Crossroads of Rural Crime

Representations and Realities of Transgression in the Australian Countryside

Alistair Harkness, Rob White, Alistair Harkness, Rob White

• Publisher: Emerald Publishing Limited
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781800436466
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Criminologia

Rural-oriented scholarship in criminology is growing, in part motivated by governmental, community and academic recognition that, despite stereotypes of the 'rural idyll', crime and justice are significant issues in the rural landscape.
Using the notion of 'crossroads' to provide a unique lens through which to examine realities of rural crime, Crossroads of Rural Crime: Representations and Realities of Transgression in the Australian Countryside provides a dynamic understanding of the nature of rural life and ways in which transgression manifests itself in the context of a presumed rural-urban divide. Common myths regarding rural crime are challenged by exploring its diverse dimensions from a central conceptual focal point; the many 'roads' that lead into and out of rural spaces, whether literal, virtual or figurative. With a focus on the Australian countryside, the authors examine issues such as drug abuse, persecution of wildlife, rural penal practices, and health in Indigenous communities.
The first substantive edited collection to focus on notions of the mobility of crime within, to and from rural spaces, this interdisciplinary collection draws together contributions from criminology, politics, sociology, Indigenous studies, literature and anthropology to significantly contribute to our understanding of rural crime.

Chapter 1

Rural Crime at the Crossroads

Alistair Harkness and Rob White

Abstract

‘Crossroads’ serves as a metaphor for networks and intersections, overlaps and trajectories, and is used throughout this book to denote how criminal transgressions and the representations of crime circulate in and out of rural spaces in the Australian countryside. This chapter provides an introduction and overview of key concepts and approaches to rural criminology informed by a ‘crossroads’ metaphor. It discusses the complexities of rurality and how these, in turn, point to significant turning points and strategic directions – not only for research and scholarship but also for understanding, communicating and responding to rural crime and deviance as it presently manifests in countries such as Australia. Along this journey, a number of issues are identified, and practical concerns signalled.

Keywords: Rural crime; rural criminology; mobility; social change; transgression; representation

Introduction

‘Crossroads’ serves as a metaphor for networks and intersections, overlaps and trajectories, and is used throughout this book to denote how criminal transgressions and the representations of crime circulate in and out of rural spaces in the Australian countryside. This chapter provides an introduction and overview of key concepts and approaches to rural criminology informed by this metaphor. It discusses the complexities of rurality and how these, in turn, point to significant turning points and strategic directions – not only for research and scholarship but also for understanding, communicating and responding to rural crime and deviance as it presently manifests in countries such as Australia. Along this journey, a number of issues are identified, and practical concerns signalled.

Setting the Scene

The notion of ‘crossroads’ provides a unique lens through which to examine and interpret the images and realities of rural crime. It implies a dynamic understanding and appreciation of the nature and complexities of rural life and how transgression manifests itself in the context of a presumed countryside–city divide. This book challenges common myths and assumptions regarding rural crime by exploring its diverse and multiple dimensions. It does this from a central conceptual focal point – the many roads that lead into and out of rural spaces, literal, virtual and figurative.

Rural-oriented scholarship worldwide is growing as a sub-discipline of criminology and criminal justice studies (see for instance, Donnermeyer's edited Routledge Handbook of Rural Criminology, 2016). In large part, this boom has been motivated by governmental, community and academic recognition that, despite stereotypes and images of the ‘rural idyll’ (Bell, 2006), crime is an evident and significant problem in the rural landscape. Myths about peaceful, crime-free areas beyond the cityscape persist, but there is increasing recognition that rural crime is, in fact, multi-faceted and has consequences well beyond the countryside (Harris & Harkness, 2016).

There is also a ‘deviant’ side to the rural, which likewise is evident in the phenomenon of ‘dark tourism’ (for example, sites of massacre and penal institutions) through to cinematic portrayals of abnormal people engaging in strange rituals, rites and abysmal activities in isolated places and/or with ‘backward’ locals (for example, the film ‘Deliverance’ has a lot to answer for, as does the Australian horror movie ‘Wolf Creek’). Again, such portrayals distort and pervert the realities of life in the outback and the bush, the coastal retreat and the highland getaway.

And, so, there does exist, then, a clash between depictions and mythologies of the rural. On one hand, the ‘rural’ is perceived as home to paradisal peacefulness; a place for metropolitan people to escape from the city to. For others, there is the notion of the rural and its inhabitants as simple, hard and intransigent, a place to avoid. In an American context, Haydon (2020) explores these contrasting portrayals of the rural heartland – this manufactured dichotomy of peaceful rustic and rural primitive (Haydon, 2020).

Existing monographs and collections on rural crime in Australia and elsewhere (Barclay, Donnermeyer, Scott, & Hogg, 2007; Donnermeyer, 2016; Harkness, Harris, & Baker, 2016) are primarily written by and for criminologists. Crossroads of Rural Crime brings together a themed collection of chapters with a distinct cross-disciplinary approach: in addition to criminology and criminal justice, the book encompasses contributions from politics and political sciences, sociology, Indigenous studies, literature and writing, journalism and anthropology. This multi-disciplinary collection is the first substantive edited collection to focus on notions of the mobility of crime within, to and from rural spaces. It stands at the crossroads of disciplines in order to better explore the nature of transgression and representation.

One intention of the book is to demonstrate how the notions of both static place and increased mobility can assist with our understandings of rurality, rural society and crime using the metaphor of ‘roads’ as a unifying central theme. These roads crisscross and complicate simple understandings of crime in a rural context. While based primarily upon Australian scholarship, the ideas and approaches have universal application, and, as such, we hope that it will resonate with readers across the globe.

The Rural

The concept ‘rural’ is multilayered, contested and ambiguous (Baker, 2016; Hodgkinson & Harkness, 2020). It is used to describe the ‘non-urban’, and in this sense, refers to smaller communities on the periphery of larger urban conglomerations and small communities in remote areas of the planet. The key criteria here is usually population size, density and distance from larger metropolitan centres. Yet, this is likewise variable in nature. For instance, Australia's rural areas are characterised by a low density of population that makes them very different from the rural communities of Europe, North America or almost any industrialised country. This feature also differentiates Australia from other, less industrialised but highly populated countries (White, Wyn, & Robards, 2017).

Today, the population of Australia is overwhelmingly concentrated into its coastal capital cities – Adelaide, Brisbane, Darwin, Hobart, Melbourne, Perth and Sydney (and, particularly, the eastern seaboard). Given this, it has been suggested that regional areas also need to be included in a definition of rural (White et al., 2017). That is, a more useful definition of ‘rural’, at least in the Australian context, is to consider rural and regional areas, which are those areas in which people are living outside of the major cities.

The term rural is also used to describe an ‘imagined’ space, a place where certain cultures, values, communal relationships and pastimes dominate that are somehow different to what occurs in the ‘urban’. Yet, with this definition, there are also variations and contestations. For example, what for the non-Indigenous may be construed as inhospitable due to remoteness and harshness of environment (e.g., deserts, tundra) may be experienced as ‘country’ by Indigenous peoples who may have thrived in these particular landscapes for thousands of years. Moreover, it is not ‘remote’, but at the very ‘centre’ of life, in this conception and experience of place. What is wilderness to some is home to others.

Reflecting on an observation from Chris Cunneen at the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia's rural crime workshop held in February 2019, Joe Donnermeyer (2019) noted that:

…from the perspective of people living in localities far from the shadows of skyscrapers, the word ‘remote’ is the city itself; yet, we assume without thinking about it, that the opposite is true and that the city is the point of reference for all things criminological.

Perspective, therefore, lies as much as anything in the location of the beholder.

Across both these definitional parameters, it is the contrast between ‘rural’ and ‘urban’ that counts, and these, too, may be real or imagined. One thing that we do know for certain is that

[t]he reality is that there is no such thing as a single rural sector within a country anywhere in the world, but rather a wide and varied collection of localities with smaller populations and population densities. (Donnermeyer, 2020, p. 19)

These localities are differentiated in a number of ways. Life in provincial towns is very different from life in remote or isolated areas, and each region of Australia has its own unique characteristics. For example, it has been noted (White et al., 2017, pp. 137–138) that rural Australia includes:

…mining towns in the centre of Australia, landlocked and dominated by a single industry; coastal towns based on fishing that service a local farming region; regional centres that were based on a once-viable wool industry and are now struggling to find a sustainable economic base; and Indigenous communities that are engaged in a process of self-determination. Immigration to some rural areas has increased the proportions of the population who were born overseas, thereby increasing the ethnic heterogeneity of rural populations.

Rural and regional communities are not static but, rather, are continually changing as the economy shifts, communications improve (via satellite connections) or erode (such as when train links are severed), and as populations shrink, grow and transform (due to phenomena such as ‘tree change’ and ‘sea change’ involving the drift of people away from the metropolitan centres). The creation of a boomtown brought about by rapid growth and industrialisation of a rural community (such as with the oil and gas industries) can lead to a spike in offending and victimisation rates brought about by a lack of community cohesiveness and identification with the locality. Equally negative social effects can be experienced when the population rapidly decreases and a bust-town is created (see, for example, Ruddell, 2017; Ruddell & Donnelly, 2020).

Rural communities are also dynamic from the point of view of movements of people on a day-to-day basis. Farmers experiencing drought may work as nurses or labourers in nearby towns and cities; miners living in major cities hop on planes and buses and undertake their jobs on a fly-in, fly-out (FIFO) basis. They work remotely but live permanently in cities. And where they work may be outside of the local rural community of which they will never really be a part (Carrington, Hogg, & McIntosh, 2011).

For others, transience is experienced as episodic. There is annual migration from rural areas to regional towns and metropolitan areas by young people for study and work. The same happens in reverse for seasonal harvesting and sheep shearing. There is considerable mobility and interpenetration of the rural and urban across many lived dimensions. Both communities and people are constantly changing and on the move in one respect or another.

Rural Life and Social Change

The single most significant theme to emerge from discussion of the social, economic and cultural characteristics of Australia's rural, regional and remote populations is that of diversity. It is a diversity marked by significant differences in occupations and industries, land uses, river and water accessibility, distributions of older and younger populations, Indigenous and multicultural demographics, access to essential services, experiences of drought and flood, and the dynamics of victimisation, vulnerability and resilience.

Around Australia, there are clear pockets of heightened social advantage as well as evidence of quite extreme disadvantage. Sometimes, this is due to the normal ebbs and flows of industry (such as the mining and resource sector) and sometimes contingent upon climatic conditions and weather patterns (such as agriculture and the pastoral industries). Whether a region is ‘up’ or ‘down’ is frequently reliant upon factors internal to the economic lifeblood of the community and/or ecologically extrinsic to human purposes as such. The transfer of wealth to the countryside is evident in some high-income coastal areas, as the economically well off move to greener pastures and quieter suburbs. For other regions, the state of play depends upon the intersection of highly fluctuating economic and social factors and geophysical forces such as drought and flood.

Sometimes, disadvantage is more structural in nature and degree, particularly with regards to Indigenous communities due to the legacies and ongoing harms of colonialism. It is entrenched and manifest over many generations. Not all are affected the same way, but all are affected in some way. Government decision-making and policy setting can be highly impactful, as Cunneen (2016, p. 63) observes:

The very fabric of rural and urban life in Australia has been spatially patterned though the processes of colonising strategies, policies and practices… Place and community for Indigenous people have also been affected by colonial policies of removing and concentrating different tribal and language groups.

Social structure and social change are manifest in other ways as well. Out-migration of young people and children has seen considerable demographic changes in some rural and remote communities. Going to school and finding paid employment has necessitated, for some, the movement to the city. For others, such as the elderly, out-migration may be necessitated by the requirements of adequate health care, hospitals and leisure outlets. Or simply, exposure to weather that is kinder to old bones. A critical mass of people is needed to sustain local amenities and service infrastructure. When people leave, services leave. When services leave, people leave. This is the trap from which some rural communities are presently finding it hard to extricate.

Yet, some communities are rebuilding themselves, including their notions of community and inclusion, through the intentional addition of migrants – not just from the cities but from countries offshore near and far, familiar and foreign. Asylum seekers and refugees who suffer disadvantage elsewhere may well find security and belonging in their new abodes and, for them, what might be novel physical settings. The rural in this instance constitutes a location for opportunity.

Nonetheless, according to various social indicators, people living in rural areas generally tend to be less well off than their urban counterparts (White et al., 2017). For example, they tend to have lower levels of household income and greater difficulties in obtaining paid work. In most country regions, unemployment levels are higher than in the capital cities, although there are regional differences in unemployment rates.

In many respects, young people growing up in rural communities face these issues more sharply than their urban counterparts because structural changes to the rural economy have dramatically affected the very fabric of their communities (White et al., 2017). Young Indigenous people continue to struggle to come to terms with the effects of the dest...