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Violent crime worse in the bush: new figures

November 30, 2006

WeisheitCarrington.th.JPGNew evidence that regional and rural areas have higher rates of violent crime than the big cities was revealed during a conference at The University of New England today.

UNE's Professor Kerry Carrington, in a keynote address to the conference, said that 39 of the top 50 "hot spots" for sexual assault in NSW were in regional or rural areas, 10 in coastal areas, and only one in metropolitan Sydney.

The pattern for domestic assault was similar, with 39 of the "hot spots" being in rural or regional areas, seven in coastal areas, and four in Sydney. For assaults generally, 40 of the top 50 "hot spots" were in rural or regional areas.

Professor Carrington was speaking to an international audience at the conference on "Crime in Rural Communities: The Impact, The Causes, The Prevention". At the beginning of this year, she and her UNE colleague Associate Professor Russell Hogg published the book Policing the Rural Crisis, which alerted the community to what Professor Carrington calls the "cloak of silence" surrounding rural crime.

She told the conference delegates that the differences in rates of violent crime between country and metropolitan areas were likely to be even greater than the statistics indicated. "Our statistics are based on crimes reported to police," she said, "and a range of informal social controls (constituting the 'cloak of silence') result in a greater level of under-reporting of violent crime in the country than in the city.

She quoted from interviews with service providers conducted during the research. A police officer had said that, even if a girl were to report a sexual assault, others in the town were likely to say that "she probably deserved it", or "she's made it up", or "it never happened at all - she just did it for attention".

The statistics for property crime are the reverse of those for violent crime. "Without exception, the largest concentration of 'hot spots' for crimes such as theft, robbery, and stealing motor vehicles is in metropolitan Sydney," Professor Carrington said. She said the statistics for both violent crime and property crime in Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and - to a lesser extent - Victoria, followed the same pattern as those for NSW.

She concluded her address by saying that "much more work is needed in order to satisfactorily map patterns of crime in rural and regional Australia. Indifference will serve to perpetuate certain comforting myths, although this is unlikely to serve the interests of those either living in rural Australia or otherwise committed to its future."

Experts on rural crime from the United States, the UK, and Australia are challenging some of these "myths" about the "idyllic" rural lifestyle during the two-day conference. Tomorrow [Friday 1 December], Professor Ralph Weisheit from Illinois State University, USA, will deliver a keynote address 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.

A highlight of the conference is a field trip tomorrow afternoon 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, is open to farmers and other interested people as well as the conference delegates. For more information, go to:
http://www.ruralfutures.une.edu.au/rurcrime/conference.htm.

THE PHOTOGRAPH displayed here shows Professor Ralph Weisheit (Illinois State University, USA) and Professor Kerry Carrington (UNE) at the conference.

Posted by Jim Scanlan at November 30, 2006 05:17 PM