Fear of crime, cultural threat and the countryside

Abstract

Summary This paper argues that the study of crime and the fear of crime in rural areas reveals much about the geography of crime, policing and rural society. Drawing upon a crime and safety survey conducted with residents of a rural parish in Worcestershire it establishes a link between fear of crime and ‘cultural threats’ to residents' dominant constructions of rurality. It concludes by considering the 1998 Crime and Disorder Act and its implications for rural policing and society.

Relationships and responses: Policing anti-social behaviour in rural Scotland

“…A number of papers have, however, recently sought to shed light on the varying dimensions of rural policing (see for example Gilling, 2010;Yarwood and Gardner, 2000;Yarwood, 2007), and perhaps, most notably, Mawby and Yarwood's (2011) edited collection Rural Policing and Policing the Rural. Rural locations are a key area of study in relation to policing and the police in Scotland, not only because 94% of the country is classed as rural using the six-fold urbanerural Scottish Government classification (Scottish Government, 2010a), but also because examining rural policing reveals important details about rural society and the role that the police play in controlling rural space .…”

Lost and hound: The more-than-human networks of rural policing

“…Those more likely to participate in community partnerships are usually drawn from elite groups of people that are more willing to work with the police to defend class interests (Herbert, 2006). Rural policing may revolve around a vision of rurality and community that reflects a hegemonic, idealised view of crime-free rural life (Yarwood, 2005;Yarwood and Gardner, 2000). More often than not, these visions tend to exclude on a cultural rather than a criminal basis.…”

“…More often than not, these visions tend to exclude on a cultural rather than a criminal basis. Certain groups, such as young people (Yarwood and Gardner, 2000), travellers or ethnic minorities (Vanderbeck, 2003), are more likely to be the target of community-based initiatives rather participants within in them (Gilling, 2011;Yarwood, 2010a). Rather than one rural community, there are many; raising questions about whether policing is for or of particular communities.…”

Techniques of neutralising wildlife crime in rural England and Wales

“…Yarwood (2001, p. 201), for example, argues that the geography of crime is "firmly entrenched in the urban environment and, by contrast, crime in the countryside has largely been ignored". A focus on rural crime, however, could help develop understandings of crime as a cultural construct (Yarwood, 2001(Yarwood, , 2005(Yarwood, , 2007, revealing how notions such as 'fear of crime' are constructed by changing social relations within the countryside in which new rural elites marginalise rural others (Yarwood and Gardner, 2000). A focus on rural crime also gives rise to the question of what is 'criminality'.…”