Crimes Against Animal Production: Exploring the use of Media Archives

Abstract

Swedish media have revealed an increase in crimes against animal production (CAAP) in the last decade. We investigate the nature of such crimes (especially against mink, pig, and rabbit farms), with a focus on those crimes whose suspects are animal rights groups by utilizing data from media archives from 2009 to 2019. Newspaper articles show that while vandalism and trespassing are often committed against mink farms, property crimes occur more often against pig and rabbit farms. Because there are indications that crime suspects are not a homogeneous group and express different motivations to commit CAAP, a multipronged approach is needed to prevent CAAP. The use of newspaper articles from media archives has proven to be successful for obtaining a general perspective of CAAP, but it is limited for capturing crime incidence or for investigating CAAP spatiotemporal nature when using geographical information systems. The automated usage of digital media archives should be further explored and critically assessed in future research in criminology.

Reasons Why Crime and Safety in Rural Areas Matter

“…The development (and the testing) of methods that can better capture the nature of crime and safety in rural areas is emerging as an area of research in its own right (see e.g., Weisheit et al, 2022) Reason 5 -Crime is influenced by the very nature of rural areas Certain crime opportunities may only be present in rural areas, as low population density affects crime opportunities and detection. It is no surprise that hot spots of diesel theft from tractors are concentrated in farm-based municipalities; similarly, harassment and attacks against ranchers (e.g., of mink or cattle) are found only on farms that specialize in animal production (Ceccato et al 2021). If people are not present in a place, a crime may go undetected for some time, for instance, the dumping of waste in forests (Ceccato 2013).…”

“…Rural areas of the Global South are contested spaces where violence is part of daily life (Ceccato and Ceccato 2017;DeKeseredy and Hall-Sanchez 2018). This is particularly true in Central and South America, Africa, and most of Asia, where violence encompasses fights between spouses and neighbors, armed robbery, organized cargo theft, child labor, prostitution, slavery, human trafficking, smuggling, socalled honor killings, killings related to land-reform and environmental conflicts, and police-related violence (Ceccato and Ceccato 2017).…”

“…Rural areas of the Global South are contested spaces where violence is part of daily life (Ceccato and Ceccato 2017;DeKeseredy and Hall-Sanchez 2018). This is particularly true in Central and South America, Africa, and most of Asia, where violence encompasses fights between spouses and neighbors, armed robbery, organized cargo theft, child labor, prostitution, slavery, human trafficking, smuggling, socalled honor killings, killings related to land-reform and environmental conflicts, and police-related violence (Ceccato and Ceccato 2017). Examples of recent, related research topics include rural patterns of violence (Ceccato and Ceccato 2017;Steeves et al 2015); the effects of lighting on homicide (Arvate et al 2018); the case of Somalian pirates (Collins 2016); violence in Turkish rural regions (Çaya 2014); estimations of homicide rates in Cambodia (Broadhurst 2002); and violent farm crime in Zimbabwe (Rutherford 2004).…”

“…This is particularly true in Central and South America, Africa, and most of Asia, where violence encompasses fights between spouses and neighbors, armed robbery, organized cargo theft, child labor, prostitution, slavery, human trafficking, smuggling, socalled honor killings, killings related to land-reform and environmental conflicts, and police-related violence (Ceccato and Ceccato 2017). Examples of recent, related research topics include rural patterns of violence (Ceccato and Ceccato 2017;Steeves et al 2015); the effects of lighting on homicide (Arvate et al 2018); the case of Somalian pirates (Collins 2016); violence in Turkish rural regions (Çaya 2014); estimations of homicide rates in Cambodia (Broadhurst 2002); and violent farm crime in Zimbabwe (Rutherford 2004). The research also calls for more evidence on the relationship between poverty and violence in rural areas (Lee and Slack 2008;Melde 2006), and the violence related to Western commercial exploitation of the Global South (which, e.g., engages in bio-prospecting and bio-piracy, i.e., using plant and animal species from rural areas for the production of medicines or tonics) and practices that ignore the rights of indigenous peoples in regard to traditional knowledge and ownership (Brisman et al 2014).…”

“…Other attacks on farmers working with animal production have been directed at the animals themselves, in various forms of abuse and injury, including threats via social media. Recent evidence indicates that these criminal acts have a strong impact on the farmers' personal safety, the safety of their family and trust in society in general (Ceccato et al 2021), putting their businesses' survival at risk but also their health.…”