NCJ Number
179040
Journal
Journal of Crime & Justice Volume: 22 Issue: 1 Dated: 1999 Pages: 1-26
Editor(s)
J. Mitchell Miller
Date Published
1999
Length
26 pages
Annotation
This study examines how rural crime is likely to be affected by such broad changes in American society as urban sprawl, improvements in transportation and communications technology, the move toward a global economy, and changes in the nature of work.
Abstract
The factors likely to be important in shaping rural crime trends are economic, demographic, and technological; these three factors are interconnected. Consequently, although the discussion makes a nominal effort to treat them separately, the overlap of these areas is substantial. In the economic arena some rural prosperity and growth has resulted from proximity to metropolitan areas. Also, rural communities are realizing economic benefits from modern technology and the location of manufacturing plants in rural communities. Advances in technology have meant that some kinds of work can be done anywhere that the worker has access to telephone lines. Unfortunately, efforts to spur economic growth in rural areas have sometimes increased crime-related problems while having little impact on the economic vitality of the area. Wages and benefits are often so low that full-time employees still have incomes well below the poverty level. Attendant frustration and hopelessness can lead to criminal behavior. Further, demographic changes in the rural population will also impacted rural crime. Some have argued that in rapidly growing rural communities crime may increase several times faster than the population. In addition, these areas are subject to "spill-over crime" from urban centers, such as increased gang activity and an increase in such crimes as robbery. Advances in technology have assisted rural residency by facilitating telecommuting, distance learning, and the development of small businesses that use communications networks to provide services; however, such technological advances work for the better educated, who already have a higher standard of living, and work against the poorest rural citizens, whose livelihoods are based on labor-intensive jobs. As the new technology reduces the quality-of-life differences between rural and urban settings, it will reduce rural-urban differences in other less desirable ways, including making rural citizens vulnerable to the new forms of crime that accompany new technology. Moreover, environmental crimes will become increasingly important as a broad category of rural crime that has been ignored by criminal justice researchers. 69 references