I've asked Chris Sambrook of Harper Adams to talk a bit about Rural Criminology. I know as a green criminologist that there is an uncomfortable overlap; crimes by and against farmers don't sit neatly in a nice pristine offender/victim matrix. It's more than the theft of machinery, animal cruelty or 'get of my land'. Cue the Archers theme tune.
Rural crime
has found a new voice, or rather it has found a voice that previously saw it as
little more than a convenient column filler. Rural journalism has long treated
machinery theft, hare coursing, poaching and the other crimes spread across their
rural crime palette as a reportable irritant rather than a core issue. But not
anymore. Rural crime is now making the front pages, both of the specialist
press dealing in agricultural and countryside matters and of local newspapers
with a rural leaning. In fact we might be tempted to say that it has found two
new voices, for this reporting often carries a police quote and details of the
latest constabulary initiative to tackle the problem. It seems then that the
police have also discovered rural crime.
Of course as
a rural criminologist I am scarcely going to complain about my subject being
thrust into public consciousness. Indeed this coverage is most welcome, for at
a time when overall crime incident is falling rural crime has seen a considerable
upsurge. But it makes
me wonder, why the sudden interest?
The truth is
it is not sudden for to misquote Eddie Cantor it has taken rural crime many
years to become an overnight success. There are probably many factors at play
here, but might I suggest that greater public access to the setting of police
priorities and the need to placate the demands of an influential rural electorate,
both consequential to the introduction of Police
and Crime Commissioners,
has been highly influential.
That said
this new found interest causes me some concern, not least because it presents an
extraordinarily narrow view of crime in the rural setting. Whilst the media coverage
may have grown exponentially in volume we do not see any corresponding growth
in breadth. Moreover, and perhaps of greater concern, this constrained view bears
a remarkable similarity to the widely held police notion of what constitutes ‘rural crime’.
This shared discourse
is potentially misleading for it takes no account of emerging rural crime or the
uniqueness of widely occurring crimes when they happen in the rural setting. It
is these issues that are at the core of much of the research being carried out
by criminologists within the Centre for Rural Security at Harper
Adams University.
Take, for example, my own research into the emergence of counterfeit
pesticides within the UK agricultural market. It is a crime with known links to
transnational organised crime groups and with the potential to cause serious
environmental and human health problems as well as its economic impact. And yet
this, and similar non-traditional rural crimes, rarely make the local policing
agenda.
Rural crime
is growing, and as importantly it is changing. However, it seems that the way it
is perceived and communicated is not. Perhaps then the time is right for an
agri-cultural criminology, time for
us to consider what has shaped this mediated notion of crime in the rural
setting.
