A review of What You Are Getting Wrong about Appalachia by Elizabeth Catte

No abstract available

Explaining Crime in Metropolitan and Non-Metropolitan Communities

Traditional urban theories of community crime development increasingly are being adapted and evaluated for their relevance to the crime problems of smaller and less urban settings. Most notable of these have been social disorganization theory and civic community theory. This paper compares these two major theoretical frameworks for explaining community-level variations in crime, using county-level data on crime rates merged with data on the economic, geographic, population, and ecological features of counties in the U.S. The study finds that both traditional social disorganization and civic community theories are good predictors of some, but not all, types of crime, in the largest metropolitan areas. However, their predictive power declines substantially when applied to the most rural communities

Socially Disorganized Rural Communities

The article talks about the social disorganization of rural communities in the U.S. It is stated that family farming has been on the decline for decades, with the numbers of farmers dropping by 16 million since 1950 and farms decreasing by over 4 million during the past century. It is inferred that a part of a community\u27s history and way of life are being forfeited when local business are closing. According to the author, the theory of social disorganization emphasizes social integration and stability as necessary conditions for community. It offers some of the disadvantages of disorganized communities, such as the lack of collective efficacy

Research Methods for Rural Criminologists

Conducting rural criminological research exposes researchers to concerns such as absence or inadequate official data about crime and superficial rural-urban comparisons, rural isolation and distance from the researchers' office to the study site, and lack of services or access to justice. This distinct cultural context means that studying rural crime requires creatively adapting existing research methods. Conducting research about or in rural settings requires unique researcher preparation, as everything from defining the space at the conception of a project to collecting and analyzing data differs from urban research. This book explores the various issues, challenges, and solutions for rural researchers in criminology. Integrating state of the art methodological approaches with practical illustrations, this book serves as an internationally comprehensive compendium of methods for students, scholars, and practitioners. While contributing to the growing field of rural criminology, it will also be of interest to those engaged with the related areas of rural health care, rural social work, and rural poverty

Rural and Agricultural Crime

Much of the theory, research, and policy analysis in criminology has been devoted to urban locations. Yet crime is not exclusively an urban phenomenon. Rural crime involves theft from farms, illegal dumping, and illegal hunting and fishing, as well as familiar issues, such as drug use and production. Crime in rural areas raises important questions concerning the seasonality of activity, characteristics of offenders and victims, and the meaning of rural poverty. It requires thinking through responses from law enforcement and courts and the appropriateness of crime prevention initiatives. As well, rural criminology compels rethinking about criminological theories and their generalizability to a world whose population until recently was majority rural. This chapter reviews five key areas of rural criminology: criminology theory and rural criminology; rural community and crime; rural police; agricultural, environmental, and wildlife crime; and drug use and trafficking

Book Review: A Worid Apart: Women, Prison, and Life Behind Bars

Review of Vernetta D. Young and Rebecca Reviere\u27s Women Behind Bars: Gender and Race in U.S. Prisons. Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner. 2006. Review of Cristina Rathbone\u27 s A World Apart: Women, Prison, and Life Behind Bars. New York: Random House. 2005