Crime and safety in rural areas: A systematic review of the English-language literature 1980

Crime and safety in rural areas: A systematic review of the English-language literature 1980–2020

Abraham, Jonatan / Ceccato, Vania

Abstract This article explores the nature and frequency of crimes and people's safety perceptions in rural areas using a systematic review of the literature. It explores four decades of English-language publications on crime and safety in rural areas from several major databases; mainly Scopus, JSTOR and ScienceDirect. The number of retrieved documents was 840, of which 410 were selected for in-depth analysis and their topics later categorized by theme. We found that rural crime research took off after the mid-1980s and experienced an increase during the 2010s. Despite the domination by North American, British and Australian scholarship, studies from other parts of the world (including the Global South) are increasingly being published as well. Publications on rural crime patterns (e.g., farm crime) compose over one-fifth of the reviewed literature. This together with rural policing/criminal justice and violence constitute the three largest themes in rural criminology research. With ever-increasing links between the local and the global, this review article advocates for tailored multilevel responses to rural crimes that, more than ever, are generated by processes far beyond their localities.

Highlights • Research on crime and safety in rural areas increased rapidly in the 2010s to include studies also from the Global South. • Patterns of rural crimes (in particular violence) and rural policing are the largest themes in rural crime research. • Crime underreporting constitutes a limiting factor in research on crime and safety in rural areas. • Crime prevention programs have long been urban-centric, ignoring the uniqueness of rural contexts. • Globalization, organized crime, ideological and other societal changes are reshaping criminogenic conditions in rural areas. • Emergent fields of research include the intersectionality of safety from the perspective of those living in rural areas.