Patterns of Rural and Urban Crime: A County-Level Comparison

Abstract

Community policing, crime mapping, and the recent attention to theories of social disorganization are all examples of the renewed appreciation for understanding the social and environmental context within which crime occurs. However, most studies of the ecological context of crime have focused on urban settings, with little research attention in less metropolitan areas. Despite a growing interest in rural crime, it remains an under-studied issue. The study reported here used a national county-level data set to consider whether variables commonly used to predict urban crime patterns can be applied similarly to more rural settings. The results showed that, although ecological and structural factors did a good job of predicting urban patterns of crime, they were less predictive of crime rates in more rural counties. Further, the constellation of variables that best predicted urban crime rates was not identical to the set that best predicted rural crime rates.

Drilling Down: An Examination of the Boom-Crime Relationship in Resource Based Boom Counties

“…Так, в 109 округах Монтаны и Северной Дакоты отсутствовали насильственные преступления семи категорий по классификации UCR, а в 21 округе на-сильственные преступления в 2012 г. вообще не были зарегистрированы. Еще одно препятствие в нашей работе состояло в том, что факторы, коррелирующие с тяжкими преступлениями в городских районах, которые указываются в большинстве криминологиче-ских исследований, могут отличаться применительно к сельским районам [50][51][52][53]. Поэтому исследователи должны использовать в своем анализе не данные пере-писей населения, а другие переменные.…”

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

“…Additionally, public opinion does not consider rural crime to be a major problem in comparison to urban crime (Weisheit & Donnermeyer, 2000). However, while official rural crime rates are consistently lower than urban crime rates in all index crimes (Weisheit & Donnermeyer, 2000, Wells & Weisheit, 2004, Donnermeyer (2007) found crime rates in rural communities were continuously increasing. Moreover, as of 2005, non-metro counties comprised of 17 of the top 30 counties with the highest homicide rates (Weisheit & Wells, 2005).…”

“…Although there has been a recent interest in the study of rural crime, there continues to be a dearth of rural crime research in the criminology and criminal justice literature (Wells & Weisheit, 2004). Official rates of crime are higher in cities, catching the attention of researchers more than rural areas.…”

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

“…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).…”

“…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, noneconomic indicators of social disorganization theory have been found to perform fairly consistently in the rural context (Bouffard and Muftić 2006;Lee et al 2003;Li 2011;Osgood and Chambers 2000;Wells and Weisheit 2004).…”