Modeling Rural Violent Crime Rates: A Test of Social Disorganization Theory

Social Disorganization and Rural/Urban Crime Rates: A County Level Comparison of Contributing Factors

“…Unemployment generally predicted more crime (Osgood & Chambers, 2000;Bouffard & Muftić, 2006). However, poverty, low socioeconomic status, and income inequality have not produced a significant effect on crime rates in rural models (Petee & Kowalski, 1993;Osgood & Chambers, 2000;Wells & Weisheit, 2004, Wells & Weisheit, 2012, while Bouffard and Muftić (2006) even found crime generally increased with lower rates of poverty. While this relationship may be perplexing, as Weisheit and Wells (1996) alluded to, poverty may play a different role in rural communities.…”

“…Racial composition may not be as important as rapid racial change (Bursik & Webb, 1982). Thus, the studies that have found a relationship (Petee & Kowalski, 1993;Osgood & Chambers, 2003) may have found an effect for changing racial composition rather than racial heterogeneity. Although, there may also be a curvilinear relationship between racial heterogeneity and crime, as Barnett and Mencken (2002) found the positive effect on crime rates racial heterogeneity had peaked at 30 percent nonwhite.…”

“…Research of rural crime typically is grounded in social disorganization theory (Petee & Kowalski, 1993;Osgood & Chambers, 2000;Barnett & Mencken, 2002;Bouffard and Muftić, 2006;Kaylen & Pridemore, 2011Wells & Weisheit, 2004. However, social disorganization exogenous variables have failed to exert the same effect in rural models as they do in urban models.…”

Civic Community Theory and Rates of Violence: A Review of Literature on an Emergent Theoretical Perspective

“…Low socioeconomic status, one of the main structural variables of classic social disorganization theory by Shaw and McKay (1942), is thought to be positive and significantly related to crime. However, several researchers have failed to find a statistically significant association between measures of low socioeconomic status and violence in rural areas (Lee et al 2003;Li 2011;Osgood and Chambers 2000;Petee and Kowalski 1993). Even more unexpected is the negative relationship between poverty and rape, robbery, and assault in rural areas found by Bouffard and Muftić (2006), which indicates that higher levels of poverty actually reduce these crimes.…”

“…However, the relationship within the rural context is not as obvious. Research has found conflicting results, with some studies finding the expected relationship, while others find the opposite or no relationship (Barnett and Mencken 2002;Bouffard and Muftić 2006;Li 2011;Osgood and Chambers 2000;Petee and Kowalski 1993;Wells and Weisheit 2004). In addition, one study examined the effects of the spatial concentration of poverty on violence in rural and urban communities and found that poverty concentration was related to violence only in urban counties (Lee, Maume and Ousey 2003).…”