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Rural regional communities are often imagined to be naturally cohesive,
relatively crime free environments. However, the ideal low crime rate rural
community - has been more assumed than studied. Crime too tends to be assumed
to be an index of the weakening of communal bonds and the growing social
disorganisation cause by the processes of urbanisation in major population
centres. Consequently the impact of crime in non-metropolitan Australia has
been largely neglected, both as an area of study and as a public policy issue of
significance.
A review of the available empirical evidence revels that per capita crime rates
are relatively high in some rural regional areas of Australia, and in some cases
dramatically so, when compared to metropolitan centres. This opens up a range
of interesting questions concerning the differential social construction of
crime problems in a variety of rural regional civic contexts relevant to
assessing their impact and prevention.
Our interest in this topic stems from a three-year study of the historical,
cultural and socio-economic dimensions of crime and violence in five rural
communities in NSW, funded by the Australian Research Council. The paper draws
upon the findings of this original empirical research to construct an analysis
of the spatial-distribution of crime in rural regional Australia that avoids
privileging the urban community as the social laboratory for criminological
research.
No paper available
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