A Structural Analysis of Social Disorganisation and Crime in Rural Communities in Australia

Abstract

This paper extends research on rural crime beyond North America by analysing associations between census measures of community structures and officially reported crime in rural New South Wales (Australia). It employs social disorganisation theory to examine variations in crime rates between different kinds of rural communities. A typology of rural communities was developed from cluster analysis of demographic, economic and social structural measures of rural local government areas (LGAs) in NSW. Six distinct types of rural communities were found to have unique crime characteristics. Structural measures were statistically associated with four types of crime.Overall, the findings support social disorganisation theory. Crime generally decreased across an urban-rural continuum, and more cohesive and integrated community structures had less crime. One highly disorganised type of small community had extremely high crime. These analyses demonstrate how specific structures of rural places are linked to rural crime.

The Dark Side of Gemeinschaft: Criminality within Rural Communities

“…Rural communities are often described in the popular media and criminology alike as having qualities of friendliness, togetherness, honesty and low crime rates, qualities that social scientists refer to as Gemeinschaft. However, recent scholarly attention given to rural crime 1,2 has demonstrated that such qualities are not universal and that their relationship to crime varies considerably in different kinds of rural communities.…”

How Rural Criminology Informs Critical Thinking in Criminology

“…Hence, these two commonly accepted features of social disorganisation theory, which were supposed to measure disorder, did not go hand-in-hand in the rural context, which was why Osgood and Chambers (2000) did not find an association between poverty and arrests rates for violent crimes by rural youth. Other rural-focused research has found this same distinctive pattern (Bouffard and Muftić 2006;Jobes et al 2004;Kaylen and Pridemore 2013), indicating a limitation to the generalisability of social disorganisation theory. Wells and Weisheit (2012) completed a comparative statistical analysis of violent and property crime rates for nearly 3,000 counties in the United States, using sets of independent variables traditionally adopted for testing social disorganisation theory (as measured by population instability, racial heterogeneity, poverty and family instability), plus civic community theory (as measured by owner-occupied housing, church membership, voting rates).…”

An Exploratory Assessment of Agricultural Crimes in Georgia

“…Regardless, crime is not absent from rural and agricultural areas. In fact, the limited research conducted on farm crime indicates that some specific criminal acts have a higher rate of occurrence in agricultural areas (Jobes et al 2004;DeKeseredy et al 2013). Donnermeyer and DeKeseredy (2014) noted how women living in the rural U.S. are at a much greater risk of being the victim of intimate partner violence (IPV) but this isn't the only act that has an increased probability in rural areas.…”

“…As a result, crimes committed in rural settings have frequently been overlooked by researchers and the media despite evidence suggesting high rates of certain offenses within these areas (Donnermeyer and DeKeseredy 2014;DeKeseredy, Muzzatti, and Donnermeyer 2013;Jobes, Barclay, and Donnermeyer 2004). Although approximately 72 percent of the U.S. land area is classified by the United States Department of Agriculture (Cromartie 2013) as being rural with 46.2 million individuals living in these areas, rural crime is ranked as one of the least studied social problems in criminology (DeKeseredy, Donnermeyer, Schwartz, Tunnell, and Hall 2007).…”