Policing the Rural Crisis

Abstract

This book contributes to the growing interest in the subject of crime in rural communities(Barclay 20002; O'Connor & Gray 1989; Cunneen & Robb 1997; Weisheit, Falcone andWells 1996; Websdale 1998; Chakraborty & Garland 2005). It is a study of crime in ruralNSW at the end of the twentieth century, one located though within a particular critical,reflexive tradition of theory and research in criminology. We take the view that crime canonly be adequately understood if we also examine the social reaction to crime, including themeaning ascribed to it and the nature and scale of the threat read into it. Both crime and crimecontrol are enmeshed in the wider moral politics of communities, their characteristic forms ofcultural mentality and sensibility and the larger strategies and rationalities of power that makeup their prevailing forms of rule. Our interest in exploring the communal context of crime,specifically rural/urban differences, is not therefore confined by the desire to simply measurevariations in the incidence of crime in different environments. Rather we seek to explore ruralcrime and social reactions to it in relation to processes and patterns of community formationand change in rural Australia involving consideration of the social, economic, cultural andpolitical forces shaping the history, structure and everyday life of rural communities.