Crime and Conflict in the Countryside

The simplistic concept of two contrasting communities, the crime-ridden urban areas and the crime-free countryside, is an enduring one in criminology. This ground-breaking collection of essays challenges that concept and aims to stimulate debate about a major gap in contemporary criminological research.

Although the impact of environmental factors on criminality has long been acknowledged, criminology has concentrated almost exclusively on urban crime, while disregarding crime and criminal justice in a rural setting. This volume combines crime surveys, empirical case studies and theoretical analyses to provide the most comprehensive examination of rural crime available in the United Kingdom. It discusses the complexities and implications of sociological, geographic and demographic phenomena in the rural context, arguing that, in addition to the differences between rural and urban crime, there are also significant variations in crime within rural areas, and that criminological theory should take spatial patterns into account.

Crime and Conflict in the Countryside is a timely and important book which represents an original and significant contribution to criminological knowledge.