A Tale of Two Towns: Social Structure, Integration and Crime in Rural New South Wales

This paper examines social factors that are associated with crime in two rural Australian communities with high proportions of Aboriginal people. It draws upon the theoretical contributions of Braithwaite (1989) to explain how levels of community integration and cohesion affect the presence of crime. Data for the case studies are derived from secondary statistics, surveys, observation and in-depth interviews. Existing literature on crime in Australia emphasises the disproportionate representation of Aboriginal people within the criminal justice system. Yet, by comparing and contrasting the two communities, the analysis demonstrated that social structural and perceptual characteristics, rather than Indigenous status, account for high levels of crime in one community and low levels in the other. The analyses demonstrate that communities with high levels of social cohesion can ameliorate the affects of social disorganisation, division, and disadvantage in communities with high Aboriginal populations. It further demonstrates that rural crime is a complex and multi-faceted phenomenon

The Dark Side of Gemeinschaft: Criminality within rural communities

Two studies of agricultural crime in Australia found that rural communities have informal social norms for tolerating certain types of crime and for proscribing the reporting of such crimes. Many victims of crime suffered in silence. Some were pressured to conform, keep the peace, and not accuse someone in the community of theft under threat of exclusion from the community. Some victims were judged to be deserving of their victimisation. The extent to which these attitudes and behaviours prevail in rural communities was investigated through mail surveys and interviews with farmers. While the studies focused upon agricultural crimes, it is suggested that these same cultural practices and social judgements are likely to be extended to several other crimes, including alcohol-related violations and sexual assault, and to other situations where the Gemeinschaft-type qualities within rural communities encourage crime

Logging Affects Fledgling Sex Ratios and Baseline Corticosterone in a Forest Songbird

Silviculture (logging) creates a disturbance to forested environments. The degree to which forests are modified depends on the logging prescription and forest stand characteristics. In this study we compared the effects of two methods of group-selection (“moderate” and “heavy”) silviculture (GSS) and undisturbed reference stands on stress and offspring sex ratios of a forest interior species, the Ovenbird (Seiurus aurocapilla), in Algonquin Provincial Park, Canada. Blood samples were taken from nestlings for corticosterone and molecular sexing. We found that logging creates a disturbance that is stressful for nestling Ovenbirds, as illustrated by elevated baseline corticosterone in cut sites. Ovenbirds nesting in undisturbed reference forest produce fewer male offspring per brood (proportion male = 30%) while logging with progressively greater forest disturbance, shifted the offspring sex ratio towards males (proportion male: moderate = 50%, heavy = 70%). If Ovenbirds in undisturbed forests usually produce female-biased broods, then the production of males as a result of logging may disrupt population viability. We recommend a broad examination of nestling sex ratios in response to anthropogenic disturbance to determine the generality of our findings

Rural Crime, Poverty, and Community

In this chapter, we begin the development of a cross-community sociological perspective for the examination of crime amongst rural populations. We utilize "community" as the central concept linking broad change and the behaviors of individuals, both as possible perpetrators and victims of crime.Throughout most of the 20th century rural crime ranked among the least studied phenomena in criminology, especially in the US. If rural was considered at all, it was as a convenient "ideal type" contrasted with the criminogenic conditions assumed to exist exclusively in urban locations. Rural crime was rarely examined, either comparatively with urban crime or as a subject worthy of investigation in its own right. Occasional work by Clinard on rural criminal offenders (1942; 1944), Gibbons (1972) and Dinitz (1973) on victimization in rural communities, and Lentz (1956), Feldhusen, Thurston and Ager (1965) and Polk (1969) on rural juvenile delinquency, were early exceptions to the dominant urban focus of the time

A Structural Analysis of Social Disorganisation and Crime in Rural Communities in Australia

This paper extends research on rural crime beyond North America by analysing associations between census measures of community structures and officially reported crime in rural New South Wales (Australia). It employs social disorganisation theory to examine variations in crime rates between different kinds of rural communities. A typology of rural communities was developed from cluster analysis of demographic, economic and social structural measures of rural local government areas (LGAs) in NSW. Six distinct types of rural communities were found to have unique crime characteristics. Structural measures were statistically associated with four types of crime. Overall, the findings support social disorganisation theory. Crime generally decreased across an urban-rural continuum, and more cohesive and integrated community structures had less crime. One highly disorganised type of small community had extremely high crime. These analyses demonstrate how specific structures of rural places are linked to rural crime