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Expanding our knowledge on rural crime and safety is not only an important step for the future of criminology, but a prerequisite for ever obtaining a truly sustainable society. Rural criminology is becoming a dynamic field of research and quite diverse in terms of research topics, including violence and property crime, but also environmental crime, organized crime, domestic violence, drug production and distribution, as well as responses to crime with policing, crime prevention, and fear of crime. Most publications reviewed for this book are from Anglo-Saxon countries: mainly the United States followed by the United Kingdom, Australia, and Canada. More recently, articles and book chapters have also been published by authors and on study areas in the Global South.

The reviewed literature is quite definitive about the complexity of rural areas and how their nature affects what crime occurs there. The research reveals critical perspectives of the rural, particularly in relation to the globalization process of the countryside, the impact of organized crime on peoples and communities, new facets of social exclusion in rural contexts, and violence against women and gender relationships. The studies also provide examples of how new ideological trends and ICT are influencing criminogenic conditions in the countryside (e.g., computer-based fraud, illegal animal rights activism, animal abuse, drugs, wage theft, slavery, racism). In addition, studies include perspectives from a range of different societal groups such as women, ethnic minorities and indigenous peoples, youth, and farmers, to name a few.

Rural criminologists have continued to combat the persistent notion of the “rural idyll,” as well as emphasizing that the stereotypical “tight-knit communities” have downsides to them as well. Rural dwellers may overall experience less victimization and fear of crime than urbanites, but note that this trend can vary disproportionately between different countries and within different socioeconomic groups and perhaps offer therefore a limited basis for safety interventions. Women, the LGBTQ + community, ethnic minorities, and low-income persons are rural victims whose experiences must not be neglected, as they additionally have less access to physical and social support systems. Communities may be exclusionary and even hostile to those that do not fit the norms or ideals of the community, for example, discouraging reporting victimization or harassment of “outsiders.” While rural communities have seen success with community policing initiatives, this has too been observed to often be used to target the rural “other.” The adoption of crime prevention measures has also been comparatively low among certain rural residents such as farmers, but increased attention surrounding technological measures may indicate a growing interest in improving rural safety.

For decades, criminology has relied on urban understandings of rural crime and rural offenders. Thus, researchers are calling for new or updated models that can better explain the mechanisms behind rural crime and its prevention. Therefore, new approaches to tackle crime and safety issues along the rural-urban continuum should be an area of future research. The emergent research topics in rural criminology include a discussion about the need for new concepts and theories that cover topics such as situational conditions of crime and fear, endemic offending and criminal motilities, offending and crime prevention, technology, climate change and crime, organized crime, LGBTQ+ gendered and intersectional perspectives on victimization and safety perceptions.

The paucity of knowledge on victimization, crime prevention, and safety perceptions in rural contexts can be at least partially associated with the inadequacy of reliable official data and/or the lack of methods capable of capturing the complexities of the rural-urban continuum. Certainly, issues of data scarcity and sparsity when it comes to rural areas are a limiting factor for many of the standard methods used in criminology, such as tools to detect spatial concentration, measures of risk, and modelling (for a further discussion, see Ceccato, 2022). The study of rural safety should welcome interdisciplinary approaches, including theories and methods from other disciplines. Lessons from psychology, geography, and computer science can provide guidance on how to deal with an ever-increasing amount of data from relatively new sources, for example, crowdsourced data, social media data, but also data from remote sensing including drones.

Ground-breaking methodologies are needed to support knowledge transfer from theory to practical action (Laub 2012) in rural areas. Simultaneously, practitioners need to support academics with lessons from on-the-ground experience. Addressing rural criminological issues requires an engaging and well-informed process of knowledge creation, exchange, and diffusion that activates a range of stakeholders including academics, safety experts, private sector actors, and practitioners from different fields that reflect different realities.

In summary, rural criminology is opening up to an ever more diverse set of perspectives and topics, well befitting the challenges that characterize both twenty-first century criminology and the demands of the 2030 sustainability agenda.

Rural Criminology and the 2030 SDGs

The world is facing a range of difficult challenges. Climate change is an ever-looming threat against our global civilization, potentially causing irreversible damage to ecosystems, global resource scarcity, and violent conflicts (Evans 2010). The COVID-19 pandemic has both laid bare and exacerbated the societal inequalities both between and within countries, and the crisis has affected (and is still affecting) the already most vulnerable across the globe (Berkhout et al. 2021).

In combatting these many challenges, rural areas are both areas of concern and key components in reaching the United Nations SDGs. Environmental and wildlife crimes, that is, events that are essentially rural phenomena, are threats to the protection, restoration, and promotion of both ecosystems and biodiversity (SDGs 14 and 15). Similarly, addressing the illegal dumping of waste and ensuring the good health of all people are more relevant today than ever (SDGs 3 and 6), especially as the wildlife trade contributes to the spread of zoonotic diseases (UNEP, 2020). Furthermore, the impacts of crime and fear of crime on rural residents’ physical and mental health cannot be ignored (SDG 3).

Hate crimes, discrimination, and inequalities based on race, class, gender, and sexuality (SDGs 5 and 10) are issues of concern in rural areas, where they may in fact be of a more severe nature than in other places. Cases of rural domestic violence may remain hidden due to “cultures of silence,” while rural members of the LGBTQ+ community face disproportionate victimization rates as well as difficulties in accessing support after hate-crime victimization. Economic inequality between urban and rural areas often results in fewer resources for both rural residents and rural governing and policing authorities. Additionally, in the battle to achieve peace, justice, and strong institutions (SDG 16), it is vital to not neglect the rural areas of the Global South, where some experience exceptionally high rates of violence, organized crime networks, and widespread corruption.

Areas on the rural-urban continuum can also be drivers of sustainable development. Agriculture plays an important role in ensuring food security, and it remains an important source of employment (in non-Western rural communities in particular) (SDGs 2 and 8). Much of the larger, remaining ecosystems, such as forests, are typically located in remote rural areas and are important mitigation tools in terms of CO2 reduction (Malhi et al. 2002).

Unless deliberated and coordinated plans focusing on improving the safety of rural environments are put into action, no change will occur. This demands concerted efforts on local and national (even regional and global) levels involving both a broad range of stakeholders and the adoption of multi-pronged strategies tailored to specific types of problems (SDG 17). Only then, we will have a chance to ensure more inclusive, safe, and sustainable rural environments. If we aspire to create sustainable environments, rural criminology can contribute by tackling the most emergent safety challenges across the globe. The examples provided by this book illustrate how each of us can contribute by intently directing our research aims toward the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals and the most pressing rural safety challenges.