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Introduction - There's crime out there, but not as we know it: Rural criminology - the last frontier
No full textThe idea that crime is a predominantly urban phenomenon has been pervasive in criminology, so much so that Australian criminology textbooks do not recognise rural crime as a distinct phenomenon worthy of scholarly attention (see Chappell & Wilson, 2000; Goldsmith et al, 2003; White & Haines, 2004; White & Habibis, 2005). There are no chapters or sections in Australian texts which specifically examine rural crime, despite the inclusion of a range of topics that appear to provide a broad coverage of crime in its many temporal and spatial dimensions. Nor is there so much as an index reference to "rural" issues in criminology textbooks. The standardised syllabus for crime texts provides coverage of topics such as violent crime, public crime, delinquency, race and crime, gender and crime, and crime and social class. This canon is mirrored in international texts, most of which also fail to address the issue of rural crime, but make abundant reference to crime in various urban contexts (see Carrabine et al, 2004; Conklin, 2004). This is not to suggest that Australian texts fail to localise their subject matter
Crime and Violence Outside the Metropole: An Australian Case Study
No full textCompared to the sprawling morass of city life, rural communities are often romanticized as places of “unquestionable moral virtue” (Lockie, 2000: 21), brimming with social capital and relatively crime free. They are assumed to be safer and healthier communities, and in many respects they are – greener, cleaner and easier to live in. However they are no less violent than urban areas. By triangulating crime data with mortality and morbidity data an empirical picture emerges that departs significantly from what many scholars and policy makers have too confidently assumed about violence and rural communities. The idealisation of rural life is partly the product of a set of assumptions arising from the modernisation thesis – what Tonnies referred to as the passage from a ‘Gemeinschaft’ to a ‘Gessellschaft’ society. Rural communities are idealised as conforming to the typical ‘Gemeinschaft’ society, small-scale traditional societies based on cohesive organic forms of solidarity. By contrast, violence, crime and disorder are misconceived in this model as the offshoots of ‘Gessellschaft’ social relations generated by modernising and urbanising processes (Tonnies 1887). This article challenges the myth perpetuated by modernisation thesis – that rural communities are relatively free of crime and violence
Intimate violence against women in rural communities
No full textIntimate violence against women takes many shapes and forms and is endemic to most, if not all, societies. However, some groups of women are much more likely than others to be subjected to lethal and non-lethal acts of violence committed by their current or former male partners. Rural women constitute one high-risk faction, but have historically been given short shrift by the social scientific community. This is not surprising because, as made explicit throughout the Handbook, criminology is generally urban-biased. Still, the empirical and theoretical literature on intimate femicide, sexual assault, physical violence, and other brutal male behaviors experienced by rural women has rapidly grown since the latter part of the last decade, with most of it generated in the United States. The main objective of this chapter is to review this body of knowledge and to suggest new directions in research and theory..
Without Place, Is It Real?
Get PDFThis article reviews Matthews’ (2014) Realist Criminology as an opportunity to address larger shortcomings within critical criminology, which is the failure to develop an alternative theory of crime and place to the mainstream theories of social disorganisation and collective efficacy. It uses rural criminological work related to violence against women and substance use, production and trafficking to illustrate the importance of place for development of a realist criminology that can consider localised expressions of power and inequality, and the multiplicity of networks and roles by which people can simultaneously be involved in both conforming and deviant/criminal behaviours. The article also suggests that a critical theory of crime and place would be useful to the synthesis and re-interpretation of criminological literature that is either theory-less or lacks a critical perspective.</p
Crime in Rural and Regional Areas
No full textThis Chapter provides an overview of available corrent data measuring crime in Australia's States and Territories broken down into regions and localities The data is limited, has reliability problems and lots of gaps. Nevertheless when the data are analysed according to offence type (in particulary violence versus property offences) an interesting but complicated empirical picture emerges that departs from what most scholars and policy makes have commonly assumed about crime and rural communities - that there is not much of it! The chapter begins with an assessment of the uses and limitations of different ways of measuring crime for those interested in a spatialised analysis of crome dispersion in rural communities
Crime in rural Australia
No full textAs an academic who has spent a quarter of a century living, lecturing and researching in a rural community, I am often impressed by the discrepancies between the reality of rural life and its image in the public consciousness. At least two aspects of this are the most striking. First, there is often - especially, but not exclusively in English-speaking societies - the idea that rural communities represent the "real" or "true" aspects of a society's culture. For example, judging by the representations of rural Australia in the media, rural life is where we find the true Australian, the laconic, taciturn, but decent everyday man and woman, the "battlers", who are not corrupted by urban life. Such an attribution of genuineness to rurality is especially interesting given that the vast majority of contemporary Australians live in cities and that Australia is one of the most urbanised countries in the world. Second, and following from the first point, is the idea that rural areas remain somewhat behind the times, that somehow they are not quite part of the contemporary world. This is a mixed image as it combines both the negative idea of backwardness with the more positive one of a society that has not lost the virtues of stability and civility that we often feel is missing in the city. Both of these ideas combine in the popular image of rural communities as safe places in an increasingly dangerous world. In the popular mind it seems that there is an idea that whatever rural communities may lack in conveniences and sophistication, they remain places where you might walk down the street safely, leave your doors unlocked at night and raise your children confident that they will not be exposed to drugs, gangs and violence. Unfortunately, all of these ideas are fantasies. There is no reason to believe that the residents of rural communities are anymore the truer representations of Australian culture than the average suburbanite
Contemporary Issues in Left Realism
No full textUsing Roger Matthews’(2014) book Realist Criminology as a launching pad, this article points \ud
to some timely issues that warrant attention from Left Realism.\ud
Special attention is devoted \ud
to rebuilding the Left realist movement and to some new empiric\ud
al directions, such as critical \ud
studies of policing, adult Internet pornography, and rural wome\ud
n and girls in conflict with the \ud
law
Young people and crime in rural communities
No full textBecause childhood and adolescence are crucial phases in psycho-social development and the formation of responsible citizens, an unusual degree of attention and supervision is directed at the young (Bittner, 1976; Rose, 1989). Such is the moral frailty of youth that mere presence or 11 doing nothing" (Corrigan, 1979) can, under certain circumstances, excite adult anxieties as a harbinger of immediate or later danger. Delinquency and adolescent antisocial behaviour are not, therefore, a matter of objective, positivistic measurement and control, but are bound up with larger patterns of intergenerational relationships. These relationships are also conditioned by social and spatial environments
Key Concepts in Crime and Society
No full textThis book is an introduction to key issues in the area of crime as it connects to society. The book is divided into three parts:\ud
Understanding Crime and Criminality: introduces topics such as the social construction of crime and deviance, social control, the fear of crime, poverty and exclusion, white collar crime, victims of crime, race/gender and crime.\ud
Types of Crime and Criminality: explores examples including human trafficking, sex work, drug crime, environmental crime, cyber crime, war crime, terrorism, and interpersonal violence.\ud
Responses to Crime: looks at areas such as crime and the media, policing, moral panics, deterrence, prisons and rehabilitation
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