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Challenging the 'myths' that hide rural crime

November 14, 2006

BarclayDonn.thumb.JPGExperts on rural crime from the United States, the UK, and Australia will challenge some of the “myths” about the “idyllic” rural lifestyle when they meet at The University of New England at the end of the month.

Professor Kerry Carrington and Associate Professor Russell Hogg, from UNE, will address what they call "the myth that rural communities are less violent than urban communities" by breaking down Australian crime statistics into regions and localities and analysing them in a way that highlights violent crime.

Professor Joseph Donnermeyer from Ohio State University in the United States will extend this “myth-busting” to other countries – including America and England. Professor Donnermeyer says his talk will “challenge age-old presumptions about the nature of rurality and crime: myths that still hold firm in the minds of the public, politicians, policy-makers, media pundits, the police, and professors who study crime”.

Another of the overseas speakers, Professor Rob Mawby from the University of Plymouth in the UK, will discuss crime “hot spots” in rural England and explain why such spots exist.

The Centre for Rural Crime, within UNE’s Institute for Rural Futures (IRF), is hosting the event at UNE on November 30 and December 1. Dr Elaine Barclay, Director of the Centre for Rural Crime and convener of the conference, has collaborated with Professor Donnermeyer over the past eight years in an extensive program of research into rural crime, and safety and security. (Dr Barclay and Professor Donnermeyer are pictured here.)

“The theme of the conference is crime and other risks to the safety and security of rural communities,” Dr Barclay said, “with a particular focus on drug crimes, the criminal justice system and Indigenous people, crime prevention and rural policing, farm crime, and biosecurity.”

One highlight of the conference will be a field trip to see and discuss some of the latest technological approaches to the prevention of farm crime. The excursion, to the Laureldale research farm at UNE, will be open to farmers and other interested people as well as the conference delegates. It will begin at 2 pm on Friday 1 December and continue till about 4.30 pm. It will feature demonstrations of farm security cameras (including the real-time system recently developed by IRF and Telstra Country Wide) and electronic readers for livestock identification, and discussions on farm security with representatives of NSW Police.

Professor Ralph Weisheit from Illinois State University, USA, will deliver a keynote address at the conference on “the growing problem of methamphetamine”. His talk will examine the impact on rural communities of a drug problem that is reported to be expanding rapidly in Australia and New Zealand. Two of the conference’s 11 workshop sessions will deal with “drug and alcohol use and misuse” in rural and regional areas, and will include the presentation of findings from a 12-month study by the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies and the Australian Institute of Criminology on the policing of cannabis, amphetamine and other illicit drug use in rural and remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities.

For more information on the conference and the field excursion, go to: http://www.ruralfutures.une.edu.au/rurcrime/conference.htm.

Posted by Jim Scanlan at November 14, 2006 05:28 PM