘Endangered Countryside’ and the ‘Frightened Countryside’, respectively. He then offers as a more radical alternative of the ‘Deprived Countryside’, which he sees as a more constructive representation that might underpin rural policing strategies.

The idea that rural crime control has received lower priority than its urban counterpart gains credence from Craig Johnstone’s account in Chapter 8 of the development of CCTV initiatives in rural areas. Indeed, in discussing the ways in which rural stakeholders justified a need for CCTV, Johnstone reiterates the three common representations identified by Gilling: the ‘Idyllic Countryside’ (and the need to keep it that way); the ‘Endangered Countryside’ (and the need to deter criminals from commuting there to offend); and the ‘Frightened Countryside’ (and the need to reassure local people). Additionally, he notes the political considerations that underpinned this: once some small towns installed CCTV there was pressure on stakeholders in others to follow suite, both to avoid crime displacement to their patch and to demonstrate to their constituents that they were taking local crime problems seriously. However, there are generic difficulties in translating what was initially an urban initiative to the countryside. For example, the public space covered by what is commonly a handful of cameras is limited and cameras are difficult to monitor. This may mean that a central monitoring point covers cameras located in a number of towns, almost as if CCTV has replaced the village bobby located at a distance from divisional HQ. But in this case the hightech substitute lacks both the personal touch and the ability for rapid response. This leads Johnstone to speculate, echoing Gill and Spriggs (2005), as to whether CCTV is an appropriate response to crime and disorder in rural Britain, or a top-down initiative imposed by a metropolitan-focused central government.

While both Gilling and Johnstone discuss partnership working in policing rural crime, this receives more explicit attention in Chapter 9, where Richard Yarwood uses case studies from England and Wales, Australia and New Zealand to assess who is responsible for local policing in both de facto and de jure terms. While, as with CCTV, he argues that rural policing initiatives have been influenced from the top down in Britain and Australia, with the resultant difficulties of translating policy into practice, he points to the New Zealand model as one of bottom-up initiatives.

Part II: Policing the Rural

The chapters in Part II then focus on the nature of crime and disorder in the countryside and the ways in which this is policed. While these chapters offer an eclectic mix, they epitomise two distinctions that might be drawn: between ‘traditional’ rural crimes, such as agricultural crime and poaching, and crimes that are commonly associated with urban life, such as drug misuse and domestic violence; and between problems associated with local residents themselves and those deemed to be ‘outsiders’, reiterating Gilling’s representation of the ‘Endangered Countryside’. In each case, policing may vary accordingly. Thus ‘rural’ crimes may evoke specialist units, whereas conventional crimes may pose particular policing problems where rates are lower, or incidents are less visible, than in the city. And the police may find it less problematic to deal with outsiders than insiders where their relationships with local stakeholders are less likely to be undermined.

The latter point is nicely illustrated in Chapter 10 where Mike Woods considers the policing of rural protest. He notes that early protests reflected a ‘displacement of urban politics’, where protest was located in the countryside because that was where nuclear power stations or military bases tended to be. Later protests against road construction and by animal rights activists or hunt saboteurs, were similarly portrayed as urban incursions, where policing agents could rely on the rural vote to support their actions, reflected in The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994, that essentially protected rural people from outside incursions. However, from 1997 onwards, farmers’ protests and pro-hunting groups, often coalescing in the Countryside Alliance, posed a different set of problems for the police, who needed to deal with ‘protest from within’, and initially at least adopted the mantra of policing by consent. However, as more radical offshoots of the Countryside Alliance opted for direct confrontation, police tactics have changed, unsettling the dynamics of police-community relations in rural areas.

In contrast, Chapters 11 and 12, by Keith Halfacree and Zoë James, address travellers, arguably the ‘folk devils’ (Cohen 1972) of rural societies. While both chapters focus on the UK, as Halfacree demonstrates, there has been longstanding prejudice against travellers in a range of countries. Despite a romanticised portrayal of the travelling life1 and a need for some of the specialist or seasonal work performed by travellers, they have been seen to pose a threat to the countryside in three ways: they disrupted the ‘predominant spatial practices’, especially through ‘disrespect’ for private property; they challenged the everyday lives of local people, presenting an alternative way of living; and they challenged the rural idyll. In England and Wales, The Public Order Act 1986, The Criminal Justice and Public Order Act 1994 and The Anti-Social Behaviour Act 2003 explicitly target travellers, the former removing the requirement contained in The Caravan Sites and Control of Development Act 1968 for local authorities to provide sites for travellers. Halfacree’s analysis is complemented by James, who identifies key issues of control and policing as drawn out of a national sample of local authority reports on the needs of Gypsies and Travellers. James argues that the relationship between travellers and local law-enforcement agencies is predicated by the fact that most occupy unauthorised, and consequently illegal, sites, and so hostile reaction from the ‘settled community’ and the consequent call to evict sets the policing agenda. Not surprisingly, then, travellers lack trust and confidence in the police, who are associated with eviction and enforcement activity. When overt conflict occurs, the police utilise a range of public order policing tactics to manage travellers, resulting in a further reduction in their confidence in the police and authorities generally, who are seen as adopting the settled community’s perception of travellers as requiring controlling and managing, rather than viewing them as citizens with a right to a comprehensive range of police services.

Increasingly, urbanised societies such as Britain make much of the idyllic nature of ‘the country’ and the benefits of ‘rural living’. Chief amongst those alleged benefits are the apparent problem-free nature of rural settings and the absence of many of the inherent problems associated with city living. Whilst it is true that there are differences in day-to-day living between rural and urban settings, it is not true that rural living is without problems. There is, however, a tendency for rural problems to be under-explored and under-reported and for ‘rurality’ to be conceived as a holistic geography, when this is clearly not the case. Chapters 13–14 illustrate this by describing crimes that are conventionally associated with the urban, rather than the rural. Drawing on empirical data, Adrian Barton, David Storey and Claire Palmer seek to address these misconceptions of the idealised, problem-free, holistic nature of the rural idyll by exploring the nature and extent of illicit drug use in two rural settings (Cornwall and Herefordshire), and the manner in which services for drug users are provided. Noting that on a national level drug misuse among younger people appears to be at least as common in rural as in urban areas, they use their research to map out local drug scenes. They argue, following the discussions of plural policing, that the traditional police play a limited role in controlling drug misuse, and that users are more likely to experience close relations, and be policed, by a range of health and welfare agencies operating within local DAATs. To a certain extent, drug misuse in rural areas, despite its public location, is relatively invisible. The same applies to an even greater extent in the case of domestic violence (Hogg and Carrington 2003). Drawing upon empirical data gathered within Oxfordshire and the South West, Greta Squire and Aisha Gill argue that living within a rural setting will often exacerbate the effects domestic violence has upon the victim by geographically isolating them due to poor transport, and institutionally isolating them from support through the lack of suitable ag...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Dedication
• List of Contributors
• 1 Introduction
• I Rural Policing
• II Policing the Rural
• Bibliography
• Index