Crime and Policing in Rural and Small-Town America: An Overview of the Issues.


Series: NIJ Research Report
Published: September 1995
132 pages
292,972 bytes

by
Dr. Ralph A. Weisheit
Dr. L. Edward Wells
Dr. David N. Falcone

Rural Police Project
Department of Criminal Justice
Illinois State University
Normal, Illinois  61790-5250
Phone: 309-438-5038
FAX: 309-438-7289
RAWEISH@ILSTU.EDU

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors would like to express their thanks to
the National Sheriffs' Association for its
cooperation and assistance, with particular thanks
to Ms. Theresa Mathews.  And, for their comments
on earlier drafts of this document, we would like
to thank Sheriff G. C. "Buck" Buchanan of Yavapai
County, Arizona; Sheriff Carl R. Harbaugh of
Frederick County, Maryland; and Sheriff J. C.
Bittick of Monroe County, Georgia.  The project
has benefited enormously from the comments of Dr.
Joseph Donnermeyer and Mr. Larry Heisner and from
Dr. Mark Hamm's comments on the hate crimes
section.  The authors also wish to thank Mr.
Michael Chitty for his assistance in locating and
organizing much of the hard-to-find literature. 
Finally, the authors wish to thank Ms. Nancy
Becker who arranged interviews, transcribed tapes,
and took care of a dozen other details to make
this project possible.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. INTRODUCTION

II. THE STUDY
 The Literature Review
 Interviews
 Summary

III. WHAT IS RURAL?
 Conceptual Issues
  Demographic
  Economic
  Social structural
  Cultural
 Measurement Issues
 Analytical Issues
  Rural as a quantitative variable versus a
typological category 
 Rural as a scope condition versus a causal
variable
 General versus localized analysis
 Rural as a single variable versus many different
variables
 Rural as a dependent versus an independent
variable
Problematic Assumptions
 Magnitude assumption
 Homogeneity assumption
 Implicit definition assumption
Summary

IV.  THE RURAL SETTING OF CRIME AND JUSTICE
 Geographic Isolation
 Availability of Guns
 Economic Factors
 Race and Ethnicity
  Race in rural areas
  Ethnicity in rural areas
  Race, ethnicity, and crime
 Social Climate
  Informal control
  Mistrust of government
  Reluctance to share internal problems
 Summary

V.  RURAL AND SMALL-TOWN CRIME
 Fear of Crime
 Rural Versus Urban Crime
 Trends in Rural Crime
 Special Issues
  Gangs
  Alcohol and drugs
  Vice and organized crime
  Violence
  Hate crimes
  Arson
  Agricultural crimes
  Wildlife crimes
  Emerging issues
Summary

VI.  RURAL AND SMALL-TOWN POLICE
 Who Are Rural Police?
 Sheriffs vs. Municipal Police
 Department Size
 The Effectiveness of Rural Departments
 Styles of Policing in Rural Areas
 Community Policing
 Special Problems
 Violence and Rural Police
 Summary

VII.  OTHER PARTS OF THE SYSTEM
 The Practice of Law
 Rural Courts
 Rural Jails
 Prisons
 Summary

VIII.  POLICY AND RESEARCH ISSUES87
General Issues
Specific Areas for Further Consideration

IX.  REFERENCES
------------------------------
I. INTRODUCTION  

Police practices vary from one area to another,
and studying the varieties of police behavior can
yield important insights into the role of police
in a community.  These variations have been noted
in regard to styles of policing, bureaucratic
structure, patterns of crime, and the demands of
local communities.  Curiously, most studies of
variations in police behavior have been conducted
in urban settings.  By comparison, rural and
small-town policing has been relatively neglected. 
Similarly, studies of crime often focus on
national patterns that imply a homogeneity across
areas, which is patently absurd.  And, like
studies of police, studies of crime that do
consider variations from one area to the next
frequently focus on comparisons among urban areas,
occasionally make rural-urban comparisons, but
rarely examine differences among rural areas.

Neglecting rural policing and rural crime is
justifiable if there is nothing about policing,
crime, or the community in rural environments that
precludes directly applying knowledge from urban
areas.  Although the literature on rural crime and
justice is comparatively sparse, it is evident
that rural environments are distinct from urban
environments in ways that affect policing, crime,
and public policy.

This report examines what is known about crime and
policing in rural areas and small towns and how
they are shaped by the rural environment.  To
place this discussion in a larger context, it is
useful to consider broad reasons why a study of
rural and small-town policing is important.  There
are several practical reasons for studying
policing and rural crime: 

o Rural crime is a problem and may be increasing.

o Rural areas are often used to produce drugs,
such as marijuana and methamphetamines.

o Rural areas are used as transshipment points for
such illegal goods as drugs, stolen auto parts,
and illegal cash.

o Some have argued that urban crime networks, such
as street gangs, are setting up "franchises" or
"satellite operations" in rural areas.

o Rural areas have special crime problems, such as
organized theft of livestock, equipment, and
grain, for which urban police are poorly trained,
yet which may be enormously costly to both the
victim and society.  In addition to the practical
benefits of studying rural crime and justice is
the potential for advancing our understanding of
the police function in society.  If crime and
justice are vastly different in rural and urban
areas, an understanding of those differences might
improve our understanding of crime and policing
more generally. 

The volume of literature on rural crime and rural
policing is scant, particularly when compared with
the amount of published work based on urban
departments.  To complicate matters, what
literature is available is scattered across a
variety of disciplines.  As this discussion will
show, there are many references to rural crime and
rural justice.  Unfortunately, they are often only
fragments of information or brief asides in
discussions of other issues.  Rural crime is
worthy of further study, but for that study to be
useful, it must tie together these scattered
pieces of information.  The synthesis that follows
will do just that, beginning with what is known
about the environment in which rural crime and
rural justice take place.

II. THE STUDY
The information presented here is drawn from a
larger study of rural and small-town crime and
policing funded by the National Institute of
Justice.  The study involved collecting and
reviewing relevant literature, conducting focus
groups with rural sheriffs and municipal police,
locating and cataloging data sets relevant to
rural crime, and interviewing officials familiar
with rural crime and rural policing.  This paper
is based primarily on the literature review,
supplemented with information from interviews
conducted to date, and with information provided
by two focus groups.  The purpose of this report
is not to reach firm conclusions but to stimulate
thinking and suggest patterns that merit further
study.

THE LITERATURE REVIEW

Rural and small-town crime issues can be found in
the literature from a variety of fields and from
sources that vary greatly in their concern with
detail and accuracy.  In addition, rural issues
are often only some of many variables embedded in
a larger discussion and not mentioned in either
the title or the abstract.  Thus, using keyword
searches to quickly go through indexes will
identify many sources but will miss many others.

Regarding the academic literature, we focused our
search efforts on materials published since 1980. 
Indexes prior to 1980 were much less
comprehensive.  Further, much of the literature
prior to 1980 had already been assembled by
Hubbard and Horton (1980) in Rural Crime and
Criminal Justice: A Selected Bibliography.  A
computerized search through the DIALOG Information
Retrieval Service led to an examination of the
following indexes and abstracts:

o Criminal Justice Abstracts.
o Criminology and Penology Abstracts.
o Criminal Justice Periodical Index.
o Current Contents.
o Sociological Abstracts.
o Social Work Abstracts.
o Human Resources Abstracts.
o PAIS Bulletin: Public Affairs Information
Service.

In addition, we also kept abreast of developing
literature by routinely examining the annual
programs for the American Society of Criminology
and the Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences and
copies of appropriate presentations.  Finally, we
used what those involved in meta-analysis refer to
as the "ancestry method" by which the references
in identified publications are searched to
identify other publications on the same topic.

This study was highly exploratory and was intended
to go beyond the existing academic literature to
include emerging issues and patterns, as well as
those issues that had been neglected in the
academic literature.  This aspect of the study
included searching newspapers and magazines 
and directly contacting
organizations and agencies that might have
produced documents relevant to rural crime.  These
organizations include the National Crime
Prevention Association, the Committee for Arson
Control, the U.S. Fish & Wildlife Service, the
U.S. Forest Service, the Center for Diseases
Control and Prevention, the American Bar
Association, Klanwatch, the U.S. Commission on
Civil Rights, and a number of organizations
concerned with Native American law.

INTERVIEWS

More than 130 people from a variety of
perspectives relevant to rural and small-town
crime have been interviewed thus far, including
sheriffs, municipal chiefs, State police,
conservation officers, judges, attorneys,
coroners, and other authorities in specific areas. 
Interviews are still being conducted, and
completed interviews are still being analyzed. 
Most of the focus has been on sheriffs and
municipal chiefs from a variety of rural areas
throughout the country.  The discussion that
follows is based primarily on the literature
review but includes information from a focus group
of 6 rural sheriffs from around the country, and
from interviews with sheriffs in rural counties
(n=46) and police chiefs in small towns in rural
areas (n=28).  Of these 74 interviews, 13 (18
percent) were done face-to-face and the remainder
were conducted by telephone.  While we wanted to
include jurisdictions of varying sizes, the focus
was on the most rural jurisdictions.  In
jurisdictions where the chief was interviewed, the
size of the community ranged from 900 to 50,000
people, with an average of 7,500 people. 
Departments ranged in size from 1 to 66 uniformed
officers, with an average of 17 officers.  Where
county sheriffs were interviewed, departments
ranged in size from 1 to 182 uniformed officers,
with an average of 23 officers.  This figure is a
very rough approximation, since department size is
difficult to compute for sheriffs, who sometimes
have high numbers of part-time employees;
moreover, jail staff sometimes include sworn
officers, and in some counties there are a large
number of reserves.  The population of the
counties served by these sheriffs ranged from
2,100 to 712,000 people, with only 8 of the 46
sheriffs working in a county of more than 50,000.

As an exploratory study, locating subjects for
interviews focused on identifying individuals from
the widest possible range of social and physical
environments, rather than on average rural
settings.  Indeed, the differences across rural
areas are so substantial that speaking of averages
is probably misleading and is certainly of limited
utility for policy.  Rural Montana and rural
Delaware, for example, probably have as many
differences as similarities.  To capture as much
of this range as possible, we selected police
officers from across the country, attempting to
include every State and giving a particular focus
to the 18 States identified as rural by the U.S.
Government's General Accounting Office (GAO,
1990).

As an exploratory study we felt it important to
use unstructured interviews.  Appreciating rural
variation, and always keeping it in mind, we were
still interested in identifying common themes. 
Thus, we used the available literature and
information gathered from a series of preliminary
interviews to develop a list of questions to be
covered in the course of the interviews, but we
also encouraged subjects to explore other areas
they thought were important.  Questions included
crime concerns, police-citizen interactions,
police practices, and the working relationship
between police and other criminal justice
agencies.  The length of interviews ranged from 20
minutes to 2 hours but was typically about 40
minutes. 

SUMMARY

This document reviews what is known about rural
crime and rural justice.  The review is based on
literature from a wide range of sources, most
published since 1980.  Information from these
published sources is supplemented with information
from focus groups and interviews with sheriffs and
municipal police in rural areas and small towns. 
The purpose is to demonstrate the features of
rural areas that shape crime and justice.  In
addition, this study is designed to stimulate
thinking about rural crime and highlight issues
that merit further attention.  Our examination of
rural crime and rural justice begins with the
fundamental question, "What is rural?"

III. WHAT IS RURAL?

Basic to the study of rural and small-town crime
and justice is an understanding of the term
"rural."  Like concepts such as "truth," "beauty,"
or "justice," everyone knows the term rural, but
no one can define the term very precisely.  As one
sheriff told us, "Rural is like pornography; I
can't precisely define it but I know it when I see
it."  As with pornography, our difficulty in
precisely defining the term rural may complicate
our applying it or measuring it in specific cases,
but it does not render the term useless.  We will
argue that while a precise definition may be
difficult, there is something to the idea of rural
that distinguishes it in important ways from what
is called urban.  Further, this distinction has
important implications for understanding the
social dynamics of crime and for developing
informed criminal justice policy that applies to a
variety of settings.

How the term rural is defined is important for
three reasons.  First, in conceptual terms, our
definition describes exactly what we are studying
and indicates the terms by which we are thinking
about it.  Thus, it clarifies the content of our
ideas.  Second, our operational definition of
rural shapes how it is measured and empirically
counted.  Thus, it determines the kind of data we
collect on rural crime and shapes the findings we
can reach with these data.  And finally, the way
rural is defined has a practical impact on who is
targeted by policies addressing rural crime issues
and what kinds of interventions are relevant. 
Thus, it can shape the policies developed from our
research.

Despite its apparent simplicity in commonsense
terms, there is nothing mechanical or
straightforward about developing a working
definition of rural.  The following discussion
initially outlines some of the basic conceptual
questions involved in specifying what rural means. 
Next, it moves to a discussion of how rural can be
measured empirically.  Finally, we consider some
of the key analytical issues regarding how the
rural variable might be used to expand our
knowledge of crime and policing in different
areas.

CONCEPTUAL ISSUES

While rural is commonly treated as a single idea--
both in research and in everyday conversations--
careful reviews have pointed out its
multidimensional nature (Bealer et al., 1965;
Deavers, 1992; Miller and Luloff, 1981).  Most
uses of the term "rural" reflect a mixture of
different ways in which a place (or a group of
people) can be described as distinctively rural. 
Drawing on the discussion of Bealer et al. (1965),
we can identify at least four basic dimensions of
meaning: demographic, economic or occupational,
social structural, and cultural.

Demographic. The most obvious sense of what rural
means is the demographic dimension, referring
simply to how many people are concentrated in an
area, along with where they are located.  Rural
means areas of sparse populations, either in the
small total number of people who live there or in
their low density (i.e., ratio of people to
available space).  A related but distinct idea is
that rural places are also geographically
isolated, physically removed from other population
areas and from major urban centers.  For example,
outlying (less densely populated) areas of
counties that contain a large city often are not
counted as really rural, because they are near
urban populations; instead, they are labeled
sometimes as "metropolitan fringe" or "rurban"
(Ball, 1977).

A third element of the demographic meaning of
rural is location outside the political boundaries
of an urban area.  People and places located
inside the city limits (or other formally
designated metropolitan boundaries) are counted as
urban, while everything located outside the city
limits is labeled rural.  The issue is not
population size or density, but location relative
to official urban boundary designations.  An area
may have few people yet not be considered rural,
because it is within urban or metropolitan
boundaries.  Defining rural in demographic terms
depicts it as an objective, numerical, physical
attribute of a place or a population, referring
only to where people live and how many of them
live there--not to who they are or what they do.

Economic. Beyond mere demographics, the idea of
rural also has an economic meaning.   It may imply
something about how the people in the area make a
living.  We stereotypically think of rural as a
place where people tend to "live off the land"
(i.e., are close to nature) and depend directly on
the exploitation of natural resources.  In its
traditional meaning, rural is treated as a synonym
for agricultural (i.e., rural means an area where
farming is done). Note that this defines rural in
occupational terms, applying it to less
technologically developed communities where the
economy is simple, nonindustrial, and labor
intensive.  While this obviously refers to
farming, it might also include mining, fishing,
logging, or hunting as primary subsistence
occupations.

While the identification with farming remains a
central part of the common meaning of rural,
technological and economic developments during
this century have radically changed the role of
agriculture in the U.S. economy.  Today farming
ranks well behind manufacturing and service
provision as a source of employment and income in
rural areas.  Less than 10 percent of the rural
labor force is significantly involved in farming,
and less than 10 percent of the rural population
actually live on farms.  Thus, the common
definition of rural, which simply equates it with
farming, needs to be modified to remain relevant
to contemporary conditions.

Rural as an economic classification also may be
defined by the functional simplicity of an area--
i.e., there is a single common industry within the
community in which most residents are engaged,
resulting in a simple division of labor and a low
degree of economic specialization.  Here rural
implies a lack of variety in the ways people make
a living and a low degree of functional
differentiation in the community's social
structure.

Social structural.  Another common meaning of
rural includes social structural considerations
that reflect the distinctive character of social
life and social order in rural communities.  In
social structural terms, the defining attributes
of rural life are intimacy, informality, and
homogeneity.  By virtue of the smaller numbers of
people in rural settings, social connections are
more immediate (face-to-face), more intense or
primary (often based on kinship ties), and more
complete (based on knowledge of personal
biographies rather than formal role positions). 
Because of the greater familiarity, rural social
order is maintained through informal mechanisms of
social control (based on kinship and personal
acquaintance) rather than through formal
mechanisms and legal institutions.

Cultural.  The fourth component of the common
meaning of rural is cultural, referring to
distinctive sets of attitudes, beliefs, values,
knowledge systems, and behaviors that characterize
the people living in rural areas.  Rural culture
has been pictured as traditional, slow to change,
provincial, and fatalistic (Bealer et al., 1965,
p. 264).  Rural culture has also been
characterized as relatively intolerant of
diversity and unaccepting of outsiders.  In short,
rural is a world view, a way of thinking that is
different from that common among urban dwellers. 
Viewing rural as a cultural phenomenon that goes
beyond geographic or demographic conditions has
much intuitive appeal.  This is expressed in the
common wisdom that "You can take the boy out of
the country but you can't take the country out of
the boy."  However, defining rural in cultural
terms complicates the attempt to do systematic
research on rural events.  First, it makes the
idea of rural rather subjective and difficult to
study objectively, because the idea of culture is
notoriously difficult to quantify.  Moreover, it
limits by definition issues that might otherwise
be regarded as matters for empirical investigation
(e.g., variations in outlooks, attitudes, or
lifestyles across rural and urban areas).
Given the many dimensions of rural and the
confusion this can produce, what is the correct
definition of the term?  Unfortunately, there is
no one correct definition of rural.  Our aim is
not to prescribe a correct meaning but to outline
the forms of meaning already in use and to suggest
how these may be compared.  Researchers such as
Deaver (1992) favor restricting the meaning of
rural to a single dimension.  Almost always this
is the demographic dimension, because it is more
objective and measurable; it also seems most
conceptually basic and straightforward. 
Alternatively, we may define rural as a conceptual
umbrella term referring to a set of multiple
variables and dimensions that cannot be neatly
reduced to a single category or number without
losing much of its real meaning.  In a broad
summary review such as this, we are utilizing the
latter approach to be as inclusive as possible. 
Whatever approach is selected, researchers need to
spell out clearly how rural is defined in their
study, along with how this relates to the data
being collected and analyzed.

Besides the problem of multiple content
dimensions, several additional analytical issues
affect how rural is defined and studied.  One is
whether rural is defined in positive or negative
terms.  In the former, rural is defined by the
presence of certain conditions in an area, such as
farming as a major economic activity.  In the
latter, rural is implicitly defined as whatever is
left after urban areas have been designated.  The
dominant research emphasis in recent decades on
urban crime and metropolitan policing has
generally resulted in widespread reliance on such
negative definitions.  Strictly speaking, such a
definition by negation has little meaningful
content of its own, constituting an amorphous
"leftover" category that will be difficult to
interpret and for which effective policy
development will be impossible.  Moreover, the
implied meaning of rural varies according to how
urban is defined and measured.  For example, the
Census Bureau makes a distinction between urban
(incorporated areas of at least 2,500 population)
and metropolitan (counties containing an urban
center with at least 50,000 population). 
Sometimes rural is negatively defined as "not
urban" and in other instances as "not
metropolitan," depending on which data are used in
an analysis.  What are seemingly equivalent
(negative) definitions may lead to different
classifications of the same community.

Another issue is whether rural should be
conceptualized in relative terms or in absolute
terms.  Defining rural in terms of farming
activity tends to ascribe to it a fixed, objective
character.  Alternatively, many descriptions of
rural define its content as relative to specific
social and historical contexts.  This especially
applies when rural is defined by contrast to urban
areas, where whether an area is counted as rural
depends on what is considered urban in that time
and place.  For example, in 1790 there were only 8
cities in the U.S. with more than 5,000 people,
and the largest city (Philadelphia) had only
42,000 people.  What was considered a large city
in 1790 would hardly be classified that way today. 
Indeed, many recent studies (which count "small
towns and cities" as part of the rural landscape)
define rural to include communities of 5,000 to
50,000 people.  Even in the last few decades,
Census Bureau definitions of what counts as an
urban place have been modified.  The relativity
may be based on social structural or cultural
considerations, as may be seen when comparing the
meaning of rural in different regions of the
country.  Many rural areas of Delaware and New
Jersey would be considered urban by residents of
Wyoming or Montana.

Another issue in determining what rural means is
the level of description or reference.  To what
kinds of things does the term meaningfully apply? 
In the simplest terms, rural may be used to
characterize single residences or persons, as in
survey research that is individually administered.
Usually, however, rural refers to a space rather
than an individual.  The most basic is a focus on
rural simply as all unincorporated areas (i.e.,
areas outside of city limits).  At the second
level, rural can refer to communities, including
not only incorporated areas but also small towns
and villages.  Third, for some purposes it is
useful to focus on rural counties.  A complicating
factor is that sizes of counties as units of
analysis vary tremendously between eastern and
western States.  Usually, this level involves
distinguishing rural counties from urban and
suburban counties.  Fourth, it is possible to
aggregate even further and focus on rural States,
in which the entire State is classified as either
rural or nonrural, based on population
characteristics (population density or percentage
in urban places) or economic factors (importance
of farming, mining, and fishing, within the
State's economy).  Finally, some research is
focused on rural counties, although this level is
not a concern of most studies, which have a
distinctly local focus, or for the present study. 
Each of these levels has been used when referring
to the idea of rural.  The meaning of rural, and
its implications for crime and criminal justice,
are very different across these levels.  As Farmer
et al. (1992) note, data collected at different
levels of aggregation (e.g., local municipalities
vs. counties) do not necessarily yield the same
findings, especially as analyses become complex
and multivariate.

Another conceptual issue in specifying what rural
means is how to depict the distinction between
rural and urban--as qualitative or quantitative. 
Is rural-urban a dichotomy describing two discrete
categories of social settings with distinctly
different social dynamics?  This corresponds to
most discussions of the rural ideas in recent
policy-focused research, since policy decisions
tend to be structured in terms of either-or
alternatives.  Or, is rural-urban more reasonably
viewed as a continuum that varies between rural
and urban extremes with lots of gradations
representing varying degrees of rurality?  This
latter possibility corresponds to social science
descriptions where rurality and urbanism are
treated as more complex dimensions of community
organization.

The translation of numbers into categories raises
additional questions.  How many categories are
needed to capture the real differences between
rural and urban--two (rural and urban); three
(rural, urban, suburban); four (rural-farm, rural-
nonfarm, urban, suburban); more (rural-open
country, rural-village, nonmetropolitan small
city, metropolitan fringe, metropolitan center)? 
The number chosen seems arbitrary and debatable,
reflecting a compromise between convenience and
validity rather than naturally occurring
divisions.  

The discussion above has focused on the variety of
complications that enter into any effort to
clarify what we mean by rural.  Given these
complications and the absence of any single
standard, it is not surprising that researchers
have adopted a wide range of strategies for
measuring the concept.  Our focus now shifts to a
discussion of these strategies to illustrate some
of the options available for measuring the
concept.

MEASUREMENT ISSUES  

Beyond the problem of spelling out what rural
means conceptually is the task of measuring it. 
While most people have a strong and conceptually
rich sense of what rural means, when it comes to
measuring the idea and collecting data, practical
constraints often require that the content of
rural be greatly narrowed.  As the preceding
discussion suggests, the idea of rural can be
defined in a variety of ways with widely varying
results.

Operational definitions of rural in research on
crime and criminal justice have taken several
basic approaches.  These include measurements by
intuition, by demographic conditions, by
occupational characteristics, by composite
measures, and by self-ratings.  The most common
approach is not to explicitly define rural at all,
but to rely on common intuitive understandings of
the term.  This presumes that the meaning of rural
is so familiar and widely shared that it requires
no specification or elaboration.  Cases are chosen
for analysis based on prima facie judgments about
their rural character.  In our review of 90
studies on rural crime, 62 percent gave no
explicit (i.e., measurable) definition of the term
rural.  Moreover, the most widely cited collection
of research studies and policy analyses of rural
crime (Carter et al., 1982) includes no
operational definition of rural, even though a
number of chapters analyze statistical data on
rural crime and report empirical rural-urban
comparisons.  The lack of a precise definition for
rural in this collection reflects the clear
presumption that its meaning is well understood in
everyday language.

The intuitive or subjective approach to measuring
rural draws heavily on occupational, social
structural, and cultural factors for deciding when
an area (or population) is really rural.  Such
factors seem obvious and intuitive but are very
difficult to quantify.  Often the reliance on
intuitive or implicit definitions works well only
for average cases which fit neatly into
unambiguous ideal categories of rural-urban.  It
does not address the variations that may occur
across rural settings about which there is less
consensus.  Such an implicit approach also hides
the underlying principles or criteria by which
rural conditions are recognized and understood. 
As a result, it limits the ability to generalize
beyond the specific cases being studied, and in
the process, limits both the knowledge and the
policy applications that the research should
generate.

Beyond intuitive judgment, the second approach to
measuring rural makes use of demographic
information, utilizing categories and criteria of
rural-urban from the Federal census.  This has the
advantage of yielding data that are objective,
official, standardized, quantitative, and readily
available.  However, because the Census Bureau's
primary focus is on measuring degrees of urbanism,
rural places are defined and measured in negative
terms.  In census data, the category of rural
simply includes those areas or populations left
over after urban categories have been counted. 
The rural-urban distinction from census data is
primarily based on population size, which is
numerical and unambiguous.  However, it
technically leads to two different definitions of
rural.  One refers to rural as nonmetropolitan
areas, while the other refers to nonurban areas. 
In census terms, metropolitan refers to geographic
areas containing an urbanized center of at least
50,000 persons plus contiguous areas having strong
economic and social ties to that urban center.  In
contrast, urban refers to incorporated places
containing at least 2,500 population.  The
metropolitan category applies to counties as units
of data, while the urban category applies to
municipalities (or census-designated equivalents). 
Thus, while both Census Bureau definitions of
rural are based on a combination of geographical
area and population size, the two are not
identical.  Some urban areas are located within
nonmetropolitan counties, and metropolitan
counties often contain nonurban areas.  This means
that the size of the rural population, as well as
its location across geographic areas, will depend
on which negative definition is used.  Overall,
approximately 25 percent of the U.S. population
was nonurban in 1990, while less than 23 percent
was nonmetropolitan.  However, the disagreement is
larger than the difference between these two
percentages because the two groups have only
partial overlap.  At least 20 million persons
categorized as rural residents by one definition
were not counted as rural by the other.  It is
important to note that neither of the Census
Bureau's definitions of rural include information
about the social, economic, occupational, or
cultural characteristics of areas.

Use of demographic statistics to measure rural
places and populations necessarily involves two
additional issues.  One is the numerical criterion
used to distinguish rural from urban. What number
best captures the change from rural to urban? 
Even among agencies of the Federal Government, a
variety of different official definitions of rural
appear.  As already noted, the Census Bureau uses
two different numbers to define urban and
metropolitan.  The Farmer's Home Administration
rural housing loan program includes cities up to
20,000 population in its rural category.  In
contrast, the Rural Electrification Act excludes
places with more than 1,500 population from its
rural category, while the community development
block grant program counts cities as rural
(nonurban) with populations up to 50,000 (Gilford,
Nelson, and Ingram, 1981).

The other issue is the number of categories needed
to reasonably distinguish rural and urban
settings.  The most extensive and systematic
elaboration, developed by the Economic Research
Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture
(Butler, 1990) uses a combination of demographic
and geographic information to yield 10 categories
of ruralism-urbanism.  It classifies counties by
both their urban population size as well as their
proximity to major urban centers, which allows for
a much more detailed classification of places from
completely rural to highly urban.  For
nonmetropolitan areas, this approach considers
whether they are adjacent to a metropolitan
county, including both physical proximity and
whether the county provides significant employment
to that adjacent area.  Thus, the USDA-ERS system
takes into account suburbs, "bedroom communities,"
outlying small towns, nonurbanized fringe areas,
and remote "completely rural" areas.  However,
like most elaborations of rural-urban, this system
remains urban-focused, providing more and finer
gradations among urban places.  It distinguishes
only two categories of rural (adjacent and
nonadjacent to metropolitan areas) versus eight
categories of urban.  This system does not include
economic, occupation, social, or cultural
considerations, however, being based only on
census-provided demographic data.  

A third approach to measuring rural places is
based on occupational or economic information. 
Where rural is conceptualized in terms of farm
country, the ruralness of areas is often measured
by the prevalence of farming as a major economic
activity or by other agricultural events as
indicators of farming.  This approach might also
include data on indicators of other primary
extractive industries, such as mining, fishing, or
logging; however, these are much less frequently
used, given the common identification between
rural areas and farming.  As noted earlier, this
rural-farming equation is increasingly incorrect
and inappropriate, limiting its usefulness as a
general measurement strategy.  Note, however, that
occupational may sometimes be combined with
demographic data to provide the useful subdivision
of rural-farm and rural-nonfarm.

A fourth approach seeks to incorporate cultural,
social, and lifestyle factors into the measurement
of rural (Miller and Luloff, 1981).  While no
researchers define or measure rural solely by such
factors (which are notoriously hard to measure
objectively), some researchers have developed
composite measurements of rurality (Lowe and Peek,
1974; Willits and Bealer, 1967).  These combine
demographic data with additional sociological
information on the attitudes, values, and social
practices of populations in areas.  While
appealing for theoretical reasons, this form of
measurement is more much difficult to carry out,
since the necessary data are not readily available
or systematically collected.  Moreover, research
results have been inconclusive as to whether it
actually works better than simple demographic
indicators in differentiating among rural areas or
between rural and urban populations.
A final method for measuring rurality make use of
self-identifications.  In contrast to census-data
definitions, questionnaire surveys frequently ask
respondents to self-categorize their communities,
based on their perceptions of its demographic and
social characteristics.  For example, a common
survey question asks respondents to indicate
whether they live in an urban, suburban, small
town,or rural area; or they may be asked to make a
more detailed and quantitative description (e.g.,
reporting the estimated population of their
community).  Many national surveys use this format
(e.g., surveys of delinquent behavior among high
school students, household surveys of drug use or
of domestic violence among the general adult
population).  In practice, the criteria applied
here probably lead to classifications that are not
far from the Census Bureau's definition.  However,
they are by nature more subjective and
unverifiable.

Mostly, the study of rural has focused on
counties, communities, or more localized places as
the unit of analysis.  Although not as commonly
used, another strategy is to identify rural
States.  The GAO, for example, defines rural
States as those with fewer than 50 people per
square mile and identifies 18 States that meet
this criterion (GAO, 1990).  Rather than defining
States as either rural or urban, another strategy
is to order States from the most rural to the most
urban, based on their population density
(Photiadis and Simoni, 1983).  The two-category
system used by the GAO is the simpler of the two
approaches and is undoubtedly easier to apply when
considering national policies and programs for
rural areas.  For example, if the Federal
Government were to fund anti-crime programs for
rural areas, it would be useful to have a single
(and simple) cutoff that would separate rural
areas from others.  However, simplicity and ease
of application come at a price.  It is a system
based on a State's overall population density,
without regard for how that population is spread
out across the State.  In reality many States have
both rural and urban regions.  For example, under
the GAO's definition Utah is a rural State because
in 1990 its population density was 21 people per
square mile.  However, 87 percent of Utah's
population live in urban areas.  In contrast,
Vermont is classified as nonrural, even though
only 32 percent of its citizens live in urban
areas.  

Perhaps the best illustration of the inherent
difficulties in declaring States as rural or
nonrural based on population density is
California.  With an average of 191 people per
square mile in 1990, California is clearly a
nonrural State under the GAO definition.  And yet,
as the following description shows, California has
both rural and urban elements:

California is an urban state that defines its own
scale.  Some 95 percent of the state's 30 million
persons live in metropolitan areas, yet it is the
leading agricultural producer in the United
States. . . . However, behind the urban front is a
significant, although frequently overlooked, rural
backwater that has 2.2 million persons.  Were a
rural California to be a state by itself, its
population would be larger than 18 other states,
and it would have four congressional
representatives (Bradshaw, 1992).

Although making a simple urban-rural distinction
may be useful for policy purposes, using
gradations of rural may make more sense for
analytical (i.e., research) purposes.  In this
case, the focus may be not only on whether an area
is rural but also on the extent of rurality.

ANALYTICAL ISSUES

Deciding what is meant by rural requires thinking
through the many meanings of the term and settling
on a system for measuring it.  In addition, those
who would study rural issues must sort through a
series of issues related to how the idea will be
used in the analysis.  These analytical issues
include:

Rural as a quantitative variable versus a
typological category.  In quantitative terms,
rural refers to a continuum of social contexts
that ranges most rural to most urban.  The
rurality of communities can be measured by their
location along this scale.  In typological terms,
rural refers to a discrete category of social
places that is distinctly and qualitatively
different from the category of urban places. 
Rural represents a dichotomous either-or
classification of places, rather than a scalable
quantity of some attribute.

Rural as a scope condition versus a causal
variable.  The former means that analysis of
social processes (e.g., of crime and criminal
justice) must be done separately for rural and
urban settings.  The causal models that apply to
people in rural settings only hold in that
context; they do not work in urban places; and the
converse is true as well.  This means that
separate models or explanations must be developed
and tested in rural and settings.  The latter view
means the inclusion of rurality as one more
variable in a multivariate model, which can be
estimated and tested along with the other causal
variables.  The effects of rurality are additive
with the other social variables in a single common
model that applies across both rural and urban
settings.

General versus localized analysis.  Emphasis on
the substantial heterogeneity of rural settings
can mean that different communities (or types of
communities) must be studied and explained
separately, adopting a more idiographic, case-
study approach that preserves the individual
uniqueness of different rural settings or regions. 
Alternatively, much research, especially that
aimed at formulation of national policies and
programs, deals with rural as a more homogenous
category of settings.  Emphasis on the basic
commonalities of rural settings means that rural
events can be analyzed as more general and uniform
processes.  Data from different locations and
regions can be pooled together to develop more
reliable and broadly applicable explanations of
rural trends.

Rural as a single variable versus many different
variables.  The first implies that the rurality of
a place can be sensibly summarized in a single
number or classification.  The second argues that
each place must be indexed by a number of
different variables, each one reflecting a
different facet of the concept of rural (e.g.,
population density, social isolation, economic
modes of production, networks of social ties,
cultural values, identities and memberships,
divisions of labor, role structures, cultural
values, and technology).  While it might appear
that the solution is to combine these dimensions
into a single indicator of rural, it is unclear
how this could be done.  Even if the substantial
problems of measuring each dimension were
overcome, it is unclear how much weight should be
attached to each.  For example, it has already
been suggested that the occupational dimension is
probably less important than the cultural, but how
much less?

Rural as a dependent versus an independent
variable.  Demographic measures (such as
population density) are generally treated only as
independent variables.  That is, we assume that
density may shape behavior (such as crime) and not
that behavior shapes density.  In contrast,
cultural definitions are equally well suited to be
handled as either dependent or independent
variables.  For example, rural culture may shape
the occurrence of violent crime.  In this example,
rural culture is treated as an independent
variable.  At the same time, there are dozens of
popular books exploring how a particularly heinous
crime rattles the value system and beliefs of
small town residents.  In this case rural culture
is treated as a dependent variable, as having been
influenced by something else. 

Finally, the dimension of rural selected both
shapes and is shaped by the research methods used. 
For example, understanding rural culture and
patterns of interaction may require either case
studies or observational research.  In contrast,
survey research and official records may be the
best way to study the occupational and demographic
dimensions.  And, a focus on multiple dimensions
may require multiple methods.

These analytical issues must be taken into account
in any research on rural crime and rural justice. 
While they may be of lesser immediate concern to
policymakers and program implementers, considering
them can provide both groups with valuable
insights.  Appreciating these analytical issues
makes it easier to evaluate research used in
policy and program decisions and to determine what
research is most needed in the future.

Problematic Assumptions

Research on rural crime has uniformly reflected
several misguided assumptions about rural life and
social control that seem especially problematic. 
These have limited our efforts to understand what
rural crime actually involves and how it differs
from the more familiar processes of urban crime. 
These assumptions are the following:

Magnitude assumption.  This is the presumption
that the differences between rural and urban
processes are essentially a matter of sizes,
numbers, or amounts.  This reflects a belief that
social control varies in quantity but not in
quality across urban and rural areas.  Urban areas
are composed of more people, more interactions,
more strangers, fewer kinship connections, more
problems, and fewer informal controls--but the
same basic variables apply to each area.  In these
terms, the rural-urban distinction reflects
differences of degree rather than differences of
kind.  While this assumption is conveniently
consistent with the linear statistical models and
data analytic procedures that are currently
popular in criminological research, it seems
highly presumptuous, if not simply wrong.  We
cannot simply assume that rural areas are "urban
processes written small," at least without more
empirical evidence to indicate it is reasonable to
do this.

Homogeneity assumption.  This is the common
presumption that rural areas are very similar in
their social conditions and dynamics and can thus
be treated as the undifferentiated hinterland
(i.e., what is true of one rural area will be
generally true of them all).  This represents a
kind of "urban myopia" that seems to characterize
much criminological research, expressing an urban
stereotype of rural areas captured in the phrase,
"Once you leave the city, sticks is sticks." 
While it appears that enormous variations exist
across rural areas, there has been little to
document these variations and their implications
for crime and criminal justice policy.

Implicit definition assumption. This is the
assumption that rural and urban are simple and
familiar categories that need little explication,
elaboration, or definition.  It assumes that
everyone knows what rural means and that everyone
defines it in pretty much the same terms.  It also
assumes that the operational definitions used in
collecting and reporting crime statistics
correspond closely with the common conceptual
definitions of rural and urban.  In reality, what
constitutes rural and how it is to be measured has
never been resolved in a consistent manner.

Summary

In conducting interviews for this study, the
question we were most commonly asked is our
definition of rural.  It is a question to which we
have no simple answer.  In fact, rural police
officials with whom we spoke were themselves
usually vague about the term.  The purpose of this
discussion is not to develop a single correct
definition of rural that can become a standard for
all circumstances.  To the contrary, it is hoped
that the discussion illustrates that a single
definition is not only impossible but undesirable. 
The correct definition of rural will vary from one
situation to the next, depending on why it is
used, what data are available for measuring the
idea, to whom it is applied, and the way in which
the idea of rural will be used in the analysis. 
For example, policymakers may prefer the two-
category distinction of rural versus nonrural in
establishing programs to fund rural crime
initiatives.  In contrast, two categories may be
too few for the researcher who is determining
crime patterns across varying degrees of rurality.

Rather than a concrete measurable idea, the
concept of rural might best be described as a
"sensitizing concept."  Some years ago, Herbert
Blumer made the distinction between definitive or
precisely measurable concepts and sensitizing
concepts:  

A definitive concept [has] . . . a clear
definition in terms of attributes or fixed
benchmarks. . . . A sensitizing concept lacks such
specification of attributes or benchmarks . . . .
Instead, it gives the user a general sense of
reference and guidance in approaching empirical
instances.  Whereas definitive concepts provide
prescriptions of what to see, sensitizing concepts
merely suggest directions along which to look. 
Hundreds of our concepts--like culture,
institutions, social structure, mores, and
personality--are not definitive concepts but are
sensitizing in nature.  They lack precise
reference and have no bench marks which allow a
clean-cut identification of a specific instance
and of its content.  Instead, they rest on a
general sense of what is relevant (Blumer, 1953,
p. 7).

Understanding rural as a sensitizing concept is
also a good reminder that the study of rural crime
should not become so focused on defining rural
that it becomes bogged down.  The most reasonable
strategy is for studies to select a definition
that (1) makes intuitive sense, 
(2) is relatively easy to use, and (3) allows for
comparisons with other research.  In addition,
researchers should, whenever possible, make their
definition explicit.  Our own study requires that
the issue be approached from a number of
directions, including a review of the relevant
literature, interviews with rural police, and the
reanalysis of existing data that include
information about rural areas.  Consequently, we
have approached the issue with considerable
flexibility, allowing for a wide range of
definitions when using the work of others. 
Similarly, when selecting rural sheriffs and
police chiefs to interview, we have consciously
included areas that cover a wide range of
definitions of rural.  This is done both to
reflect a sensitivity to the range of definitions
used and to help us better understand the
consequences of using various definitions.

IV. THE RURAL SETTING OF CRIME AND JUSTICE

It is impossible to understand rural and small-
town crime and justice without also understanding
the rural environment.  Unfortunately, policies
and programs to deal with rural crime are often
based on the assumption that what works in an
urban area will also work in rural and small-town
America.  A 1977 conference on justice in rural
areas reached a conclusion that still seems
appropriate today:

Generally, the participants believed that key
decisionmakers lack knowledge about the critical
features and the great diversity of the rural
environment. . . . Lacking its own data base,
rural America often gets urban solutions for rural
problems. . . . The conference participants
expressed concern time and again for what they
perceived to be widespread imposition of the urban
way of doing things on rural areas, and for the
fact that too often the planning for rural areas
takes place in urban centers (Cronk, 1977, pp. 12-
13).

More recently, Sampson (1986) found consistent and
substantial rural-urban differences in national
victimization data and noted that rural crime
rates are not only lower but may be the result of
different factors.  For example, poverty was
related to crime only in urban areas, whereas in
rural areas the percentage of dwellings that were
multiple-family structures was a more important
predictor of crime rates.  He concluded that:

. . . to the extent that criminal justice programs
and theoretical responses are based on the
underlying assumption that the structural
determinants of crime in suburban and rural areas
are the same as those in central cities, then such
policies and theoretical models may be misguided
(p. 21).

In describing cultural and geographical features
of the rural environment, this section will
demonstrate why it is a mistake to apply urban
definitions and urban policies to rural crime and
rural justice.  Crime and criminal justice do not
exist in a vacuum.  The rural setting has several
features that shape both crime and policing.  

Geographic Isolation 

The effects of geography alone pose serious
problems for rural justice, having an impact on
such things as response time and the speed with
which support services can be provided.  Mayhew
and Levinger (1977), for example, contradict UCR
data (discussed below) and suggest that the
homicide rate in rural areas is higher and that
this "could easily be explained by the
differential access to medical treatment in rural
and urban areas, even if the actual violence is
the same in both, or even higher in cities (p.
457)."  Similarly, rural officers can expect a
longer wait for backup.  Geographic isolation can
be a particular problem for the many rural
officers who patrol alone and whose interactions
with suspects have no witnesses.  The large
geographic areas covered by some rural police also
make responding to calls more expensive and more
time consuming than in urban areas.  As a New
Mexico State trooper reported, "When I was in
Vietnam, a medic was never more than 10 minutes
away.  Here you can wait by a wreck on the highway
for 45 minutes before help gets there (Applebome,
1987, p. 11)."

Geography is also likely to have different
meanings in different parts of the country.  A
common unit of study for rural issues is the
county, which is also a convenient unit regarding
police agencies and the courts.  As one moves from
East to West, however, counties tend to be much
larger in square miles.  "The size of most
counties was determined in the horse-and-buggy
era; they tend to be about the right size to allow
anyone within their boundaries to get to the
county seat and back within a day, or within
several hours by horse (Lorch, 1989, p. 223)."  As
a result of how counties were formed, they vary
substantially in size.  Arizona, for example, has
only 15 counties that average more than 7,500
square miles each-- about the size of the State of
New Jersey.  By comparison, Georgia has 159
counties that average only 370 square miles each. 
Counties also differ in terrain, population
density, and climate.  For example, periodically
hikers are lost in the mountains of Montana for a
week or two before they find other people.  Some
Alaskan villages are so remote they are even
difficult to reach by airplane (Marenin and Copus,
1991).  In contrast, one would be hard pressed to
find similar circumstances in the "wilds" of
Delaware or New Jersey.  Clearly, rural officers
in different parts of the country are likely to
confront very different problems.

Availability of Guns

The presence of guns is another area in which
rural and urban populations differ, a difference
that raises questions about assumptions often made
regarding the link between guns and crime. 
Summarizing much of the literature on guns,
Wright, Rossi, and Daly (1983) observed that gun
ownership was much more prevalent in rural areas. 
In large cities about 27 percent of residents own
some kind of gun, but in rural areas more than 75
percent of citizens are gun owners (p. 106). 
While many of the rural gun owners are hunters who
use rifles, the percentage of citizens owning
handguns is also higher in rural areas than in
central cities (23 percent vs. 15 percent).  It is
sometimes assumed that the availability of guns is
directly related to gun-related violence, but the
case of rural areas shows that the relationship is
far more complex.  Ironically, rural residents may
be the most likely to own guns, but they are also
least likely to use guns in the commission of
crimes.  Bordua and Lizotte (1979) found that
crime was lowest in counties with the highest
rates of legal firearm ownership.  Similarly, a
1990 report by the Bureau of Justice Statistics
found that the rate of crimes committed with
handguns was more than three times as great in
urban areas--5.9 per 100,000 in central cities
versus 1.7 per 100,000 in nonmetropolitan areas
(Bureau of Justice Statistics, 1990).  Similarly,
the National Crime Survey (NCS) reports that in
cities 37 percent of rapes are committed with a
handgun, compared with only 14 percent of rapes in
rural areas (Bachman, 1992b).  Urban and rural
areas are more similar regarding the use of
handguns in robberies, but rural percentages are
still lower (35 percent vs. 30 percent).

To say that guns are less involved in rural crimes
is not to say they are less relevant for rural
police.  For some kinds of rural crime they may
represent a particular problem.  For example, the
problem of rural isolation is compounded for some
rural police, such as conservation officers, who
routinely confront people who are legitimately
armed (e.g., hunters).  Walsh and Donovan's (1984)
study of Pennsylvania conservation officers found
that "72.7 percent have had a deadly weapon
pointed at them in the performance of their duty. 
Further, 25.2 percent report being assaulted in
the performance of their duty but for some
undisclosed reason did not report this to
management (p. 335)."  

Economic Factors

High rates of poverty have long been associated
with high rates of crime, but studies of the link
between poverty and crime are almost always
conducted in urban areas.  It is possible that the
link between poverty and crime is different in
rural and urban areas.  For example, Sampson's
(1986) analysis of national victimization survey
data found that poverty was associated with
victimization, but only in central cities.

Curiously, crime is less frequent in rural areas,
although poverty is a common problem in rural
America.  Weinberg (1987), for example, has
observed that of the 159 high-poverty counties in
the United States in 1979, only 6 contained a city
with a population of 25,000 or more.  Further,
Garkovich (1991) reports that the 1986 poverty
rate in rural areas was 50 percent higher than in
urban areas.  While urban researchers express
alarm over the rise of a "permanent underclass,"
this deep socioeconomic and cultural isolation
"has been the experience of generations of the
rural poor, especially in the South, where rigid
social stratification has kept them out of the
mainstream (Tickamyer and Duncan, 1990)." 
Unemployment is generally higher in rural areas,
and for those who are employed, wages are
substantially lower.  In recent decades the
eroding economic base of many rural areas has
encouraged high levels of outmigration by young
educated and skilled workers (Garkovich, 1989),
which makes future economic development more
difficult.

It is startling that the numerous studies of
poverty and crime have so seriously neglected
rural areas.  Aside from rural-urban comparisons,
some research has focused on the relationship
between economic factors and crime among rural
areas.  Arthur (1991) found that such economic
factors as unemployment, poverty level, and
dependence on government assistance were related
to both violent and property crime rates in rural
counties, though the relationship was stronger for
property crime.

The economic problems facing rural areas, of
course, can be expected to not only affect the
nature and extent of crime but the resources
available to rural law enforcement as well.  Where
tax bases are small, rural police departments are
likely to be seriously understaffed and to do
without important resources.  One of the authors
of this review interviewed a local sheriff whose
desk consisted of an old door stretched across two
half-height filing cabinets and who had a total of
three officers (including himself) to patrol a
large county 7 days a week, 24 hours a day.

While poverty is common in many rural areas, some
rural areas have experienced economic development. 
This is perhaps most evident in "collar counties"
that surround some major urban areas.  An analysis
of census data show that the highest poverty
levels are in rural nonmetropolitan areas, while
the lowest poverty levels are in rural locations
within metropolitan areas (Fuguitt, Brown, and
Beale, 1989).  In addition, pockets of rural
growth can be based on a variety of factors, such
as tourism, retirement communities, industry,
natural resources, or government services
(Bradshaw and Blakely, 1982).  A study of
population shifts over time shows a steady
outmigration of young people from rural areas,
combined with an influx of senior citizens,
leading the population of rural America to be
older, on average, than that of the country as a
whole (Johnson, 1993).  It also appears that two
types of rural county were most likely to
experience population growth in the 1980's: those
whose economies were based on tourism and those
serving a large number of retirees (Johnson,
1993).

Aside from the increase in crime that commonly
accompanies rapid growth (Freudenburg and Jones,
1991), the basis of economic development may lead
to unique crime problems.  For example, a growing
tourism industry not only requires local police to
deal with victims or offenders who are transient,
but the demands on police and the resources to pay
for police services may fluctuate throughout the
year, and from one year to the next.  One police
chief told us that his community's permanent
population was about 4,000 people, but during the
height of tourist season the population could
reach as high as 70,000 people.

Finally, there is a body of research that
concludes that rural areas experiencing rapid
growth will also experience a disproportionately
large increase in crime.  In a meta-analysis of
empirical studies, Freudenburg and Jones (1991),
report that 21 of 23 studies found that in rural
communities with rapid population growth, crime
grew even faster; in fact, crime increased at 3 to
4 times the speed at which the population
increased.  They speculate that "the accumulated
findings may best be explained by narrowly
focusing on changes in community social structure
that accompany rapid growth and result in
impairment of informal social controls,
particularly the declines in a community's density
of acquaintanceship (p. 619)."

Race and Ethnicity 

Studies of the link between race and crime are
common and almost exclusively draw on urban
samples.  There is no reason to assume that race
and crime issues are similar across rural and
urban areas, particularly since the minority
population is not evenly distributed across rural
and urban America.  Before addressing the issue of
race and crime, it will be useful to first look at
rural-urban differences in the distribution of
minorities in the United States.

Race in rural areas.  U.S. Census data show that
rural areas are substantially more homogeneous
than are central cities on both race and
ethnicity.  While the U.S. population as a whole
is 80 percent white, the population in central
cities is 66 percent white.  This contrasts
sharply with the population in rural areas, which
is 89 percent white.  As with many other issues,
these national averages mask large interstate
variations.

It is also true that the national trend for
minorities to be underrepresented in rural areas
is not true for all States.  In fact, there are
seven States in which minorities are more
represented in rural areas than in urban areas:
Alaska, Arizona, Idaho, Montana, New Mexico, North
Dakota, and South Dakota.  In these States the
high minority population in rural areas represents
large Native American (or Eskimo) populations. 
Native Americans are the only minority group in
America that is routinely more represented in
rural areas than in central cities.

Ethnicity in rural areas.  The Census Bureau makes
a distinction between race and ethnicity.  In
particular, Hispanics are considered an ethnic
group, and not a racial category.  In terms of
race, Hispanic residents are categorized as white. 
While this distinction between race and ethnicity
may not be recognized and used by most of the
public, any discussion based on census data must,
of necessity, use Census Bureau categories.  The
census data show that Hispanic citizens are much
more represented in urban areas (14.8 percent)
than in rural areas (2.6 percent).  Further, only
three States have a higher percentage of Hispanics
in rural areas than in urban areas (Hawaii, Idaho,
and Washington).  In none of these States do
Hispanics constitute more than 8 percent of the
population.  Several States do have rather large
percentages of Hispanic residents in rural areas,
including New Mexico (34 percent), Texas (16
percent), Arizona (14 percent), California (13
percent), and Colorado (11 percent).

Race, ethnicity, and crime.  Although seldom
explored, it appears that the links between race
and crime differ across rural, suburban, and urban
areas.  Bachman's (1992b) examination of National
Crime Survey (NCS) data reveal that blacks had
higher victimization rates than whites for violent
crimes in urban areas.  In rural areas the violent
crime victimization rate for whites was higher
than that for blacks.  For such property crimes as
burglary and household larceny, blacks had higher
rates of victimization across community sizes.

Using NCS data, Laub (1983b) estimated personal
crime offending rates for communities of varying
sizes.  He found that while crime rates did
generally increase with community size, there were
threshold sizes above which increases were small
or nonexistent.  For whites, this threshold was
2,500 residents or more, while for blacks the
threshold community size was 10,000 or more. 
Interestingly, race differences across community
sizes varied by age.  For juveniles ages 12 to 17,
metro-nonmetro differences in offending rates are
greater for blacks than for whites. 
Correspondingly, black-white differences in
offending rates for juveniles are greater in
central cities than outside central cities.  For
adults, these differences practically disappear.

Jensen, Stauss, and Harris (1977) used several
data sources to study crimes by American Indians. 
They found that crime rates for Indians were
higher than for white, black, or Asian Americans. 
They also found that white-Indian differences were
smaller in rural than in urban areas.  Indian
crime rates in urban areas were four times those
of whites, while in rural areas Indian crime was
only about 2 1/2 times that of whites.

Finally, while urban studies of the street-level
drug trade reflect a high representation of
minorities, Weisheit's (1992) study of rural
marijuana cultivators found that blacks were
almost completely absent.  This was true even
though entering marijuana cultivation required few
resources and few specialized skills.  

Although the minority population may be smaller in
rural areas, it is unclear why their rates
relative to whites should be lower in rural areas,
or why minorities have such a small role in
marijuana cultivation.  This pattern should be
explored further, for it raises questions about
assumed links between race and crime.

While there is little research on the link between
race and crime in rural areas, the link between
ethnicity and crime in rural areas has been
completely ignored.  Further, while racial and
ethnic minorities tend to be underrepresented in
rural areas, there are counties with large
minority populations.  Studying the link between
race/ethnicity and crime in rural areas may prove
useful for understanding the link between these
social characteristics and crime in other
settings. 

Social Climate

Precisely measuring and describing a local culture
is extremely difficult.  There are, however,
several features of rural culture that distinguish
it from urban culture and have implications for
rural policing and rural crime.  Among these
features of rural culture are informal control, a
mistrust of government, and a reluctance to share
internal problems.  

Informal control.  It is commonly believed that
rural areas are more governed by informal social
control than are urban areas, and there is some
empirical evidence to support this proposition. 
Lyerly and Skipper (1981), for example, found
rural delinquency was less common than urban
delinquency and concluded that "certain structural
conditions in rural areas tend to foster
conformity among the juvenile population (p. 39)." 
Similarly, Gardner and Shoemaker (1989), found
that social bonding was a more important factor in
protecting against rural delinquency than against
urban delinquency.  Smith (1980), found that in
rural areas shoplifting and employee theft were
rarely reported to the police.  Instead, most
cases were handled informally.  He quotes one
rural criminal justice official as saying: 

I simply can't get people to tell me things.  I
hear about them two or three weeks later, and when
I ask them why they didn't come to me about it,
they say, "Oh, I took care of it myself."  We
simply can't get people to take advantage of the
services of this office (p. 52).

Kowalski and Duffield's (1990) study of homicide
concluded that "the traditional bond of group
cohesion assumed to be associated with the rural
environment and its residents continues to have an
inhibiting effect on homicide for counties in the
United States (p. 76)."  A focus on informal
control should not be confused with a tolerance of
crime in rural areas.  To the contrary, rural
areas are often less tolerant of crime and of
deviance in general (Wilson, 1991).  For example,
a national survey published by the Insurance
Research Council (1993) found that rural citizens
were less tolerant of insurance fraud than were
urban residents.  When given the statement, "It is
all right to increase the amount of your insurance
claim by a small amount to make up for the
insurance premiums you have paid when you had no
claims," 46 percent of large city residents
agreed, compared with only 12 percent of rural
residents.  Similarly, only 3 percent of rural
residents agreed that "It is acceptable to receive
treatment after an injury had healed."  In
contrast, 25 percent of large city residents
agreed with the statement.  

Informal control is facilitated by the fact that
many residents of rural communities, including the
local police, know each other socially.  One
factor that contributes to this is the relative
stability of the local population.  Rural citizens
less frequently change addresses, often staying in
the same county, or even the same house for
several generations.  In comparing urban and rural
poverty, Auletta (1982) makes the following
observation about Preston County, West Virginia:

Unlike the cities of the North, where ghetto
residents constantly shift addresses, almost 70
percent of Preston County's 25,000 residents have
lived in the same house all their lives; another
20 percent of the people there have moved, but
within the county.  Upward mobility is relatively
rare, . . . the average mother receiving Aid to
Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) has been
on welfare more than six years (p. 159).

What mobility does occur in these rural areas is
often outmigration of younger skilled workers. 
All of these factors have implications for rural
policing.  The low levels of mobility and low
population density means that rural law
enforcement officers, such as sheriffs, are likely
to personally know most offenders and their
families.  If a victim can identify a thief, for
example, the sheriff is likely to know where to
find the offender and to already know quite a bit
about the offender and his or her family.  Given
this, a greater reliance on informal control in
rural areas should be of no surprise.

The term "density of acquaintanceship" has been
used to describe the extent to which people in a
community know one another.  In general, smaller
communities have higher density of
acquaintanceships.  Freudenburg (1986) studied
four small towns in Colorado. Three of the towns
had populations ranging from 1,000 to 5,000 people
and were high in density of acquaintanceship.  A
fourth town had grown rapidly from 5,000 to 10,000
people and was now much lower in density of
acquaintanceship.  He found that residents of
communities higher in density of acquaintanceships
less often reported being the victims of crime. 
They were also half as likely to believe it was
necessary to lock their doors when they left home
for a few hours or less, and they were five times
less likely to believe it necessary to lock their
doors when they were gone for a day or more. 
Similarly, high school students in high density
acquaintanceship communities were half as likely
to report having felt physically threatened in
their school.

Density of acquaintanceship can influence crime in
several ways.  It can increase the watchfulness of
citizens, make it more likely they will feel a
responsibility to act, and may make it easier to
identify suspects.  As Freudenburg observed:

In a smaller community, a high density of
acquaintanceship can allow the watchfulness to
extend to the entire community: if a resident sees
a person entering a house even in another section
of town, there is a relatively high likelihood
that the resident will know whether the person
entering the house has any right to do so, and if
not, that the resident will take appropriate
action. . . . When more of the faces in town are
strange . . . a lawbreaker probably will find it
easier to escape detection, and capture.  He
becomes a "white male, about 5 feet, 10 inches
tall, between the ages of 16 and 19," instead of
"Ruth Johnson's nephew, Frank." (1986, p. 32).

A high density of acquaintanceship can also
provide for monitoring and correcting early
misbehavior and delinquency.  As one youth in
Freudenburg's study complained, " A guy can't get
away with anything around here.  It seems as
though, whenever I do anything wrong, my old man's
found out about it before I even get home (1986,
p. 46)."

Mistrust of government.  A greater reliance on
informal social control is also consistent with a
greater suspicion of government, particularly
State and Federal Government, which are seen as
insensitive to local needs.  This suspicion of a
strong central government is also reflected by the
attitudes of rural residents, who are generally
less supportive than urban residents of government
programs that provide welfare, housing,
unemployment benefits, higher education, and
Medicaid (Swanson, Cohen and Swanson, 1979).  This
rural attitude is why proponents of rural
development warn against public policies dictated
by a strong central government (Littrell and
Littrell, 1991; Seroka and Subramaniam, 1991). 
Similar concerns have been expressed by rural
sheriffs.  In California, for example, a
contingent of 200 Army soldiers, National
Guardsmen and Federal agents spent 2 weeks
clearing out marijuana growing operations in the
King Range National Conservation Area in northern
California.  As a result of their efforts, 1,200
plants were destroyed, but not everyone was
satisfied.

"This is so frustrating when the Federal
Government comes in and spends enough money that
would keep my operation going for three or four
years," said Sheriff David Renner of Humboldt
County.  His team of five deputies, cooperating
with the State's seven-year-old Campaign Against
Marijuana Planting, destroyed over 3,000 plants in
one day this week.

"If the Feds have the money for this kind of
operation," Sheriff Renner said, "they ought to
give it to local law enforcement that is more
effective and is truly responsible to local
citizens.  Their results speak for themselves and
they are not good (Bishop, 1990, August 10)."

Regarding the rural American West, Flynn and
Gerhardt (1989) have observed that "the West's
frontier roots still make it hostile to anything
smelling of central authority, and the federal
government reeks of it (p. 10)."

This does not mean that local authorities cannot
work effectively with State and national police. 
The rise of multijurisdictional task forces
demonstrate that local authorities can work very
effectively with others (Schlegel and McGarrell,
1991).  The larger point is that State and Federal
authorities need to appreciate rural culture to
make these relationships work effectively.

Patterns of civil litigation also reflect the
greater tendency of rural areas to solve disputes
through informal channels and a reluctance to rely
on formal government.  In his study of variations
in the rate of civil litigation among Illinois
counties, Daniels (1982) found that rurality was
the single best predictor of civil litigation
rates.  He concluded that "higher civil litigation
rates tend to be characteristic of more urbanized,
somewhat more culturally modern and slightly more
industrialized counties, and that lower rates tend
to be characteristic of more rural, agricultural,
and somewhat more culturally traditional counties
(p. 209)."  That is, rural citizens were less
likely to resolve disputes by turning to the
formal court process.

Reluctance to share internal problems.  One
problem with studying rural areas and gaining
insights into rural crime and criminal justice is
the tendency of residents in some rural
communities to keep community problems to
themselves.  This attitude, combined with a
greater reliance on informal control, also sets
the stage for a greater mistrust of government. 
In his study of marijuana growers, Weisheit (1991)
cites a rural police officer who observed that:

People in rural areas tend to be pretty
conservative generally and don't want government
coming in, or an outsider coming in, or foreigners
coming in.  They want the status quo and that's
it.  And when they develop a cancer from within
they don't want it going out.  They don't want
people telling about it and they don't want people
rocking the boat.  They are the same people who
will ostracize members of their society who get
caught doing this [marijuana growing] (Weisheit,
1991, p. 13).

Informal control, keeping things in, and showing a
greater suspicion of government may also help
account for rural-urban differences in the
willingness of local communities to fully
cooperate with reporting to the FBI's Uniform
Crime Reports (UCR).  It is not surprising that
for 1992, reporting to the UCR program differed by
population density, with reports covering 97
percent of citizens living in Metropolitan
Statistical Areas but only 86 percent of those
living in rural areas (Uniform Crime Reports,
1992).  Similarly, Laub (1981) has found that
while the overall likelihood of reporting crime to
the police is similar for rural and urban
citizens, those in urban areas fail to report
because they think nothing can be done, while
those in rural areas fail to report because they
consider the crime a private concern, even when
the offender is a stranger.  As a New Mexico State
police officer observed, "In a lot of these
[rural] areas, there's really no law enforcement--
no police, no sheriff, no State police station. 
People prefer to handle their own affairs and
disputes by themselves (Applebome, 1987, p. 11)." 
The officer's comment should be taken as more
figurative than literal, although there are remote
areas of Alaska where the statement could be taken
literally.  The statement does reflect two
dimensions of the issue that are distinct but tend
to reinforce each other.  First, rural citizens
may less often choose to deal with a problem
formally because they see it as a local problem. 
Second, in some rural areas formal police
authority is in fact physically distant, and is
not an immediate option.

SUMMARY  

It is important to remember that rural areas vary
enormously in both the extent to which they are
physically isolated and in their social
environments.  This description of rural culture
has been, of necessity, a caricature.  Particular
rural areas will exhibit more or less the same
features, and in varying combinations.  As a
group, however, these features suggest important
differences between rural and urban areas,
differences that have implications for rural crime
and the response to rural crime.  Two
illustrations of the unique workings of crime in
rural areas can be found in the role of poverty
and the role of guns in crime.  While rural areas
contain some of the deepest pockets of poverty in
the United States, crime in rural America is
substantially less frequent than in urban areas. 
And, while gun ownership is much higher in rural
areas than in cities, the percentage of crimes
involving guns is lower in rural areas.  Poverty
and guns may be connected to crime, but looking at
rural areas suggests the relationship may be more
complex than would be assumed by considering only
urban settings.

There are several features of rural life that
distinguish it from urban life and that may shape
crime and justice.  Most obvious is the issue of
physical space and geographic isolation.  Rural
areas are also characterized by homogeneity, as
illustrated by the relatively low level of racial
diversity.  That is, while there may be
substantial variation from one rural area to
another, people within a given rural area tend to
be relatively homogenous on a variety of social
characteristics.  Rural areas are also
characterized by a reliance on informal control, a
mistrust of government--particularly the Federal
Government--and a reluctance to share internal
problems with others outside of the community. 
All of these would seem to have implications for
crime, policing, and justice in rural areas.  It
will be argued throughout the following discussion
that rural crime, policing, and justice have
features that distinguish them from their urban
counterparts, and these features are all a
consequence of the unique character of the rural
environment.  Having described several key
features of the rural environment, the focus now
shifts to the patterns of rural crime.

V. RURAL AND SMALL-TOWN CRIME  

Information about rural crime can be drawn from a
number of diverse areas.  In this section, some of
the better-known sources of information are used
to demonstrate areas of concern, suggest topics
which merit further study, and identify emerging
issues relevant to policing in rural areas.  The
discussion begins by examining fear of crime in
rural areas, and then shifts to a description of
the patterns of rural crime.  Changes in rural
crime over time are then considered, followed by a
discussion of special issues and emerging
problems.

FEAR OF CRIME

Fear of crime has implications for policing in
several ways.  It may affect community support for
policies and budgets related to policing, and it
may be important in mobilizing citizens to report
crime, cooperate with investigations, and to
participate in anti-crime programs.  Fear of crime
is among the rural crime issues most frequently
studied.  Studies conducted in the 1970's
generally concluded that urban residents were far
more fearful of crime than were rural residents
(e.g., Baumer, 1978; Boggs, 1971; Clemente and
Kleiman, 1976; 1977; Conklin, 1971; 1976; DuBow et
al., 1979; Erskine, 1974; Lebowitz, 1975). 
Studies in the 1980's and 1990's were more mixed
in their conclusions.  Some found rural citizens
less fearful (e.g., Ollenburger, 1981; Smith and
Huff, 1982; Belyea and Zingraff, 1988).  Others
found only minor rural-urban differences (Lee,
1982; Bankston et al., 1987).  Still another
approach is used in the American Housing Survey,
which asks citizens a more general question about
what bothers them about their neighborhood.  In
1991, 15 percent of central city residents
specifically mentioned crime, compared with less
than 2 percent of rural residents (DeFrances and
Smith, 1994).

Lee's (1982) work demonstrates the problem of
simply transporting methodologies developed for an
urban population to a rural setting.  He showed,
for example, that while general urban-rural
concerns about victimization were similar, the two
groups had very different perceptions about
victimization on nearby streets, a question
frequently used as the sole indicator of fear in
early studies.  Lee argued that because of the
physical environment this question was largely
irrelevant for the rural population, whose fears
were manifest in other types of crime.  When other
victimization concerns were considered, rural-
urban differences faded.

One response to the concern about crime is to
develop a prevention program, such as neighborhood
watch.  It has been found that similar factors
motivate both rural and urban citizens to
participate in crime prevention programs (Smith
and Lab, 1991).  It has also been suggested that
the interpersonal bonds and patterns of social
interaction in rural areas are positive factors
that can facilitate the development of rural crime
prevention programs (Donnermeyer and Mullen,
1987).  Consistent with this, Mullen and
Donnermeyer (1985) found that among rural citizens
one of the most important factors related to fear
of crime was the extent to which they viewed their
neighbors as trustworthy and watchful against
crime.

A study of popular images of rurality by Willits,
Bealer, and Timbers (1990), though not
specifically a study of fear, does provide
interesting insights into perceptions of crime
across rural and urban areas.  In their survey of
the public they found overwhelming agreement with
the statement, "There is less crime and violence
in rural areas than in other areas."  More than
two-thirds of rural, suburban, and urban residents
agreed with the statement.  The authors also
observed that crime was a topic that brought out
anti-urban sentiments.  For example, most
respondents, including those from urban areas,
agreed with the statement "Crime and violence
characterize city life in America."

Taken as a whole, these studies suggest the
importance of considering the social and physical
environment of rural areas before applying urban
definitions to the crime problem and before
conducting research on rural crime (see also
Weisheit, 1993).  It also appears that aside from
violent street crime, rural citizens share many of
the same concerns about crime as their urban
counterparts.  Unfortunately, research on rural
crime seldom draws on knowledge about the unique
features of rural culture and geography that are
essential to understanding how to study fear in
rural areas, how to interpret results, and how to
develop programs responsive to community concerns.

RURAL VERSUS URBAN CRIME

In addition to considering fear of crime, several
studies have examined rural crime itself, using
either self-reports or official records.  Many of
these studies make rural-urban comparisons
(Carter, 1982; Laub, 1983a; 1983b; Gardner and
Shoemaker, 1989; Lyerly and Skipper, 1981).  Most
research concludes that crime is less frequent in
rural areas, and it is often speculated that
greater informal controls in rural areas protect
against high crime rates (Smith, 1980).

Some rural-urban comparisons have tried to account
for these differences by looking for correlates
(i.e., factors that would seem to go along with
the lower rates in rural areas).  Kowalski and
Duffield (1990), for example, conducted a county-
level study of homicide and rurality and found
that rural counties had lower rates and that
counties with lower homicide rates were also those
with lower divorce rates, lower poverty levels,
less religious diversity, and lower percentages of
minorities.  They concluded that "In rural areas,
individualism is reduced, group identification is
strengthened, and the potential for violence is
diminished (p. 86)."  They also noted that
rurality is a multidimensional phenomenon and that
separate dimensions may impact crime rates
differently.  Wilkinson (1984) also used county-
level data but came to a very different
conclusion, finding that homicide rates were
higher in rural areas.  He accounted for this by
noting that in a geographically dispersed
population, social interactions are more frequent
among family members and close acquaintances, and
both are groups at a relatively higher risk for
homicide.  Wilkinson also observed that when
compared with large cities, homicide rates were
higher in rural areas but lower in small cities. 
Taken together, these findings highlight the
importance of crime-specific analyses and of using
care in defining the term rural.  Simply treating
everything outside major metropolitan areas as
rural can mask important patterns.

The belief that crime is less frequent in rural
areas is supported by recent UCR data on crime and
population group.  Of particular interest is a
comparison between crime in cities of 250,000 or
more and that in rural counties.  Studies of
police departments commonly focus on departments
serving cities of 250,000 or more people.  In
contrast to large cities, rural counties are
outside of Metropolitan Statistical Areas and
cover areas not under the jurisdiction of city
police departments.  

Data collected reveals several interesting
patterns:

o Rates for urban areas are higher than for rural
areas for every offense, including homicide. 

o The gap between rural and urban crime is greater
for violent than for property crime. 

o For property crime the rank order of offenses is
roughly similar for urban and rural areas.  That
is, larceny is the most common crime and motor
vehicle theft the least common in each area. 

o For violent crime, the rank order is thrown off
by the very large rural-urban difference in
robbery. 

o Even for crimes with the most similar rates
across areas, such as rape, the urban rate is much
higher.

o The greatest difference is for robbery, which
occurs almost 50 times more often per 100,000
citizens in urban areas. 

Official counts of crime are useful indicators but
suffer from a number of shortcomings.  Not all
crimes are reported to the authorities, not all
reported crimes are recorded, and not all recorded
crimes are forwarded to the UCR.  One alternative
is to ask citizens whether they have been the
victims of crime.  One of the most frequently used
data sources for studying victimization is the
National Crime Survey (NCS), an annual survey
begun in 1973 which utilizes a randomly drawn
national sample and includes information about the
size of the respondent's community.

Substantial rural-urban differences are found from
national household victimization surveys.  The
1990 survey of households touched by crime, for
example, reported the percentage of households
indicating any form of victimization in urban,
suburban, and rural areas was 30 percent, 23
percent and 17 percent, respectively.  Bachman
(1992a; 1992b) noted that between 1973 and 1990
victimization was consistently highest in central
cities and lowest in nonmetropolitan areas, and
this was true whether the study focused on
individuals or households.  This pattern of
differences appears to hold true for both violent
and property crime.  In his study of
victimization, Smith (1980) found that about 25
percent of victimizations of rural residents took
place while they were away from their communities,
while this was true for only 10 percent of urban
residents.  He concluded that "rural residents are
particularly vulnerable to personal theft crimes
when visiting urban areas (p. 51)."  This also
means that the usual rural-urban comparisons of
victimization rates probably understate the
difference in victimization between the two areas.

Instead of comparing rural and urban areas, some
studies have considered rural crime alone (e.g.,
Smith and Huff, 1982; Miller, Hoiberg, and Ganey,
1982; Donnermeyer and Phillips, 1982).  This
research generally focuses on patterns across
rural areas and correlates of rural crime.  Arthur
(1991), for example, examines property and violent
crime in 13 rural Georgia counties.  He found that
unemployment, poverty, public aid, and race were
related to both property and violent crime rates,
and the relationship was particularly strong for
property crime.  Bankston and Allen (1980)
compared homicides among 10 social areas in rural
Louisiana and found that both socioeconomic and
cultural factors shaped homicide rates. 
Significantly, the relative importance of each
varied from one social area to another, suggesting
the importance of appreciating variations among
rural areas.  Thus, a good understanding of rural
crime requires not only appreciating how it
differs from urban crime but also how rural crime
and rural justice vary across rural communities.

TRENDS IN TUTAL CRIME 

There has been concern for some time that rural
and urban crime rates are converging, and the
issue has raised considerable debate.  Some have
argued that with modern communication and
transportation, rural-urban differences are
shrinking through what Fischer (1980) has called
"massification."  
Carter (1982) used UCR data and found that between
1960 and 1979 the percentage increase for index
crimes in rural areas was greater than in urban
areas.  Similarly, Swanson (1981) found that
between 1969 and 1978 the percentage increase for
rural crime was greater than for urban crime. 
However, because rural rates are much lower and
the size of percentage change depends heavily on
the size of the rate at Time 1, conclusions based
on percentage change should be accepted with
caution.  In fact, using Carter's table, the
difference between the rates in rural and urban
areas actually increased over time.  In 1960 there
were 95 more violent crimes per 100,000 citizens
in urban areas than in rural areas.  By 1979 there
were 411 more violent crimes per 100,000 citizens
in urban areas than in rural areas.

UCR data from 1980 through 1992 was used to make
rural-urban comparisons over time for both violent
and property offenses.  Several things are worth
noting:

o In both large cities and rural counties violent
crime rose between 1980 and 1992.
o Between 1980 and 1992, property crime fluctuated
but was somewhat higher in urban areas and
somewhat lower in rural areas.
o The ratio (gap) of city to rural violent crimes
fluctuated between 1980 and 1992 but changed
little overall.

o The ratio (gap) of city to rural property crimes
went up somewhat between 1980 and 1992.
o The ratios for both violent and property crime
were relatively stable between 1986 and 1992.
o In every year the gap between rural and urban
areas was greater for violent crime than for
property crime.

When examining specific index offense rates over
time, one finds the greatest changes for violent
crime are for robbery.  In 1980, the rate for
robbery in urban areas was 35 times that in rural
areas.  By 1992, robbery was almost 50 times more
frequent in urban areas, and most of the increased
difference was a product of increasing urban rates
and modestly decreasing robbery rates in rural
areas. A lesser increase was observed for
aggravated assault rates, which were 3.7 times
more frequent in urban areas in 1980 but 4.9 times
more frequent in urban areas by 1992.  The urban-
rural gap narrowed very slightly for rape rates
and widened very slightly for murder.  For
property crimes, the greatest change in the gap
between urban and rural rates was for motor
vehicle theft, which was 7.7 times more frequent
in urban areas in 1980 but 13.7 times more
frequent in 1992.  Burglary and larceny changed
little. 

The National Crime Survey (NCS), conducted each
year since 1973, also permits considering changes
over time by community size.  NCS data shows that
rural crime is persistently lower than urban
crime.  Rural crime changed less over time than
did urban crime, declining steadily from 1973
through 1990.  Urban crime peaked in 1978 and
declined substantially until 1986 when it rose
again slightly.

Fischer (1980) used data on violent crime in
selected California counties to argue that the gap
between rural and urban crime was less important
than the relative patterns of change over time. 
He demonstrated that changes over time in urban
counties were followed by changes in rural
counties and concluded that "cultural change is
continually generated in major urban centers,
diffuses to smaller cities and then to the rural
hinterland (p. 416)."  Cultural cycles, whether
they be of violent crime, fashion, or inventions,
begin in urban areas and ripple out through the
countryside.  This argument is consistent with
contemporary observations about the rise of drug
trafficking and gangs in rural areas, an issue
that will be addressed in the next section.

SPECIAL ISSUES

The focus on rural-urban comparisons has also
meant a focus on particular categories of crime,
often the street crimes listed in the UCR.  Many
issues relevant to rural policing, such as gang
activity, do not neatly fit these categories or
are emerging issues that have not been explored in
the professional literature.  What follows is a
sampling of these topics, often based on reports
in the popular press.  Because many of these
discussions are based on anecdotal evidence, the
information should be interpreted with caution. 
However, these are areas that merit scholarly
research and that may be of increasing concern to
rural police.

Gangs.  Stereotypically, gangs are a problem
involving inner-city (often minority) youth.  For
example, Huff's (1990) collection of contemporary
gang research includes no discussion of gangs in
suburban and rural areas.  In the popular press,
however, there are numerous discussions of how
urban street gangs diffuse out to the countryside
(e.g., Weingarten and Coates, 1989b; Coates and
Blau, 1989; Rangel, 1991; Mount, 1992).  Many of
these discussions see drug trafficking as the
driving force behind the spread of gangs to rural
areas, a move facilitated by an improved
interstate highway system.

While the popular press currently focuses on urban
street gangs in rural areas, biker gangs have a
long history of criminal activity in rural
settings (Abadinsky, 1989).  Unfortunately, bikers
are notoriously difficult to study (Wolf, 1991),
so relatively few details of their activities are
documented in the professional literature.

Where street gangs are found in rural areas, it is
usually through migration from urban areas.  Based
on interviews with 30 rural police, Donnermeyer
(1994) suggested 4 ways in which gangs move into
the rural setting:

  Displacement.  This occurs when urban police put
too much pressure on urban gangs and members drift
away from the city to set up their operations.

o Branch office.  Sometimes an urban gang targets
a small town, either because the town is located
on an important transportation hub or because the
selling price of drugs in the small town is much
higher than in urban areas.  When this occurs,
individuals from the gang move into an area for
the express purpose of selling drugs and
conducting other illegal activities.  While
recruiting locals into the gang may occur, such
recruitment is of secondary interest.

We might speculate that displacement and the
establishment of branch offices probably follow a
pattern of fanning out from urban to suburban and
then to rural areas.  There are other ways,
however, in which gangs might move more directly
from the urban to the rural setting.  These
include the franchise and social learning.

o The franchise.  This occurs when small-town drug
dealers seek to expand their business and increase
their profits by linking up with an urban drug
dealing gang.

o Social learning.  This occurs when a rural
juvenile offender is incarcerated in a juvenile
detention facility or jail with more hardened
urban youth.  These urban youth teach the rural
juvenile the details of drug dealing and provide
opportunities for business connections.  Many
rural and small-town areas have no detention
facilities, and most States prohibit locking
juveniles in adult jails, even for short periods. 
Consequently, it may be necessary to transport
juveniles to centralized detention facilities. 
Illinois is a good illustration.  While the State
has 102 counties, it has only 16 juvenile
detention facilities.  Thus, police in most
counties will transport juveniles to facilities in
other counties.

Donnermeyer's categories were not directly tested
in our interviews, but they are consistent with
what we were told by rural and small-town police. 
However, our interviews did suggest an additional
scenario by which urban gangs move into rural
areas.  

o  Urban flight.  Sometimes urban families move
into rural areas, either to get away from the city
in general or with the specific intention of
getting their kids away from gang influences.  In
other cases the juvenile is an urban gang member
sent to live with relatives in a rural community
to remove him or her from gang influences.  While
this may spell the end of gang activity for some
gang-involved youth, others simply try to
establish a gang foothold in their new
environment.  This situation can also facilitate
establishing a franchise or branch office.

The lack of evidence makes it difficult to say
anything with confidence about gangs in rural
areas, and it is too early to tell if gangs in
rural areas will develop into a significant
problem.  It is also unclear how rural gang
activity can be measured; however, the combination
of gangs, drugs, and crime in rural areas is an
important development that bears monitoring.

Alcohol and drugs.  Another issue is the problem
of substance use, including alcohol and illegal
drugs.  This issue has two dimensions, use by
rural citizens and criminal trafficking
organizations in rural areas.  The professional
literature has discussed the issue of drug use,
while the issue of rural trafficking organizations
has more often been addressed in the popular
press.  Alcohol, among the most popular of the
mind-altering drugs, is of particular concern in
rural areas.  Each year more people are arrested
for Driving Under the Influence (DUI) than for any
other single offense, and DUI is more common in
rural areas (Jacobs, 1989; Weisheit and Klofas,
1992).  According to the UCR, the rate of arrest
for DUI in cities of 10,000 is more than double
that in cities of 250,000 or more, and the rates
for both suburban and rural counties are much
higher than in the largest cities.

Studies of young people commonly find alcohol use
is more frequent in rural areas.  Even if urban
and rural rates of alcohol use by young people
were similar, the rural setting would be cause for
greater concern.

Similar rates of alcohol use, however, may be more
of a problem for rural than for urban youth
because rural youth must spend more time on the
roads.  The distances that must be traveled from
homes to school and other entertainment events, or
even to visit friends, are generally much greater
for rural youth than for urban youth.  The lack of
availability of public transportation means that
these youth spend a significant amount of time in
cars.  Most social use of alcohol by these rural
teens is followed by driving or at least riding in
a car where the driver has been drinking.  The
relative lack of traffic on rural roadways and the
distances to be traversed often lead to driving at
high rates of speed.  With many rural roads in
poor condition, poorly marked for hazards, and
poorly lit, these youth are already at higher risk
of accidents leading to injury or death (Peters,
Oetting, & Edwards, 1992, pp. 25-26).

Regarding illegal drugs, one of the most common
ways to compare rural and urban areas is to use
self-report surveys.  McIntosh et al. (1979) found
that rural youth began using both legal and
illegal drugs at a younger age, but a higher
percentage of urban youth were users.  Swaim et
al. (1986) compared adolescent drug use in three
rural communities with that in an urban community. 
They concluded that the differences in drug use
among rural communities may have been greater than
differences between rural and urban areas.  They
emphasized the importance of local variation and
suggested that local policies and programs for
rural areas not be based on aggregate national
data.  Finally, in School Crime: A National Crime
Victimization Survey Report, students ages 12
through 19 in central city, suburban, and rural
areas were asked about the availability of drugs. 
There were no differences across these areas in
the reported availability of drugs in their
schools, but students in rural areas were more
likely to report having attended drug education
classes.  And, in contrast to reports on drugs,
students in rural schools were more likely to
report that alcohol was available in their schools
(Bastian amd Taylor, 1991).

In his summary and analysis of 65 research studies
of drug use by rural youth, Donnermeyer (1992)
concluded that for alcohol, rural and urban rates
were similar.  The use of marijuana in urban areas
was higher, but these differences were shrinking
over time.  Rural youth generally reported greater
use of inhalants and stimulants but less use of
cocaine and crack cocaine.  Finally, Donnermeyer
noted the relative paucity of research on rural
drug issues, in particular the lack of information
about how rural youth gain access to drugs.

An indirect way of comparing rural and urban drug
use is to use arrest statistics.  Belyea and
Zingraff (1985) compared drug arrest data in North
Carolina for urban and rural counties between 1976
and 1980 and concluded that rural arrest rates
were consistently lower, and there was no evidence
that rural and urban rates were converging. 
Castellano and Uchida (1990) estimate that the
rate of drug arrests in urban areas is nearly four
times that in rural counties.  They speculate that
because most drug enforcement is proactive,
variations in arrest rates among jurisdictions are
more the result of differences in enforcement
efforts than of differences in consumption
patterns.

A 1990 report to Congress by the General
Accounting Office (GAO) examined rural drug abuse
using data from a variety of sources.  The report
found that the rate of total drug use, including
alcohol, was similar across rural and urban areas,
but there were differences in the types of drugs
used.  Cocaine use was lower in rural areas, but
the use of inhalants was higher.  Further, while
total drug arrest rates were similar across areas,
alcohol arrests were higher and drug arrests
correspondingly lower in rural areas.  The report
also found that anti-drug programs in rural areas
faced special problems:

Rural programs can have greater per-client costs
because of their "diseconomies of scale."  These
areas may find it difficult to attract and hold
trained and experienced staff.  Clients must
travel farther to reach programs and program staff
must travel farther to reach clients.  The
programs may lack acceptance by the community,
community agencies, and the local school system
(GAO, 1990, pp. 6-7).

Where rural drug treatment programs do exist, the
nature of their services may be different:

Rural substance abuse programs tend to offer a
wider array of outreach and acute response
services, such as hot lines and crisis
intervention.  Outpatient services tend to be
heavily utilized with respect to staff
availability.  Rural hospitals are less likely to
provide inpatient services and the need for
inpatient services is filled by sending the
patients to the closest urban treatment facility
(Leukefeld, Clayton, and Myers, 1992, pp. 100-
101).

Recent reports in the press suggest that patterns
of urban drug use, including crack, are spreading
to rural areas (Treaster, 1991; McConnell, 1989;
Weingarten and Coates, 1989b).  Whether these
reports prove to anticipate emerging trends or are
merely isolated cases remains to be seen.  They do
signal another area that should be monitored
closely.

The issue of drug trafficking and production in
rural areas is less understood but may also be an
emerging cause for concern.  Popular reports
suggest that rural areas may serve as production
sites for methamphetamine, designer drugs, crack,
and marijuana (Weingarten, 1989; Baker et al.,
1989; Weisheit, 1992; 1993; McCormick and
O'Donnell, 1993).  It has been noted that
clandestine drug labs are often set up in rural
areas "where strong fumes, suspicious bottles, and
drums of chemicals are less likely to be detected
(National Institute of Justice, 1993, p. 4)."  It
has also been suggested that the dangers involved
in handling these chemicals and the complexity of
the laws regulating them makes it important that
rural police be trained in identifying and
responding to clandestine labs and the shipment of
precursor chemicals (National Institute of
Justice, 1993, p. 5).

Weisheit's (1992; 1993) studies of commercial
marijuana growers found they were almost
exclusively rural operations.  In addition,
knowledge about marijuana growing was particularly
easy to learn for those who grew up in farm
communities.  

Other reports argue that rural areas have become
important transshipment points for drugs destined
for urban areas (Weingarten and Coates, 1989a;
"Illegal drug trade spreads," 1989).  The problem
is exacerbated by an improved highway system and
by the large number of isolated airstrips set up
for corporate farms and for crop dusters serving
rural farmlands.

As one response to the issue of drugs, about 70
percent of the police agencies in the United
States are currently part of multijurisdictional
task forces (Schlegel and McGarrell, 1991). 
However, participation in these groups varies by
population density, with rural agencies
underrepresented.  For example, about 80 percent
of the agencies that serve populations from 25,000
to 99,999 are in task forces, but only 40 percent
of agencies serving fewer than 10,000 citizens are
in task forces (Bureau of Justice Statistics,
1992).  This low participation rate does not mean,
however, that rural agencies tend to minimize or
dismiss the drug problem.  To the contrary, the
issue of drugs consistently arose as a major crime
concern among the rural police officials with whom
we spoke.  They also believed that drug use was
connected to many of their other crime problems,
such as theft and burglary.  As one sheriff put
it:

I think the citizens are more concerned about
burglaries and breaking and entering.  However,
the burglaries and breaking and entering are
caused by drugs and alcohol. . . . if you
concentrate on drugs and make those arrests, you
will put your burglars in jail also, because the
addict is usually the burglar.

Rural officers also expressed widespread and
enthusiastic support for such drug prevention
programs as D.A.R.E. (Drug Abuse Resistance
Education).  Of course, such programs not only
address the issue of drugs but also facilitate
communication between the police and school-aged
children, and they establish excellent public
relations with the rest of the community.  As one
sheriff reported:

We have found the D.A.R.E. program has been a
great tool in helping us get things done in the
community.  The kids go home and say, "Hey, those
cops are OK, they're doing things for us."  It
kind of rubs off on the parents a little bit. 

Vice and organized crime.  Aside from Abadinsky's
(1986) passing reference to the "Dixie Mafia,"
little has been written about vice and organized
crime in rural areas.  Despite this, there is good
reason to believe that vice and organized crime
are features of the rural environment (Potter and
Gaines, 1990).  For example, small communities
near major highways often have problems with
prostitution set up for truck drivers.  Also,
areas that were traditionally involved in
moonshining and bootlegging can use some of the
same routes and expertise to transport drugs,
stolen auto parts, and other illegal merchandise. 
In 1989, the so-called "Cornbread Mafia,"
operating out of Kentucky, was discovered to have
marijuana operations in at least nine States.  By
April of 1990, 86 people were arrested as part of
the operation, and the government had confiscated
475,000 pounds of marijuana on 33 farms (Yetter,
1989; Coates and Weingarten, 1990).  At the same
time, a group of more than 30 people operating out
of the southwest who called themselves "The
Company" ran an elaborate indoor marijuana
operation.  At the time of the group's arrest,
about $1 million in growing equipment was seized
by authorities (Coates and Weingarten, 1990).

Potter and Gaines (1992) used local newspapers,
official records, and participant observation to
identify 28 crime networks operating in 5 counties
in rural Kentucky.  A major activity of these
networks was marijuana cultivation and the
transshipment of cocaine, but they were also
involved in the illegal sale of liquor,
prostitution, and gambling.  Of the 28 networks
studied, 25 utilized corrupt relationships with
public officials and local law enforcement
officers.  Further, 5 of these 25 corrupt
relationships were based on kinship ties between
law enforcement and members of the crime network.

While anecdotal evidence suggests that vice and
organized crime are a rural problem, there is
simply too little information to make general
statements or to even speculate on the
similarities and differences with urban organized
crime groups.

Violence.  In previous sections data from the UCR
were used to compare rural and urban violent
crimes.  Much of the focus in the UCR is on
"street crime" involving strangers, an aspect of
crime which may be less salient in rural areas
where social interaction is more likely to be
among acquaintances.  For example, among index
violent offenses, the crime most likely to involve
strangers is robbery, the offense with the
greatest rural-urban discrepancy.  While the
homicide rate in urban areas is about 5 times that
in rural areas, the robbery rate in urban areas is
almost 50 times that in rural areas.

Greenberg, Carey, and Popper (1987) used data from
the National Center for Health Statistics (NCHS)
to study violent deaths among young people age 15
to 24.  Violent deaths included homicide, suicide,
highway auto deaths, and deaths from such
accidents as drowning, falling, and fires.  The
highest rates were in four western States, and
within these States rates were highest in rural
counties.  In these counties the violent death
rate for young whites was even higher than for
young inner city blacks in the six most violent
cities.

Indeed, the white male violent death rate in the
six most dangerous Western counties is 13 percent
higher than the comparable black rate in the six
inner cities.  To be sure, black inner-city
homicide rates are high, but rural Western violent
death rates from auto and other accidents as well
as for suicide more than offset their lower
homicide rates.  The rural areas of the West,
rather than the American urban ghetto, is where
youth is far more likely to suffer violent death
(Greenberg, Carey, and Popper, 1987, p. 43;
emphasis added).

Regarding criminal violence, as opposed to
violence more generally, the data provided by the
UCR are important starting points but are
incomplete in several respects.  First, they tell
little about differences in the character of urban
and rural violence, as it relates to both the
offense itself and to the manner in which police
and prosecutors respond.  Second, some forms of
violence are not included, such as family
violence.

Bachman's (1992a; 1992b) analysis of National
Crime Survey victimization data found that "On
average, individuals residing in central cities
experienced nearly twice as many crimes of
violence as those in nonmetro areas and
approximately 40 percent more than those residing
in other metro areas . . . (1992a, p. 551).  Rural
violence was more often among acquaintances and
among family members in particular.

Some of these issues can be illustrated using the
few studies available on domestic violence in
rural areas.  In her observational study of
families in a rural Appalachian community, given
the fictitious name Raven Ridge, Gagne (1992)
noted that both the police and prosecutor were
reluctant to act in abuse cases and, as a
consequence, women were reluctant to call them for
assistance.

Most people I met agreed that police protection in
Raven Ridge was inadequate.  John explained that
it took at least an hour for an officer to arrive
after a call was placed, and when the cruiser
arrived, the officers would sit in the car and
beep the horn rather than come to the door.  His
explanation for this behavior was that so many
officers had been shot responding to domestic
calls that few were willing to risk going to the
door. . . . Acceptance of a man's authority over
his wife and the belief in the sanctity of the
home, together with officers' belief that they
would be in danger if they responded to domestic
calls, resulted in the failure of the legal system
to provide protection for physically battered
women. . . . Given the geographic isolation, lack
of protection, and lack of economic opportunities
available to them, women acquiesced to control in
the short term while thinking about ways to
improve their situation over time (pp. 410-412).

The conclusions of this case study receive some
support from the few existing quantitative
studies.  In his study of police jurisdictions in
Ohio, Bell (1986; 1989) found the highest rates
for domestic violence disputes were in the least
populated jurisdictions.  In neither cities nor
rural areas were the police likely to make an
arrest following a domestic violence complaint,
though they were somewhat more likely in urban
areas.  The response of rural police to domestic
violence may be changing.  In our conversations
with rural officers this issue arose frequently,
usually reflecting a heightened sensitivity to the
issue.  Based on what we have heard, it is
possible that rural police are increasingly
willing to intervene in domestic violence cases--
both because research suggests that arrest might
be an effective deterrent and out of concern for
lawsuits that might result from inaction. 
However, further study is needed to determine if
earlier observations about the response of rural
police to domestic violence are still accurate.

Even less is known about rural-urban differences
in child abuse, but two studies by the National
Center on Child Abuse and Neglect (1981; 1988)
suggest the issue is worth further study.  The
first study was conducted in 1980 and the second
in 1986.  The studies differed in one important
respect.  In the 1980 version abuse was defined as
"demonstrated harm as a result of maltreatment
(1988, p. ix)."  The 1986 study included a
definition of abuse that mirrored that of 1980 but
also included children "placed at risk for harm,"
such as being left alone.  When the first
definition was used, abuse rates were higher in
rural than in major urban counties.  However, when
the broader definition was used, urban rates of
abuse were higher.  The studies were based on a
relatively small number of counties and could not
address contextual issues that would explain these
differences.  Other research suggests that
compared with doctors in larger cities, physicians
in small towns detect more child abuse but are
less likely to report cases to the authorities
(Badger, 1989).

Another source of information about both spouse
abuse and child abuse is the National Family
Violence Survey (NFVS).  This self-report national
survey was first conducted in 1975 (Straus,
Gelles, and Steinmetz, 1980), and again in 1985
(Straus and Gelles, 1990) and measures violence
using the Conflict Tactics Scales (CTS).  These
scales tap a range of behaviors, from verbal
aggression to inflicting serious physical harm,
and are considered the most thorough and sensitive
measures of family violence currently available. 
They are important because both surveys were
designed to specifically include substantial
numbers of rural respondents.

Regarding child abuse, the 1975 NFVS found that
large cities (1 million or more) had the highest
rates, while rural, suburban, and small-city rates
were similar.  The 1985 survey found no
differences in child abuse rates across
communities of different sizes (Wolfner and
Gelles, 1993).  Regarding spouse abuse, the 1975
survey found that rates were highest in large
cities and rural areas, and lowest in small cities
and suburbs.  However, the differences were rather
small.  Curiously, although the 1985 study was
designed to specifically include urban, suburban,
and rural respondents, the major book describing
the 1985 findings (Straus and Gelles, 1990) does
not mention differences in spouse abuse by
community size.  If domestic violence in rural
areas is as frequent as in urban areas, this is
particularly interesting in light of the
substantially lower general crime rate in rural
areas.

Some rural areas have a long history of violence,
including lynching, labor unrest, and blood feuds
(e.g., Angle, 1980; Littlewood, 1969).  Lynching
seldom occurs today, and labor unrest is
comparatively nonviolent.  While there are still
pockets of rural America with clan violence (e.g.,
Burrough, 1989; Bukro, 1991), this, too, seems
less common than in the past.  Further, the nature
of rural interactions means that crimes such as
homicide, rape, and assault are more likely to
occur among acquaintances than is true in urban
areas.  This, combined with the greater distrust
of government, may also mean that the police are
less likely to be called when such crimes occur. 
Consequently, preventing violent interpersonal
crimes in rural areas may require different
strategies than in urban areas.

Hate crimes.  Related to the issue of violence,
though less well documented, is the use of rural
areas by so-called "hate groups" and related
extremist organizations.  Some have argued that
the terms "hate groups" and "hate crimes" lack
scientific precision, are emotionally loaded, and
serve to incense rather than inform (e.g., Jacobs,
1993).  The discussion that follows maintains the
label "hate crime" because it is familiar to most
readers.  While the discussion includes several
groups under this definition, the focus is on
groups that combine hatred, whether based on race,
religion, or sexual orientation, with an ideology
that fosters violence.

Aside from the physical isolation and privacy
afforded by rural settings, rural culture has
elements that are consistent with the mindset
underlying some right-wing extremist groups. 
Flynn and Gerhardt (1989) make this argument
regarding the rural American West:

It is no accident that the Silent Brotherhood was
spawned in the American West.  It is a land of
huge proportions, its vast emptiness alluring to
the frontier spirit. . . . It is that frontier
spirit that produced the Posse Comitatus, American
Agriculture Movement, Sagebrush Rebellion, Aryan
Nations, and other far-right groups.  It also
produced individuals steeped in the mountain man
mystique of individualism and survivalism. 

Over the last two decades, America's backwoods
became dotted with survivalist training camps.  A
Klan-run camp at Anahuac, Texas, taught guerrilla
warfare techniques.  A Christian survival school
deep in the Arkansas Ozarks taught urban warfare .
. . The leader of the Carolina Knights of the KKK,
Frazier Glenn Miller, claimed a thousand men would
answer his trumpet call at Angier, North Carolina
. . . And farmers, the veritable salt of America's
earth, put a "face" on their plight by blaming
Jewish bankers for bringing them to the brink of
economic collapse (pp. 9-10).

In his discussion of the rise and spread of
survivalist movements, James Coates (1987)
addressed the question of where these survivalists
come from:

They come from the high pine forests of Montana
and the coastal plains of Texas.  They come from
the hills and hollows of North Carolina and the
rugged Ozark Mountains along the Missouri-Arkansas
border.  They labor in downstate Illinois and
press the good fight in Wisconsin's dairy land. 
They clamor for what they deem to be righteousness
on the Nebraska-Kansas-Missouri border and in the
bayous of Louisiana (p. 18).

Survivalists in particular eschew urban life and
seek to return to simpler times in a world they
can create and control, something much easier to
accomplish in remote rural areas.

Some of these far right groups have targeted
farmers as potential members, particularly in the
Midwest with a combination of anti-Semitism,
racism, fundamentalist Christianity, and a deep
suspicion of government.  In economically troubled
farm belt communities these groups have a
particularly sympathetic audience (Zeskind, 1985). 
Davidson (1990) describes the literature published
by one of those group, the Iowa Society for
Educated Citizens (ISEC):

The literature decries race mixing, gun
registration, the liberal (i.e., Jewish) media,
the IRS, homosexuality, the Council on Foreign
Relations, and driver's licenses--the last because
by accepting them citizens are, in effect,
legitimizing what the self-proclaimed patriots
consider illegitimate authority.  But the target
of choice for ISEC members . . . is the Federal
Reserve Bank: root of farmers' problems and the
front organization for the international Jewish
bankers (p. 103).  Many--especially members of the
Posse Comitatus--refuse to recognize any
government authority higher than county sheriff
(p. 109).

Sometimes these beliefs lead directly to violence,
as when members of the Posse Comitatus fight
paying taxes and farm foreclosures, or when they
commit robbery and theft to fund their activities. 
In perhaps the most famous incident, Gordon Kahl
killed two U.S. marshals in North Dakota in
February of 1983, before being killed himself in a
shootout with law enforcement officials in
Arkansas 4 months later.  Kahl avoided arrest for
4 months with the help of a loose network of
sympathizers (Corcoran, 1990).

Many of these groups weave together violence and
religion, believing that Armageddon is near and
that they must be heavily armed for self-
protection.  And, as Colvin notes, the rural
setting plays a role in these beliefs:

The most fervent members of the Posse [Comitatus]
were armed survivalists whose stated goal was to
be prepared for an eventual, and inevitable,
catastrophe--a war or economic depression. 
Fundamental to the beliefs of the Posse was that
only rural dwellers would survive a war and that
unprepared urban individuals seeking food and
shelter would become enemies.  Accordingly,
followers were instructed to collect arms and
stockpile food (Colvin, 1992, p. 20).

While it may seem ironic, many of these groups see
themselves as highly patriotic and deeply
religious.  They believe that the U.S.
Constitution and the Bill of Rights were divinely
inspired but that subsequent amendments and laws
have undercut these documents to serve special
(i.e., Jewish) interests.  Religion not only
underlies their patriotism but is also used to
justify racism.  Among the most visible religious
forces behind these hate groups is the Christian
Identity Movement.  Identity followers believe
that descendants of Northern European stock are
the true lost tribes of Israel and that the United
States is their promised land.  They also believe
that Jews are descendants of Cain, who was
fathered by the devil in the form of the serpent
in the Garden of Eden.

Nine months after eating the apple, Eve bore two
sons.  Adam's son was Abel.  Satan's was Cain. 
Cain killed Abel.  Cain's descendants killed
Jesus.  Now, under the banner of world Jewry,
they're trying to kill all white Christians
(Coates, 1987, p. 82).

The Identity Movement also decries race mixing,
believing that people of color were mistakes by
God in the process of creating man, "false starts
before God made the perfect-- read white--Adam and
Eve (Corcoran, 1990, p. 39)."  Viewing them as
less than fully human, Identity followers commonly
refer to people of color as "mud people."  The
Identity Movement's focus on a literal
interpretation of the Bible makes it appear, at
least on the surface, to have much in common with
traditional fundamentalist Christian groups.  In
rural areas this has considerable appeal to many. 
While such groups may be on the fringe in their
beliefs, these beliefs are only an exaggerated and
distorted version of existing rural values
emphasizing religion, patriotism, and independence
from government tyranny.   

The number of active members of these fringe
groups is unknown, but there are probably no more
than 10 or 20 thousand.  However, these groups
have a high potential for crime, particularly
violent crime.  Unlike young urban skinheads,
whose dress and behavior cry out for public
attention, members of rural hate groups blend
perfectly into the surrounding community and
actively avoid saying or doing things in public
that would draw the attention of authorities or
the press.  Rural hate group members do not
generally look like rebels and are often longtime
residents of their communities.  As Hamm (1993)
has observed, American hate groups have found they
are best served by secrecy and an unwillingness to
share information about their groups with
outsiders:

Evidence of a politics of silence among members of
the far right is well-documented. . . .
withholding information (or silence) becomes a
political tool:  The less outsiders know about the
individual and organizational features of
extremist groups, the safer the group becomes from
outside threats to control them through public
policy (regardless of their criminal exploits). 
Silence, therefore, serves to "harden the target"
of right-wing extremism by providing a
paramilitary umbrella over the individual and
organizational interests of such groups (Hamm,
1993, p. 99-100).

Our conversations with rural police indicate these
groups are widely scattered and, where they are
known to exist, keep a relatively low profile. 
While secrecy and maintaining a low profile are
the rule, there are several notable exceptions,
including Tom Metzger in California and Gary Rex
Lauk in Nebraska.  Neo-Nazi literature,
newsletters, electronic bulletin boards, telephone
message services, hate-based music, and even
public access cable television programs have been
attributed to one or both of these men (Hamm,
1993; Dees, 1993; Bjorgo and Witte, 1993).

It is important to recognize that the groups
described here are distinct from a host of other
"fringe" groups attracted to rural areas.  Many
religious cults that find rural areas appealing
have no organized involvement in crime.  The Amana
colonies in Iowa are one example.  Other groups
may be involved in crime, but neither the group
nor the crimes of its members are driven by an
ideology of hate that also connects them to other
groups.  This is illustrated by David Koresh's
Branch Davidian compound outside of Waco, Texas. 
The compound was burned to the ground on April 19,
1993, killing most of its members, after a 51-day
standoff with Federal authorities.  While Koresh
stockpiled illegal weapons and explosives in
preparation for a coming Armageddon, there was no
evidence that the group's philosophy was driven by
racial or ethnic hatred, that the group planned
such crimes as murder or robbery against people
outside the group, or that the group was connected
ideologically or organizationally with other hate
groups (Gibbs, 1993; Linedecker, 1993). 
Ironically, the heavy-handed actions of Federal
agents in the Waco case, and several others, might
be interpreted by survivalists as evidence for
their worst fears about the Federal Government.

There will always be groups and leaders driven by
individual pathology.  The concern in this section
has been with groups connected by a criminogenic
ideology that combines religion, politics, and
racism and is based on institutionalized hatred. 
Ultimately, such groups have a greater potential
for crime and violence and will be more difficult
to control.  We have suggested that features of
the rural environment make it easier for hate-
based groups to operate there.  The secrecy with
which they operate, and the lack of empirical
evidence about their numbers and operations make
it difficult to determine whether such groups are
a greater problem in rural areas than in urban
areas.  This is an important issue that merits
further study.

Arson.  The Insurance Committee for Arson Control
reports that although urban arson receives the
most media attention, rural arson has been
increasing.  "Unlike arson in cities, which for
the most part is confined to a limited site,
whether a building or an entire block, rural
arsons can cover vast acres of forest and
wildlands as well as structures and machinery. 
With the depressed condition of the farm economy,
some observers fear rural arsons could be on the
upswing (Security Systems Digest, 1985)."  

In contrast, the 1991 annual report of the
National Fire Prevention Association (NFPA, 1992)
reflects relatively stable arson rates in rural
counties between 1983 and 1991.  According to 1992
UCR data, as the size of the community goes down,
the rate of arson offenses also goes down, from a
rate of 91 per 100,000 people in cities of 250,000
or more to a rate of only 20 per 100,000 in rural
counties. (Uniform Crime Reports, 1992, Table
2.30).

Whether rural arson rates have increased or
remained relatively stable over time, there are
important differences between arson problems in
rural and urban areas.  Compared with urban areas,
rural communities more often lack the resources
and staff to fully investigate arsons.  In its
Rural Arson Control report (1989), the
International Association of Fire Chiefs (IAFC)
noted that "Rural arson control efforts are
hindered by constraints and requirements specific
to rural areas.  These special conditions make
rural arson prevention, detection, and control
different from and more difficult than urban arson
problems (p. i)."  Small staffs and substantial
travel distances can slow response time and impede
rural arson investigations.  The problem is
compounded by a lack of resources and technical
equipment for conducting thorough investigations. 
Further complicating investigations, rural fires
more often advance to the "total burn" syndrome,
in which the structure is completely destroyed. 
In fact, "fire damage in rural areas runs at least
three times urban rates (p. l7)."  Total burn
arson fires often require additional manpower and
equipment to sort through the debris. 
Consequently, rural fires are often not
investigated for arson unless the preliminary
evidence is particularly compelling. 

Among the recommendations of the IAFC report is
that it is particularly important for rural arson
investigators to cultivate good working
relationships with local and State police and with
the insurance industry.  These relationships can
somewhat offset the shortage of manpower and
resources.  Further, the absence of explicitly
worked out cooperative procedures for reporting
arson fire incidents contributes to the
misreporting of arson data to the UCR system
(IAFC, 1989).  

Existing evidence suggests that the problems of
rural arson and its investigation are not
identical to those in urban areas.  It appears
that some of those problems can be minimized by
greater cooperation between arson investigators
and rural police, but this merits further study.

Agricultural crimes.  Most of the crimes discussed
to this point (e.g., homicide, child abuse) take
place in both urban and rural areas.  Some crimes,
however, are peculiar to the rural setting.  These
include such offenses as poaching and agricultural
crime, neither of which has been extensively
studied.  The focus here is on agricultural crime
because some literature is available and because
of its impact on the country as a whole through
escalating food and insurance prices.

The UCR does not separate agricultural crime from
other offenses.  However, each year the UCR does
list specific items of theft and the rate at which
these items are recovered.  Among the listed items
is livestock, which account for losses of about
$18 million in 1992, only about 12 percent of
which is recovered (Uniform Crime Reports, 1992,
Table 24).  Charles Swanson (1981), along with
Leonard Territo (Swanson and Territo, 1980), has
assembled incidents of agricultural crime that
illustrate its scope and seriousness.  These
include:

o $1 million in annual thefts of avocado, lime,
and mango fruit in Florida.
o $1 million in annual losses to timber thieves
and vandals in western Washington. 
o $2 million in annual losses from pesticide
thefts.
o Eighty percent of surveyed Iowa farmers had been
victims of theft in the prior 3 years.
o $30 million a year is lost to theft from
California farmers.

Further, Swanson, and  Territo (1980) note that
single offenses can be enormously costly.  They
cite embezzlement at an Iowa grain elevator which
produced a loss of $10 million.  They also cite
anecdotal evidence that organized crime is active
in agricultural crime in several States.  Much of
Swanson and Territo's information came from a
variety of sources but primarily from State Farm
Bureau offices.  Though not a conventional source
of crime data, the Farm Bureau may be a good
source of data specifically on agricultural crime.

The problem of agricultural crime also illustrates
the importance of accounting for the considerable
variation across rural areas when addressing the
crime problem.  Most discussions of rural crime
focus on the close and relatively informal nature
of rural life, and this is true in many rural
communities (see the discussion below).  However,
many farmers, particularly those with large farms,
are physically isolated from their neighbors and
their community.  In their study of Montana
ranchers and farmers, for example, Saltiel,
Gilchrist, and Harvie (1992) included respondents
who lived as far as 78 miles from the nearest
emergency services.  In addition, the average
distance to the nearest neighbor was 4 miles. 
Those most isolated were most concerned about
sufficient police patrols, but these were the very
areas in which increased patrol activity was
impractical.  Saltiel et al. (1992) observed that:

Although those living closer to population centers
may face greater risks, those who live farther
away are more isolated from potential sources of
help when problems arise. . . Those who live
farther from the police appear to be particularly
sensitive to the ability of law enforcement to
patrol effectively. . . . Those who live farthest
from law enforcement are more sensitive to the
lack of available help from their neighbors which
in turn increases concern about the sufficiency of
police patrols. . . . The greater the isolation of
farm residents, the greater the reliance on police
(p. 542). 

While police services are often thinly spread
across these remote rural areas, the importance of
these services is magnified by the isolation of
residents from each other and from other service
agencies.

Crime prevention in farm communities has been the
focus of some research.  The theft of livestock,
grain, and expensive farm machinery is facilitated
by the trend toward larger farms.  As farms
increase in size, farmers more often live away
from storage sheds, machinery, livestock, leaving
them frequently unattended.  This not only makes
theft and vandalism easier to commit but means
that the crime may go undetected for some time,
making apprehension more difficult.

In our conversations with rural police in farming
areas, a common complaint was that farmers were
too casual about marking expensive equipment and
about leaving it unattended near roadways, where
the temptation for theft would be greater.  As one
sheriff told us, "People in a rural community have
a tendency to trust everybody and they get real
sloppy about leaving their stuff laying around. 
Especially the farmers.  They'll have an implement
set out in the field and thieves will steal part
of it."  Some of these casual attitudes reflect
the reality that theft and vandalism are not
everyday occurrences for the typical farmer.  For
example, a survey of victimization among 428
Alabama farmers found that in the prior 12 months
a relatively small percentage had experienced
vandalism (13 percent), burglary (8 percent), or
theft (9 percent) (Dunkelberger, Clayton, Myrick,
and Lyles, 1992).  Just over half (58 percent) of
the farmers reported any of these victimizations
over their years of farming.  Most farmers in the
study either did not have such simple security
devices as locks on storage sheds, or they had
them but did not use them.  Perhaps the study's
most interesting finding was that theft,
vandalism, or burglary were not the crimes about
which these farmers were most concerned.  Their
greatest concerns were about what the study's
authors describe as "nuisance" crimes-poaching,
trespassing, and dumping trash on farm land.  It
was also found that victimization and crime
prevention were related to the size of the farm
operation.  Large farms were more likely to be
victimized.  The operators of large farms were
twice as likely to leave machinery unattended
overnight in fields but were more likely to take
other crime prevention measures, such as marking
cattle and locking farm gates.  Interesting within
the context of the earlier discussion of rural
crime, the most widely practiced security measure
was to "have a neighbor watch the farm when out of
town," which was reported by more than 80 percent
of the farmers in the study.

The importance of farm size in the Alabama study
has implications for the study of farm crime in
other parts of the country.  The size of the
average farm varies substantially from one State
to another.  For example, in 1990, the average
farm in Kentucky was 152 acres, while the average
farm in Arizona was more than 4,600 acres (U.S.
Bureau of the Census, 1993).  This wide interstate
variation in farm size again highlights the
importance of recognizing and considering regional
variations across rural America.
As a closing comment about agriculture-related
crime, it is striking that so little is known
about crime and victimization of migrant workers. 
This group is interesting for practical reasons
and for theoretical reasons as well.  Migrant
workers are an integral part of the rural
environment, yet they remain outsiders in most
communities where they work.  Consequently, they
may experience the informality of the rural
justice process without the benefit of the
personal familiarity with criminal justice
authorities that is true for most permanent rural
citizens. 

Wildlife crimes.  Wildlife crimes, like
agricultural crimes, are almost exclusively a
rural phenomenon.  In recent years wildlife
crimes, especially poaching, have become a major
concern for conservation police officers such as
game wardens and wildlife officers. According to
the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, "Wildlife
shipments entering and leaving the United States
during Fiscal Year 1990 had a declared value of
over $1 billion" (U.S. Department of the Interior,
1991, p. 3).  In a 1986 publication, the estimated
replacement costs of illegally harvested fish and
wildlife exceeded $45 million in Illinois, while
deer poaching alone was estimated to cost
Pennsylvania over $93 million a year in
replacement costs (Pash, 1986).  Working in
sparsely populated areas, poachers can be
particularly difficult to apprehend.  According to
Lt. Don Hastings of the Illinois Department of
Conservation's Law Enforcement Division, "It is
estimated that the conservation officer learns of
one out of every fifty [poaching] violations"
(Hastings, 1985).

The literature also suggests there are
noncommercial reasons individuals engage in
poaching activities.  For example, many rural
residents participate in poaching activities to
provide food for themselves and their families,
while others pride themselves on simply killing a
wildlife "trophy" (Bristow, 1982).  When illegal
harvesting of wildlife takes place on the hunter's
own land, there is sometimes an attitude of "my
land, my game."   This attitude may make it
difficult for poachers to define their behavior as
criminal.  Gathering food, collecting trophies,
and a sense of "my land, my game," all reduce the
likelihood that citizens will cooperate with the
investigation of wildlife crimes and undermine the
perceived legitimacy of the wildlife officer.

In their study of poachers in the rural south,
Forsyth and Marckese (1993) found that in addition
to providing money and food, poaching was exciting
and was seen as a test of wit and skill between
the poacher and the game warden.  Many poachers
were proud that they could easily outmaneuver the
technology and complex modern strategies of the
game warden.  "The conflict is similar to the city
slicker versus the country rube.  Although game
wardens are not representative of sophisticated
urbanites, they are in the same position (p.
169)."  In addition, poaching may reinforce the
rural mistrust of outsiders and of government. 
"They [poachers] are constantly in contact with
others who support an 'us' and 'them' orientation
toward the larger society.  Both game wardens and
the laws they enforce represent outsiders (p.
169)."  One poacher was quoted as saying, "I
outlaw because nobody is gonna tell me what to
hunt, where to hunt, or when to hunt.  My daddy
hunted like that and his daddy before him (Forsyth
and Marckese, 1993, p. 168)."  Poachers may
recognize that the nature of their activities, and
the large calibre weapons carried by game wardens,
can lead to violent confrontations, but for some
the inherent danger only adds to the excitement. 
As Forsyth and Marckese (1993) observed, "In
essence, these men saw poaching as a very rough
game.  They took pride in being tough enough to
participate in it and being successful in evading
the law (p. 167)."

Emerging issues.  In addition to traditional
wildlife and agricultural crimes, it is clear that
rural crime is assuming new forms, forms for which
many rural areas may be ill equipped to respond. 
For example, modern telecommunications makes it
easier to victimize rural residents with telephone
scams and fraud involving credit cards.  Rural
areas also face problems with illegal dumping,
toxic waste, and highway and railroad accidents
involving toxic chemicals and radioactive
materials.  Similarly, the increase in the number
of interstate highways through rural areas has led
to increasing problems with crime at rest stops
and with crimes against people and businesses
adjacent to the highway (McDowell, 1992).  It has
also created a situation in which rural areas find
themselves situated along key transshipment routes
for drugs and other illegal items.  One sheriff
commented to us that "you have to remember how
many people we have incarcerated because of the
interstate system.  Our biggest drug population
within the jail is from the pounds of cocaine or
marijuana coming off the interstate." 

The growing elderly population in rural areas will
also present police with a new set of problems
related to victimization.  Our conversations with
rural police indicate, senior citizens may also
expect police to provide a wider range of
services, particularly in rural areas where other
service providers may not be available.  Several
rural police commented to us about how a large
population of senior citizens shapes what is
expected of the police, requiring them to provide
a wide range of services:

We get a lot of calls from elderly people about
checking on somebody.  "Would you go over and
check on Marge?  Would you do this, would you do
that?"  Last winter I got a call from this woman
who says, "I think I got somebody in my basement,
would you come over?"  She has a clothes chute,
opened it and there was a light on down there. 
She "always" turned the light off, but this time
she didn't!

Another sheriff used seniors as citizen volunteers
to keep tabs on and provide assistance to other
senior citizens:

We can tell you about every widow or widower that
lives in the county.  A couple of times a week
they [volunteers] will call just to see how they
are doing.  A lot of them are lonely, old, and by
themselves.  We check to see how they are doing,
if everything is all right, if there are any
problems, and are they feeling well?  Just good
basic conversations.  Along with that, if they
can't make it to town to buy groceries or medicine
or make a doctor's appointment, we will actually
send somebody out.  Whether it's a volunteer or a
deputy, to make sure they make it to the doctor. 
We have made arrangements with the local grocery
store so we can charge on their behalf.  We have
bought basic necessities to get somebody through a
blizzard and had deputies deliver it on
snowmobiles.  

While these citizens often demanded a great deal
from the police, in return they often served as
watchful eyes, noticing when things aren't right
and bringing it to the attention of the police. 
One sheriff reported that the largest marijuana
seizure in his county was the result of a tip from
watchful senior citizens.

In addition to the specific crime issues just
discussed, little is known about how the features
of rural culture may shape the incidence and
reporting of a variety of offenses, particularly
those outside of traditional index crimes.  In
their study of the caseloads of rural courts in
four States, Fahnestock and Geiger (1990)
observed:

The criminal caseload profile reveals that certain
criminal activity is seldom prosecuted in rural
areas.  There were no cases in the sample relating
to illegal waste dumping or environmental offenses
such as illegal use of pesticides, yet fish and
game violations are frequently prosecuted. 
Banking law violations and other illegal business
practices did not appear in this caseload.  Few
embezzlement, incest, and aggravated sexual
assault cases were prosecuted, although it is
common knowledge that these crimes are widespread
(p. 46).

As discussed in the next section, responding to
new forms of crime and to changes in the
importance the public attaches to some existing
crimes will require more than simply applying
urban responses to rural settings.

Summary  

Although findings are inconsistent, it is probably
true that rural residents are less fearful of
crime than are residents of central cities.  It is
hard to know, however, how much of the difference
is a product of using questions that don't fit the
rural setting--such as questions about crime on
the respondent's street or in their neighborhood. 
In addition, some differences across studies may
reflect real variations across the particular
rural areas included in each study.

Rural-urban differences in fear of crime fit
public stereotypes and are consistent with
available data on rural and urban crime patterns. 
Official police data, as reported in the  Uniform
Crime Reports, show a pattern of higher crime in
urban areas across a variety of crime types. 
Violent crime per capita is eight times more
prevalent in urban areas, and property crime is
four times more prevalent in urban areas.  Self-
report studies of victimization also show rural-
urban differences, with rural citizens reporting
about half the victimization rate of urban
citizens.  This difference is large, but not as
great as the differences observed in official
reports.

Examining trends in rural and urban crime since
1980 suggests that rural and urban crime rates
generally follow parallel paths.  Official records
show that violent crime in both rural and urban
areas has drifted up slightly since 1980.  A
modest increase in the rural-urban gap in violent
crime is due primarily to changes in the rate of
robbery, which increased in urban areas and
declined in rural areas.  Since 1980 the rate of
property crime has changed little in either
setting.  Self-reported victimization studies also
suggest that rural and urban crime rates follow
parallel trends over time, but according to
victimization reports crime has steadily declined
over time in both rural and urban settings.

In addition to these general patterns of crime,
there are several specific issues that merit
discussion.  Gang activity was a frequently voiced
concern among rural police we interviewed, but is
rarely discussed in the professional literature. 
Documenting the nature and extent of gang activity
in rural areas is a difficult but important task.

Drugs appear to be as available in rural areas as
they are in urban areas, although rural drug users
are less likely to use cocaine and more likely to
use inhalants.  Alcohol use, particularly DUI, is
a greater concern in rural areas because the
distances traveled while intoxicated may be
greater, public transportation is not an option,
and roads may be narrow and poorly lit.  Drug
production, particularly marijuana and synthetic
drugs, is a rural issue about which relatively
little is known.  Finally, the distances involved
and the lack of anonymity in rural areas may raise
special concerns regarding the delivery of drug
treatment services.

Vice and organized crime are also rural issues
about which little is known.  Rural areas may be
directly involved, or they may be used as
transshipment points.  Some historical writers
address this, particularly regarding the
prohibition era, but there is relatively little
written about the current status of either vice or
organized crime in rural areas.

While violence among strangers is less common in
rural areas, rural-urban differences in child
abuse and domestic violence are not consistently
found in the research.  Earlier studies suggested
that rural police were more reluctant to intervene
in domestic violence cases than were urban police. 
Our interviews suggest this is changing rapidly. 
A growing sensitivity to domestic violence,
combined with revisions in State laws requiring a
more active police response, appear to make rural
police increasingly likely to formally intervene. 
Rural areas are also home to groups based on
philosophies of race-based hatred, anti-Semitism,
and a disdain for the Federal Government.  A
variety of practical and philosophical factors
make rural settings more hospitable to the
establishment of enclaves for these groups.

The distances that must be served by emergency
crews, and the lack of technical staff also
complicate detecting and investigating rural
arson.  Buildings are more likely to be totally
consumed because of the longer response time for
firefighters.  This not only increases the loss
from fire but may destroy evidence that could be
used by arson investigators.

Agricultural crimes are also a rural concern. 
Each year there are substantial losses from theft
and vandalism of farm equipment and from the theft
of livestock and harvested crops.  A major concern
is motivating farm operators to become more
actively involved in crime prevention.

Other rural crime issues include poaching,
telephone fraud, dumping of toxic waste, and
crimes linked to traffic on interstate highways. 
Another issue, not addressed in the literature,
but a concern among some of the police
interviewed, is crime associated with the
operation of casinos and legalized gambling.  

Many, perhaps most aspects of rural crime are
poorly understood.  This is unfortunate because
not only is rural crime a problem in itself but it
can also impact urban areas, as when drugs are
produced in or transshipped through rural
communities.  It is likely that the social
environment of rural areas shapes the types of
crimes committed in these areas as well as the
relationship between victims and offenders.  It is
also likely that the rural environment shapes
police work, an issue to which we now turn.

VI. RURAL AND SMALL-TOWN POLICE

As noted earlier, the issues of rural crime and
rural justice have received scant attention.  For
example, the distinction between rural and urban
policing is acknowledged in a brief one-page
section in the International City Management
Association's 447-page book Local Government
Police Management (Garmire, 1982).  Many consider
this book the definitive reference on municipal
police administration.  The distinctions between
urban and rural policing are considered nominal. 
In fact, the authors state: "The historic
distinctions between urban and rural police
services are rapidly disappearing" (Garmire, 1982:
21).  This implies that rural policing is
fundamentally the same as urban policing.  It is
reasonable to seriously question this assumption. 
Further, as evidence of an increasing trend
discounting the importance of rural policing, the
one-page acknowledgment cited in the 1982 edition
is totally absent in the latest edition of ICMA's
book (Geller, 1991).  Clearly, there is an urban
bias in research efforts concerning police
organizations, management, operations, and methods
in America.  

Further evidence of the overall lack of knowledge
about police agencies (especially rural
departments) in the United States is revealed in
the apparent inability to calculate the precise
number of agencies.  This issue has been a matter
of much controversy for many years.  For instance,
the 1967 President's Commission on Law Enforcement
estimated that the United States had approximately
40,000 separate police agencies (U.S. Department
of Justice, 1977).  By the early 1980's the
estimated number of police agencies was greatly
reduced; one scholar placed the number at 19,691
(Walker, 1983).  Today, that same scholar places
that estimate at approximately 15,000 (Walker,
1992), while the Bureau of Justice Statistics
estimates the number of police agencies at
approximately 17,000 (Reaves, 1992).  

How do we account for this disparity?  It is
likely that the confusion results from the fact
that there are numerous special policing districts
and agencies and many very small rural police
departments that sometimes have no full-time
officers.  How should these agencies be counted
and who would keep records of their existence? 
Moreover, it is only recently that State criminal
justice information authorities have been in
existence and had the ability to gather such data. 
In short, those who would study rural policing
must not only decide what is rural but also what
is a rural police agency.  

Who Are Rural Police?

In urban settings, any reference to "the police"
invariably means the city police department. 
Various urban policing functions are carried out
almost entirely by municipal police agencies,
while State and county agencies have more
peripheral roles--ancillary or specialized tasks
such as operating the jail, providing security for
the courthouse, or participating in ad hoc
investigative task forces.

While municipal police departments are still the
primary agencies in many small cities and towns,
county and State policing agencies become much
more important outside urban areas.  State police
officers may be stationed to provide general
policing functions in remote areas not well
covered by other police agencies.  In addition,
they routinely provide highway patrol coverage of
the open roads in rural areas.  State conservation
officers are responsible for enforcing fish and
wildlife laws--especially relevant in rural areas
where fishing, hunting, and outdoor recreation are
major economic activities.  In most States they
also have police powers in outlying rural areas.

A number of Federal enforcement agencies also
operate, to varying degrees, in rural areas.  A
brief sampling of these Federal agencies includes
the Immigration and Naturalization Service, the
Border Patrol, DEA, FBI, and the U.S. Forest
Service.  Unlike local sheriffs or municipal
police, these Federal agencies are ultimately
responsible not to local citizens but to the
Federal Government.  In addition, Federal agents
are not generally from the areas they police, nor
are they likely to develop long-term social
attachments and commitments to the local
communities in which they operate.  While a number
of State and Federal police operate in rural
areas, the key enforcement agencies are sheriffs
and municipal police. 

Sheriffs vs. Municipal Police  

The major difference between rural and urban
settings is the far greater importance of the
county sheriff's office in the administration of
rural policing and law enforcement.  In rural
areas, the sheriff often becomes the central
organization of policing rather than a peripheral
or support agency (as in urban settings).  Where
rural necessarily includes all unincorporated
areas outside of municipal units, these are by
statute the primary jurisdiction of the county
sheriff.  Also, even incorporated places in rural
areas may depend on the county sheriff for basic
policing services.  Where many small villages,
towns, or small cities cannot afford full-time
police coverage, the county sheriff's office may
provide many basic policing services. The sheriff
may also serve as a central agency to coordinate
resources among the small local departments.

A clear understanding of the differences between
rural and urban policing is closely related to
recognizing the basic distinction between the
municipal police department and the county
sheriff's office as distinct forms of police
agencies.

Because of their historical evolution, sheriff's
offices have a different political structure and
character from local, municipal police agencies,
and that authority diverges from that of local
police chiefs.  The authority of the sheriff is
grounded by centuries of legal evolution, not
specifically delimited by statutory law, and
includes a range of implied responsibilities and
powers.  In contrast, the authority of the
municipal police is a relatively recent statutory
creation, being expressly limited in power and
function, and dating only to the 19th century.

Unlike most municipal chiefs, the sheriff holds an
elective office in all but two States--Rhode
Island and Hawaii (National Sheriffs' Association,
1979).  This expresses the independence of the
sheriff from other political offices or executives
within local governmental structure.  It also
means that the sheriff is directly subject to the
community and to the power of public opinion. 
Since terms of office are often fairly short--
usually 2 or 4 years--the sheriff is dependent on
good relationships with voting members of the
community.  In these terms, the sheriff is less
insulated from the public than the police chief
and lacks the administrative buffer that most
municipal departments have in the mayor, police
commission, or city board.  The difference between
sheriffs and municipal chiefs is well illustrated
by a local sheriff who told about working with a
local municipal chief.  The chief pointed out to
the sheriff that when they were together in
public, e.g., having lunch in a restaurant, people
introduced them to others as the police chief and
our sheriff.  We have heard comments like this
from other sheriffs and can speculate that being
elected changes the relationship between the
police and the public.

The employees of the sheriff's office are also
dependent on the sheriff's reelection, since they
"serve at the sheriff's pleasure" in many
jurisdictions.  Slightly less than half of the
sheriff's offices in the United States have formal
merit procedures for personnel decisions; the
majority rely on discretionary administrative
appointments.  Since the election of a new sheriff
can result in a new set of appointed deputies and
supervisors in the office, personnel in a
sheriff's office have a more symbiotic
relationship with the sheriff than do police
officers with their chief.  Indeed, the latter
often seem to have rather antagonistic
relationships built into the bureaucratic
structure of police organizations.

By virtue of its historical evolution, the legal
responsibility and authority of the sheriff is
much greater than that of local police chiefs.  In
most States, the sheriff is responsible for
providing any or all of the following: 

o Criminal law enforcement and other general
police services. 
o Custodial and correctional services, involving
the transportation of prisoners and the management
of the county jail.
o Processing of judicial writs and court orders,
both criminal and civil.
o Security of the court via bailiffs. 
o Miscellaneous services, such as the
transportation and commitment of the mentally ill.
o Seizure of property claimed by the county.
o Collection of county fees and taxes. 
o Sale of licenses and permits plus other services
that do not fall neatly under the statutory
responsibilities of other law enforcement or
social service agencies.  A unique expression of
the sheriff's greater legal mandate is the
doctrine of posse comitatus, under which the
sheriff may require the assistance of any citizen.

In relatively small sheriff's offices, generalist
road deputies find that a large portion of their
shifts are taken up with the processing of court
writs, either criminal or civil.  Since most writs
are for civil matters, deputies are left with
little time for proactive criminal law
enforcement, unlike their municipal counterparts.

As a result, sheriffs' efforts are divided across
multiple, competing administrative concerns.  Even
though the public image of the sheriff's office
may be based mostly on law enforcement activities,
the sheriff cannot afford to concentrate on that
task.  The funding of the office may depend
heavily on doing other tasks that generate
important revenues for the county (such as serving
court writs and warrants or collecting taxes and
license fees) or that involve substantial legal
liabilities to the sheriff and the county (such as
holding unconvicted defendants in jail pretrial).

Generally associated with county-level government,
some sheriffs provide services for independent
cities; however, this occurs less than 1 percent
of the time (Reaves, 1992).  The geographic area
of jurisdiction for most sheriffs is the county or
parish; however, it is the unincorporated regions
within those areas that are of special concern to
sheriffs.  Sheriffs have criminal and civil
jurisdiction throughout their counties, but it is
the unincorporated areas for which they are
primarily responsible.  In contrast, municipal
police are responsible for police services only
within their incorporated areas.

As a countywide police agency, the sheriff's
office holds the potential for coordinating police
efforts throughout the county.  In fact, in rural
settings the county sheriff is seen as not only a
coordinating office but as a higher law
enforcement authority with better trained criminal
investigators and technicians (most of whom are
generalist officers) than municipal officers in
small rural police agencies.  Where local agencies
do not provide full-time police coverage, the
sheriff's deputies often provide services upon
request to incorporated areas in the county.

The sheriff's office tends to operate in a
personalized manner.  For example, deputies and
civilian employees tend to work "for the sheriff"
rather than for the organization per se.  There is
less distance and impersonal separation between
the sheriff's office and the community it serves
than in urban areas.  In most offices, sheriff's
deputies are required to be members of the
community in which they serve.  According to the
1990 Law Enforcement Management and Administrative
Statistics survey (Bureau of Justice Statistics,
1990), 87 percent of sheriffs require deputies to
be residents of their legal jurisdictions, while
just under 50 percent of municipal police make
such requirements of their officers.

The preceding section has discussed the office of
the sheriff as if it were a single uniform
organization.  In fact, however, the form and
content of specific sheriff's offices vary greatly
both among States and among counties within the
same State.

Department Size  

Nationally, most local police departments are
small; about half of the Nation's local
departments employ fewer than 10 commissioned
officers.  Ninety-one percent of all local police
agencies maintain fewer than 50 sworn officers,
and 90 percent of the Nation's police departments
serve a population of under 25,000 (Reaves, 1992). 
Illinois, for example, has nearly 35,000 combined
State and local officers in approximately 785
separate and distinct police agencies (Illinois
State Police, 1990).  Although Illinois as a whole
is heavily populated and is included in the
enumeration of the 11 industrialized States, very
small rural (municipal) police departments
predominate.  Most of Illinois' police departments
have fewer than five full-time officers (59
percent), and approximately 32 percent have no
full-time officers, only part-time officers. 
Further, relatively few Illinois municipalities
(only 17 percent) have police departments with
more than 20 officers (Falcone, Wells, and
Charles, 1992).  

Precisely what is meant by a small department? 
The truth is ". . . no typology of police
departments by size exists.  Therefore no common
definition of small town and rural police exists"
(Sims, 1988: 15).  One could forcefully argue that
typing police departments by size (manpower
allocation) is not reasonable, given that
different contextual considerations might account
for those numerical differences.  

In their study of the organizational structure of
police departments, Crank and Wells (1991) found
it was misleading to assume that small police
departments were rural or that rural departments
were necessarily small.  A rural county, a bedroom
community, and an industrial community, each with
the same sized population, may have different
manpower requirements (Sims, 1988), and even
departments of the same size may have 
different missions.  To complicate matters, some
agencies policing rural America are not
necessarily located in rural areas.  Included in
this category are investigative agencies at both
the State and Federal levels.  The potential for
conflicts between local citizens and "outsiders"
who enforce the law is substantial, as described
in other parts of this report.  

Another reality for rural policing, especially for
rural sheriff's departments, is that along with
shrinking populations and attendant resources,
these agencies are responsible for dealing with
generalized police services for a given and
nonshrinking geographic area.  Current budgetary
realities, along with the fact that many of the
Nation's worst roads exist in rural areas, present
special problems for rural sheriffs.  A recent
article in Rural Missouri reported that 80 percent
of that State's fatal vehicular accidents happen
on rural roadways--often policed by sheriff's
departments and augmented by the State Highway
Patrol ("Research looks at rural roads," 1992). 
According to the National Safety Council, motor
vehicle deaths per 100,000,000 vehicle miles are
over two and one half times higher in rural areas
than in urban areas (National Safety Council,
1992).

The combined loss of population and taxing base is
crucial for local rural police agencies, both
municipal and county level.  The Bureau of Justice
Statistics (BJS) estimates that the per officer
expenditure for police agencies serving
populations of fewer than 2,500 is $31,500, while
in urban areas it is nearly double that at $62,600
per officer.  Similarly, departments serving a
population of under 2,500 (the smallest they
cited) spent about $95 per resident a year for
local police expenditures, compared with $144 per
resident per year in areas of 1,000,000 citizens
or more (Reaves, 1992).

In the past, National and State commissions, among
others, have operated under the presumption that
the size of a police department is related to the
quality of its performance.  In particular, it has
been presumed that departments with 10 or fewer
officers are less efficient, less forward
thinking, poorly organized, and staffed by
officers who are poorly trained.  John Crank, in
evaluating the trend toward civilianization in
medium and small 
police departments, noted that rural agencies are
"civilianizing" at nearly twice the rate of large
urban departments (Crank, 1989).  The UCR (1992,
Table 75) indicates that civilians constitute 22.4
percent of employees in the largest cities but
34.4 percent of employees in agencies in rural
counties.  If civilianization is viewed as a
progressive change, then Crank's findings and UCR
data appear to contradict common perceptions that
rural agencies are seldom in the vanguard of
change.    

One proposed solution is to do away with small
programs by consolidation.  The 1973 report by the
National Advisory Commission on Criminal Justice
Standards and Goals, for example, recommended that
departments with 10 or fewer officers be
consolidated.  As Ostrom and Smith (1976) have
noted, however, these assumptions, and the policy
recommendations that are drawn from them, are
generally without empirical foundation.  Their
study, based on interviews with police officials,
police activity reports, and a survey of 4,000
residents in 29 jurisdictions of varying sizes,
reached very different conclusions.  They found
that citizens in the jurisdiction of small
departments reported less victimization, fewer
citizens who thought crime was rising, and more
positive police-community relations.  In a variety
of other areas, differences were small or
nonexistent.  Small departments fared less well
than medium-sized departments in the speed with
which they responded to citizen complaints, but
small departments still outperformed large
departments in this regard.  They concluded that
consolidation made sense for some small
departments but was ill-advised as a blanket
policy.  More recent analyses of police
consolidation suggest it is not necessarily cost
effective (DeBoer and Mann, n.d.; Gyimah-Brempong,
1987).  Further, the community policing movement
has been defined by some as a move away from
consolidation and toward decentralization (Staley,
1992).

Expanding on the work of Ostrom and Smith,
research by Cordner (1989) examined police
jurisdictions of varying sizes in Maryland, with a
focus on investigative effectiveness.  He found
that neither police agency size nor the size of
the jurisdiction were among the most important
determinants of investigative effectiveness. 
Instead, he concluded that "regional scale and
community complexity" were more important, with
greater investigative effectiveness in the more
rural departments (i.e., departments with the
least complex community structures).  He
illustrates why complexity may be more important
than size per se:

Consider two small police departments, one located
in a rural area and the other in a metropolitan
area.  Although the residential populations served
by the two agencies may be the same size, the
investigators in the rural departments have some
natural advantages.  They actually know, by name,
by sight, and/or by reputation, a much greater
proportion of the people in their jurisdiction and
its surrounding area than the metropolitan agency
investigators know of theirs.  The witnesses that
they deal with are much more likely to have
recognized suspects they observed.  Also, the
rural investigator has only a few neighboring
jurisdictions to keep in contact with, whereas the
metropolitan investigator may have a dizzying
array of other police departments in close
proximity (Cordner, 1989, p. 153).

These studies of agency size and police
performance show that small departments can be
quite effective and that small and rural are not
interchangeable terms when describing police
departments.

THE EFFECTIVENESS OF RURAL DEPARTMENTS

It has been argued that small and rural are not
synonymous, though there may be substantial
overlap.  It has also been argued that small
departments may be more effective.  The issue of
effectiveness of rural departments has not yet
been addressed.  Some evidence comes from the UCR,
which reports the percentage of crimes cleared by
arrest by size of the community served.  Agencies
in rural counties have consistently higher
clearance rates than departments in cities of
250,000 or more people.  This pattern holds for
every index crime except rape, for which the
clearance rates are essentially the same.

The gap in clearance rates between rural and urban
areas shown in Table 6 is particularly marked for
violent crimes.  Some of the rural-urban
differences might be attributable to differences
in reporting practices.  Rural agencies might, for
example, be less likely to write up a report on a
larceny if there are no suspects.  However, this
argument cannot explain the very large rural-urban
difference in clearance rates for homicide, which
will almost certainly be recorded regardless of
whether there are suspects.  It is also possible
that close social networks in rural areas make it
easier to solve crimes.  One police chief told us:

You've got a specific number of kids who are
committing things and it's very easy after a crime
to determine who did it here.  The closeness of
the community and the wide variety of MOs, when
something happens they usually leave enough of a
tell-tale sign that we know exactly who committed
it.  We only have one school that we have to
listen to for rumors and things.  We've got a lot
of law abiding kids that let us know what they are
hearing.  We solved almost every one of our crimes
here.  For every one of our thefts, burglaries, we
know who has done it.

A county sheriff echoed this view by noting:

For example, my secretary's husband owns the tire
store.  His tire store got burglarized.  People
know him and they know her, so they come and tell
me "I know who did it."  All we have to do is
prove it.  In some place like Fort Worth [Texas],
that's not going to happen--ever.  The people on
the street don't know the cop, the cop doesn't
know the person on the street.  They don't
intermix too much.

STYLES OF POLICING IN RURAL AREAS

Given the differences between rural and urban
crime and culture, it should be expected that
police in rural and urban areas would approach
police work differently.  In his study of tasks
regularly performed by police in 249 municipal
agencies of differing sizes, Meagher (1985) found
that small agencies were more concerned with crime
prevention, medium-sized agencies showed the
greatest concern for providing noncrime services,
and large agencies focused on enforcing criminal
laws and controlling crime through arrests. 
Similarly, Flanagan (1985) examined public opinion
data about the police role.  He found that the
larger the community the more likely citizens were
to believe that police should limit their role to
enforcing criminal laws.  Conversely, people from
smaller communities were more likely to want
police to perform a wide variety of functions.  In
the sheriff's department in rural "Pine County" (a
pseudonym), Decker (1979) observed that:  

The police were called upon and expected to render
services for a wide variety of irregular
occurrences, only a few of which were statutorily
defined as law enforcement responsibilities.  For
example, the deputies complied with a request to
inspect a boundary line between two farmers'
property that was only accessible by tractor.  In
a related incident the same mode of transportation
was used to check on a foundered cow.  Many
instances required the symbolic presence of a
sheriff's deputy to legitimate its occurrence in
the citizen's eyes (Decker, 1979, p. 104).

In many rural areas, police must provide a wide
range of services because other social services
are either nonexistent or are more remote than the
police.  Marenin and Copus (1991, p.16) observed
that in rural Alaska, where all types of social
services are scarce, traditional law enforcement
is a relatively small part of the service police
are expected to perform.  "Village policing is not
normal policing, in the sense of law enforcement
or crime control, but is much more of a social
work kind of job," which includes firefighting,
emergency medical services, and rescue operations.

Styles of policing are partly a reflection of the
relationship between police and the community. 
While police in many urban areas may be viewed as
outsiders, in rural areas they are an integral
part of the community (Decker, 1979).  In
interviews with officers from one rural department
and several urban departments, Kowalewski et al.
(1984) found that officers in rural and urban
departments had many similar concerns but differed
in several interesting respects.  Urban officers
thought they were less respected by citizens.  At
the same time, police in rural communities felt
more public support for being tough, particularly
with juveniles.  Dealing with juveniles is an
important function for rural police, because this
is often a major concern for rural community
members (Decker, 1979).  

Consistent with the greater informality of rural
areas, rural and urban officers believed they were
given public respect for different reasons.  In
urban areas, respect went to the position, and it
was believed that a good way to improve public
respect was through professionalizing the
department.  In contrast, respect was thought to
be given to rural officers as individuals who had
to prove that respect was deserved.  This was
often done by establishing a reputation for
toughness early in their career.

The bonds between rural police and the community
are also strengthened by the practice of hiring
local citizens in police agencies.  Thus, the
officers not only know the community and share
many of its values but they are also members of
the community and are often involved in community
activities.  As Decker noted:

All members of the sheriff's department had
biographies not uncommon to those of the
community.  The sheriff and his three deputies
were all born and educated in the county.  Prior
to joining the force, every member was involved in
an agricultural form of employment, the dominant
form of employment for the county.  There is
evidence of integration into the community in
other ways.  Each member participates in an
important community function; i.e., the softball
team, Jaycees, Rotary, Elk's Club, etc. (Decker,
1979, p. 105).

Given the nature of rural culture and of social
interactions in rural areas, it can also be
speculated that police-community relations will be
very different in rural and urban departments.  In
rural areas officers are likely to know the
offenders and their families, just as the officer
and his family will be known by the community. 
Rural officers are also more likely to know and
appreciate the history and culture of an area and
to use that information in their work.  In his
study of marijuana growers, Weisheit (1991) quotes
one rural officer who describes his arrest
procedure in one of his cases:

You can't act overly high and mighty with them,
you won't get any cooperation.  In the big cities,
that's what you do, you come on strong, "I'm the
boss."  That's often a very effective method
there, but not out here in the rural areas. . . .
This summer I went down and there was a guy with
maybe 200 plants spread out over a small farm.  I
was fairly confident it was there and I pull up in
his driveway.  He was unloading wood.  I'm in the
pickup truck, and obviously he knows who I am.  I
walked up and told him what I was doing there.  I
said "I've come to get your marijuana and we're
going to be doing an open field search.  We're not
going to be going through your barns or anything
right now.  You've got some marijuana out there
and I've just come up here to tell you what I'm
doing."  I helped him unload his wood and then I
said, "I'm going down by the pond and look at this
marijuana.  I'll be back in a minute."  I went
down, looked at it and came back up.  I said,
"Well, your marijuana is down there," and then I
went ahead and helped him unload some more wood
and talked about it.  He went to jail with no
problem.  I think this was the kind of guy who
would have liked to have fought you.  But because
of the way I handled it, he wasn't going to fight
anybody.  Because, I didn't go in there and say,
"You're a marijuana grower and you're worthless." 
A lot of times if you're dealing with people in
these rural areas, they don't have a problem with
you coming in and arresting them.  They just want
to be treated like human beings (Weisheit, 1993,
p. 225).

Given the closer social ties between police and
their community, it should be expected that rural
officers will use policing styles that are more
responsive to citizens in their area; in turn,
local residents would be more supportive of the
police.  In fact, a 1991 Gallup survey found
substantial rural-urban differences in the support
that citizens show for the local police.  In urban
areas, 54 percent of the citizens reported having
a great deal of respect for the local police,
whereas 61 percent of rural citizens reported
this.  The differences were much more pronounced
when they were asked about police brutality; 59
percent of urban residents thought there was
police brutality in their area, but only 20
percent of rural residents believed this
("Americans Say Police Brutality Frequent," 1991).

The same features of rural policing that compel
officers to be more responsive to the public also
mean that rural police have relatively less
discretion:

A major explanation for the high degree of police
discretion found in urban areas is the low
visibility of police actions.  In smaller
communities the actions of police officers are
known to most of the population thanks to the
effectiveness and extensiveness of informal
communication networks; there they are more highly
visible.  As a result, small town police enjoy
less latitude in deviating from dominant community
values (Eisenstein, 1982, p. 117).

Crank (1990) found that organizational and
community factors had a different impact on the
adoption of a legalistic police style in rural and
urban areas.  In urban areas characteristics of
the police organization, such as the number of
ranks or the ratio of administrators to sworn
officers, were better predictors of police style
than were characteristics of the community, such
as percentage of blacks or level of economic
distress.  In rural areas, the relationships were
reversed, with community factors being more
important than organizational factors.  As might
be expected, Crank's data suggest that rural
departments are more responsive to the local
community, whereas urban departments may be more
sensitive to the dynamics of the police
organization.  Or, as a publication of the
International Association of Chiefs of Police
(IACP) put it, "The urban officer answers to the
police department.  The rural or small town
officer is held accountable for his actions by the
community (IACP, 1990, p. 9)."

The less formal nature of rural life, along with
the small size of many rural departments, itself
makes complex bureaucratic procedures less
necessary for day-to-day operations.  Thus, rural
departments are less likely to have detailed
written policies in a variety of areas, a
situation which can place them in a legal "limbo"
when problems arise.  For example, in their study
of police vehicle pursuits, Falcone, Wells, and
Charles (1992) observed substantial rural-urban
differences in both the number of pursuits and in
whether departments had written policies regarding
pursuits:

The paucity of pursuit policy in small departments
is of tremendous importance because nearly one
third of all Illinois police departments have
fewer than one full-time officer.  It is the
officers working for these small departments who
are unaided by policy and who have the highest per
officer pursuit ratios. . . officers in
departments comprised of 1-10 officers (small
agencies) had an average pursuit ratio of over
twice that of large agencies and nearly three
times that of the next agency category (11-50
officers) (p. 168).

While rural departments, particularly small ones,
may be less likely to have detailed written
policies than urban departments, our conversations
with rural police suggest that written policies
are increasingly seen as necessary and worthwhile. 
It is in the area of developing written policies
that State-level agencies and training programs
seem particularly helpful for rural departments.

While we have touched upon a number of issues,
there may be a large number of other issues of
pressing concern to rural police that have not
been systematically studied and therefore do not
show up in the literature.  There is a clear need
to identify these areas and initiate a systematic
examination of how they might best be addressed.

COMMUNITY POLICING

The preceding description of policing in rural
areas raises a number of obvious questions about
parallels with what has been called community
policing.  We have explored this issue in more
detail elsewhere (Weisheit, Wells, and Falcone,
forthcoming), but it is worth some discussion
here.

Community policing is a broad concept that has
been interpreted in a variety of ways.  Although
the term is relatively new, it has already
generated a sizable body of literature (e.g.,
Brown 1989; Greene and Mastrofski 1988; Moore
1992; Goldstein 1986; Trojanowicz and Bucqueroux
1990; Wilson and Kelling 1989).

Aside from the obvious emphasis on community, it
is possible to extract three broad themes from the
literature on community policing.  The first has
to do with the police being accountable to the
community as well as to the formal police
hierarchy.  The second is that police will become
more connected with and integrated into their
communities, which means that police will interact
with citizens on a personal level, will be
familiar with community sentiments and concerns,
and will work with the community to address those
concerns.  A third theme requires that police will
be oriented to solving general problems, rather
than only responding to specific crime incidents. 
From the preceding discussion it should be obvious
that these themes are consistent with what rural
police have been doing for some time.

Regarding accountability, we have already
suggested that as elected officials sheriffs must
be responsive to the citizenry, particularly in
rural areas where most of the voters are likely to
know the sheriff personally.  In rural areas and
small towns, municipal chiefs must also be
sensitive to the wishes of local citizens.  As an
example of accountability, we have observed that
rural sheriffs and small-town chiefs often have
their home phone numbers publicly listed. 
Citizens expect to be able to call them at home at
any time and for the smallest of problems.  As one
sheriff told us:

I'm willing to be shown that I'm wrong but it's a
lot harder being a sheriff of a small rural county
than it is to be the sheriff of [a city] with a
population of 250,000 because everybody in that
[rural] county--they want to be able to pick up
that phone, whether it be Saturday night at 2:00
in the morning and they have a problem.  They want
to be able to pick up that phone and call that
sheriff.  They don't want to talk to a deputy, or
the dispatcher.  They want the sheriff, "I have a
problem."  It may be dogs barking.

Rural sheriffs and small-town police also seem to
be more connected to their communities than are
urban police.  Rural police are more likely to
live in the community they serve and to be active
members of the community.  Because the communities
are small, the police know many of the citizens
and interact with them in a variety of social
situations, such as buying groceries or having
their personal car serviced.  As one rural officer
noted:

Their [police and citizens'] kids go to the same
school.  You see them on the street.  You see them
in the grocery store.  It isn't like a city.  In
fact, I've worked with several cities and their
officers are cold.  They treat the good people the
same way they treat the bad people.  They are
callous.

Another chief observed:

I come from a bigger agency.  In the bigger
agencies, you lose that personal day-to-day touch
with the actual citizenry, unless you're there for
a specific reason.  Here, we're very close to
these people.  There's not too many of us, so they
all get to know you.  They come in all the time
with their problems, and not just law enforcement-
related problems.  Yes, we're extremely sensitive. 
It's a very close knit operation.

This bond between the police and community in
rural areas has been observed by others:

Rural and small town police are closer to their
community than are urban police.  Rural and small
town police are a part of the local culture and
community, whereas urban police tend to form a
subculture and move apart from the community. . .
. Urban police tend to be efficient; rural police
tend to be effective (IACP, 1990, p. 8).

Another characteristic of community policing is a
focus on general problem solving, rather than a
narrow focus on reactive law enforcement.  That
is, officers not only respond to specific criminal
incidents but they recognize and respond to more
general problems that set the stage for specific
criminal acts.  The problems need not be limited
to crimes and the solutions need not involve
arrests.  When asked about the kinds of problems
to which his department was expected to respond,
one small-town chief responded:

Everything, including the kitchen sink.  I've had
people in here to counsel families on their sex
life because they think I'm the Almighty and can
do that.  I've had people come in who are having
problems making ends meet, and we intercede for
them in getting assistance, helping them file for
welfare.  We do a lot of service-oriented work.  I
consider it non law enforcement.  Somebody needs a
ride, like an elderly lady needs a ride to the
doctor.  We'll take her to the doctor or go get
her groceries for her.

Because they are closer to the public they serve,
and because they are often one of the only 24-hour
service providers in rural areas, rural police
receive calls for a wide range of services.  If
they respond to a wider variety of "nonpolice"
problems than urban police it is not because they
are required to do so by statute, or because
written departmental policies demand it.  Rather,
they seem to define police work differently,
perhaps because the people they serve are not
nameless, faceless citizens but neighbors and
fellow community members.

Given these observations, we have been surprised
to periodically hear observers from outside rural
areas comment that little community policing goes
on in rural America.  Such observations seem to be
based on the belief that community policing
requires the development of a specific program
that has been codified and prescribed in writing. 
If one accepts this definition of community
policing, then it can be argued that community
policing is not simply and invariably identical to
rural policing.  Rather, community policing is a
formalized and rationalized version of small-town
policing--where the purpose is to introduce
accountability and provide a measure of legal
rationality to what, in rural areas, is a much
more spontaneous and informal process.  Thus,
formal community policing and rural policing are
not identical--community policing is small-town
policing set in a rational framework; it attempts
to formalize the spontaneous acts of good sense
and good citizenship found in many rural officers
into a systematic "program" that can be taught,
monitored, and evaluated.  This is the paradox of
community policing--in many ways it is the
formalization of informal custom and the
routinization of spontaneous events.

It is also true that rural policing is not
homogenous across the country.  One implication of
this is that to be effective there can be no "one"
program of community policing.  Effective
community policing must be tailored to the needs
and wishes of each individual community, just as
rural police tailor their activities to their
local communities.

The higher clearance rates for rural police and
the more positive perceptions of rural police by
their citizens may reflect the benefits of the
"community policing" as practiced by rural police. 
On the other side, the lack of privacy experienced
by rural officers is just one illustration of the
problems that accompany community policing.  The
rural setting may also be a good place to examine
the concern that community policing will lead to
greater problems with corruption.  Our study was
not designed to specifically address this issue,
but it clearly merits further examination.

In summary, rural departments are positioned to be
the very embodiment of community policing. 
Sheriffs and chiefs with whom we spoke frequently
saw what they had been doing in rural areas as
community policing and believed they were well
ahead of urban areas in this regard.  One
sheriff's comments are typical:

Yes, there's far more community policing taking
place in rural agencies than urban.  We have been
doing community policing since time began, I
believe.  We have always stopped and talked with
the ranchers, the businessmen, walked the streets,
rattled doors, and checked on sick folks.  We know
the various workers in the community and what they
do.  We see the kid delivering papers at 6:00 a.m.
and talk with him.  We have always done that.  We
are much closer to the people.  Consequently, your
whole mode of operation changes.  Our method of
gathering information derives from our personal
contact on a day-to-day or minute-to-minute basis. 
In an urban setting, you're out "developing
informants."  We do that too, but the vast
majority of our information comes from regular
folks on a regular basis.  I'm a believer in
scanners.  That would cause cardiac arrest in a
lot of agencies.  We have gotten more help from
folks that have heard us out on a chase and we
have lost the guy.  They call up and say, "He's
two blocks away going down this street."  Plus, it
tells them we are on the job, what we're doing.

But is this community policing?  Examining rural
police practices raises questions about what is
meant by the term community policing.  Is
community policing a formalized explicitly planned
program, or is it what police actually do in
maintaining community order and safety?  Using the
first definition means that little community
policing takes place in rural areas because the
procedures there are not part of an explicit
program derived specifically from this philosophy. 
Using the second definition means that community
policing is a common feature of rural police work
because the procedures routinely used there
correspond closely to the basic tenets of
community policing.  Using the first definition
means that rural police have much to learn from
their urban counterparts.  Using the second
definition means that urban departments might well
look to rural areas for models of community
policing.

SPECIAL PROBLEMS

While rural and urban policing may share a variety
of concerns, there are also problems that are
either unique to the rural setting or are made
more complicated by the rural environment.  For
example, many small municipalities are strapped
for funds, which not only makes staffing difficult
but may make it impractical for their departments
to tap into statewide systems for records checks
or vehicle registrations.  Even a nominal hookup
fee may be more than the department can afford. 
Further, the more self-contained nature of rural
communities may make it more difficult to generate
support for training, equipment, or services that
would increase routine interactions between the
local agency and State or National enforcement
groups.  In addition, the distances covered by
some rural officers may also complicate radio
communication.

Rural officers are more likely to find themselves
physically isolated but socially under a
microscope.  This situation is the inverse of that
for many inner city officers.  Perhaps the best
example of this can be found among conservation
officers, whose work is often done alone in remote
areas, with backup some distance away.

Rural officers do not have a police backup system
that will respond to their assistance within
minutes.  Game officers usually work alone with
their nearest support as much as 50 miles away. 
They face a population which is generally armed
and skilled in the use of weapons.  Thus, they
must face the threat of danger alone with the
knowledge that they have limited, if any, support
systems to aid them if they are injured (Walsh and
Donovan, 1984, p. 337).

In our conversations this was an issue commonly
raised by police in the most rural areas.  When
asked "What's the worst thing about being a rural
officer?" comments such as this were not unusual:

That's distance--if you need backup or other
emergency services.  If you have a bad accident
and you're 50 miles outside of town, it's going to
take them a while to arrive.  Or, if you have a
hostage situation where you need backup, they
won't be there for an hour.

In small departments, as well as among
conservation officers, this isolation is
compounded by the fact that there are fewer
colleagues with whom they can socialize when off
duty.  At the same time that officers in small
rural departments are isolated, they also have
less privacy and more difficulty in separating
their professional and personal roles. 
Conservation officers again provide a good
illustration of the lack of privacy afforded rural
officers:

. . . conservation officers are highly visible
members of the community they serve and are in
fact never off duty.  The officers' homes are
their offices, with the game commission logo
prominently displayed outside their houses as well
as on their vehicles.  Their telephone numbers are
published statewide.  The officers and their
families are under constant observation because
they are members of the communities where they
enforce the law.  Thus, they can never develop
personal identities other than their official
roles.  They cannot, like their urban
counterparts, disengage from this role, seek
comfort in their occupational peer group, and find
relief from anxiety privately.  Because they lack
peer companionship, their families play a very
important and sensitive role.  However, even then,
the officers must be guarded lest confidential
case information becomes a source of rural gossip
(Walsh and Donovan, 1984, pp. 337-38).

Similarly, the IACP has noted that:

The rural or small town police officer cannot
escape his role, and is often viewed by the
community as a 24-hour police officer.  This
generates stress because the officer cannot
participate in the social activities of the
community as a person but is forced to be
constantly identified as a police officer (IACP,
1990, p. 9).

Thus, the same familiarity with citizens that
facilitates investigations by rural police also
takes away from the rural officer's privacy.  We
have observed there are very few rural chiefs or
rural sheriffs whose home telephone numbers are
unlisted. Many of them reported that citizens were
more than willing to call them at home at any hour
with even minor problems.  One rural chief
provided a particularly telling example that is
unlikely to be duplicated by any urban chief:

In a small town you lose your private life, too. 
It has taken a toll on my wife and our kids.  Two
years ago on Thanksgiving we had the family over
and then we had a domestic that ended up on my
front porch.  The husband came over to tell me the
problem and then she came over. . . It was pretty
embarrassing.  I have since put a sign up on my
porch that says this is not the police department,
it is our home.  Dial 911 if you have an
emergency.  It hasn't worked.  The amount of calls
that you get at your house, and . . . if you get
an unlisted number, they will come by your house. 
I would rather have them call me.

This chief, and a number of others observed that
when off duty they could not have a beer at the
local bar without starting rumors in the
community.  In such cases it is not unusual for
the chief, sheriffs, and their officers to go to
nearby towns if they wish to have a quiet evening
or if they wish to have a drink.

In summary, it is true that "police work is police
work" and that rural and urban police share many
problems and concerns.  It is also likely that the
more serious the offense the more similar are
rural and urban police practices.  In matters of
lesser offenses and day-to-day routines, however,
there are a number of important rural-urban
differences in how work is done, police-citizen
interactions, and what citizens expect of the
police.  These differences raise questions about
blindly applying urban models to rural police and
may even raise questions about the urban models
themselves.  Consider the importance urban
departments have placed on professionalism and the
way in which that term is defined:

Critics point to the personalized and informal
methods of rural and small town police as
unprofessional.  Perhaps "professionalizing" them
would erode their effectiveness.  Maybe
metropolitan policing could learn something about
police effectiveness from rural and small town
police.  It is possible that "professionalizing"
rural and small town police would destroy the
close and effective personal relationships they
have long enjoyed with their community and its
citizens (IACP, 1990, p. 9).

Although the IACP raises this point without
presenting evidence to document it, the idea is a
useful starting point for thinking through the
role of professionalism in modern policing.  Thus,
understanding what rural police do and how they do
it can provide valuable insights to improve
policing in all communities.

VIOLENCE AND RURAL POLICE

It has been argued that violent crime occurs less
often in rural areas, and that although guns are
much more available in rural areas, they are less
often used in crimes.  Further, rural police more
often know the citizenry personally and interact
with them in a variety of settings.  These factors
combined should create an environment in which
rural police are less likely to be victims of
assault or of felonious killing.  However, that
the available evidence presents a mixed picture. 
On one hand, rural officers are least likely to be
victims of assault--4 times less likely than
officers in large urban areas serving 250,000
people or more, and 9 times less likely than
officers serving urban areas of 100,000 to 249,999
people.  On the other hand, officers serving very
small towns and rural areas are killed at
comparatively high rates that are 50 percent
higher than for officers serving communities of
250,000 or more.  The highest rates of felonious
killings of officers are in midsize cities of
100,000 to 249,999 citizens, but officers serving
small towns (under 10,000 people) and rural areas
have the next highest rates.  It appears that
assaults on rural officers are less frequent but
more often deadly.  It should also be noted that
the highest rates for both assault and for the
felonious killings of officers are not in the
largest cities, but in midsized cities of 100,000
to 249,999 citizens.

It is not possible, with the available data, to
explain both low assault rates and high rates of
felonious killings of rural officers.  It is
possible to speculate on fruitful avenues to
follow in studying the problem.  Perhaps, assaults
on rural officers may be more seriously
underrepresented.  If the officer personally knows
a belligerent drunk at a wedding, for example, the
officer may be less likely to officially record an
assault if the drunk takes a swing at him or her. 
Or perhaps the high death rate is the product of
officers patrolling alone in rural areas, where
help will not be called as quickly and where
medical assistance is less immediate.  Further,
even if rural and urban assaults were equally
likely to involve guns, rural dwellers might be
better marksmen, making their attack more deadly.

A related issue, which has been ignored in the
literature, is the use of deadly force and
excessive force by rural police.  There are good
reasons to speculate that rural and urban officers
will show differences in the circumstances under
which they use force and in the long-term
implications of using force.  For example, the
rural officer is more likely to personally know
the offender, as well as the offender's friends
and family.  This may shape the psychology of
using force.  It also makes the officer more
vulnerable to retribution, since these individuals
are likely to know where the officer lives and his
daily routine.  Conversely, because the rural
officer is better integrated into the local
community, there may be more sources of emotional
support after deadly force has been used. 

Summary

A variety of Federal, State, and local agencies
have jurisdiction in rural areas.  However, two
types of agencies--sheriffs' departments and
municipal police--are the primary providers of
rural police services.  While municipal police
dominate the urban landscape, in rural areas the
sheriff's department is more often the central
police organization.  Sheriffs not only have
countywide jurisdiction but a host of duties not
assigned municipal police.  These additional
duties may include court services, running the
local jail, serving civil papers, transporting
prisoners, issuing licenses and permits, and
collecting county fees and taxes.  Most important,
sheriffs are usually elected, which makes them
directly accountable to the public.

Most police departments are small.  Almost half
have fewer than 10 sworn officers, and 91 percent
of all local police agencies have fewer than 50
sworn officers.  Not all rural agencies are small,
and small agencies are not always in rural areas. 
Still, small agencies are the most common feature
of the rural police environment.  Rural
departments are not only small but generally
funded at about half the level of urban
departments, per officer.

The small sizes and small budgets of many rural
departments does not mean they are ineffective. 
To the contrary, rural police typically have
higher clearance rates than urban departments.  In
addition, rural citizens have a more positive
image of their police than do urban citizens.

Rural and urban police tend to operate
differently.  Rural police generally provide a
wider range of services and are more closely tied
to their communities.  Rural police are more
likely to come from and reside in the community
they serve, and they are often active members of
community organizations.  Closer ties to the
community are an advantage for responding to
crime, but this closeness costs the rural officer
personal privacy.  Many aspects of rural police
work are consistent with the principle of
community policing, although rural departments are
not likely to have formal written programs of
community policing.

Given the more positive relationship between the
police and the community in rural areas, it would
be expected that rural police would engage in less
violence against citizens and that rural citizens
would be less violent against the police.  Little
is known about violence by rural police against
citizens.  The available evidence about violence
against rural police is contradictory.  Although
rural officers less often officially report being
assaulted on the job,  they are much more likely
to be feloniously killed in the line of duty.

While there is much to be learned about rural
policing, the evidence suggests important
differences between rural and urban police work. 
More needs to be learned about rural policing,
particularly how it varies across rural areas, how
rapidly growing rural areas can retain the
positive features of rural policing, and what
urban departments can learn from rural examples.  

Rural police do not operate in a vacuum.  In
addition to rural citizens, rural police routinely
interact with other actors in the criminal justice
process, and this interaction seems to be shaped
by the rural environment.  The focus now shifts to
those other components of the rural justice system
and their functioning in the rural environment.

VII. OTHER PARTS OF THE SYSTEM 

The informal nature of interactions in rural areas
has implications for the willingness of citizens
to invoke the formal legal process and for the
ways in which defense attorneys, prosecutors, and
judges conduct themselves.  Long-term members of
rural communities rely more heavily on informal
processes for resolving problems, particularly for
lesser offenses.  One example of this is
Ellickson's (1986) study of northern California
ranchers who sustain damage to crops, fences, or
their own livestock herds from the stray cattle of
other ranchers.  Although the dollar value of
damage might be considerable, formal channels are
considered inappropriate:

Rural residents deal with one another on a large
number of fronts, and most residents expect those
interactions to continue far into the future. . .
. They interact on water supply, controlled burns,
fence repairs, social events, staffing the
volunteer fire department, and so on.  Where
population densities are low, each neighbor looms
larger.  Thus, any trespass dispute with a
neighbor is almost certain to be but one thread in
the rich fabric of a continuing relationship
(Ellickson, 1986, p. 675, emphasis in the
original).

The landowners, particularly the ranchers express
a strong aversion to hiring an attorney to fight
one's battles.  To hire an attorney is to escalate
a conflict.  A good neighbor does not do such a
thing because the "natural working order" calls
for two neighbors to work out their problems
between themselves (Ellickson, 1986, p. 683).

Similarly, Engel's (1984) study of personal injury
lawsuits in a rural Illinois county found that
such formal legal actions were rarely brought. 
When injury claims were taken to court awards were
very low and the plaintiff was often viewed by the
community with hostility and suspicion.  Because
of the stigma of handling these cases, the
majority were handled by attorneys from outside
the area.  This was in contrast to noncivil
actions, which were usually handled by local
attorneys.  The same pattern was observed by
Fahnestock and Geiger (1990) in their study of
rural courts in four States.

Interestingly, both Ellickson and Engel found that
among cases that were taken to court, most were by
plaintiffs who were outsiders, people who were
either relatively new to the community or who had
weak attachments to the area.  And, as Ellickson
(1986) noted, community members in his study
considered a 10-year resident as "new" to the
community.

THE PRACTICE OF LAW

It should not be surprising that the distinctive
character of rural culture is reflected in
criminal justice institutions.  For example, the
self-imposed isolationism of rural areas is
illustrated in Kessler's description of the
problems in establishing a legal services program
in a rural community (Kessler, 1990):

The norms of cooperation, trust and courtesy
shared by members of the local bar apply
exclusively to attorneys with strong local roots. 
In general, the legal community is unreceptive to
lawyers from outside the county using their local
court.  Further, members of the local legal
community are suspicious of, if not openly hostile
to, lawyers born and raised outside the county
opening a practice within the county.  The
attitudes of the legal community to outsiders are
illustrated in the comments of one veteran local
attorney:  "If you're part of the community,
practicing law here can be great.  But it's not
particularly pleasant for out-of-county people. 
There's a very tight knit organization over here
that doesn't particularly care for the outsider
(pp. 274-75)."

The existence of small close personal networks in
rural communities also means that attorneys in
rural areas face conflicts of interest and ethical
dilemmas seldom confronted by their urban
counterparts.  For example, client confidentiality
can be a particular problem, and as Landon (1985,
p. 86) has observed:

One of the defining characteristics of country
life is the complexity of social connections. 
Most persons are involved in multiple-interest
relationships.  The client who comes to the small
town attorney may also serve with the attorney on
the local Chamber of Commerce Board, or attend the
same church, or also have a son on the high school
basketball team, or have a cousin who is married
to the attorney's wife's niece. . . . Continual
encounters with others are virtually assured, and
therefore the motivations that apply to each
interactional situation tend to narrow down to
those that will make the next encounter
comfortable.

Landon (1985) also argues that the familiarity of
the rural lawyers with both the client and the
community leads them to define their roles more
broadly than do urban lawyers.  Rural lawyers were
more accessible and spent more time providing
"general counseling" about "family problems,
children's troubles, business difficulties, and
moral dilemmas (p. 92)."  They also had a more
difficult problem separating the role of "friend"
from that of "client" when approached by citizens
about a legal problem.

The rural environment also shapes the work of
prosecutors.  The rural prosecutor is more likely
to be familiar with the judge, defense attorney,
offender, and the victim.  In addition, the
relationship between the rural prosecutor and the
police is likely to be much closer than in urban
jurisdictions.  As Thorne (1976) has noted:

A prosecutor is the chief law enforcement official
in his jurisdiction, and it seems an anomaly that
the police are nearly always independent of that
office. . . .For the small-office prosecutor, the
opportunity will usually exist to know each law
enforcement official personally.  This facilitates
the opportunity to meet with the enforcement units
to explain prosecutorial policy, answer questions,
and receive suggestions. . . . Awareness of such
policies are as important to the police function
as staying abreast of case law affecting their
actions (p. 311).

RURAL COURTS

The rural setting also shapes the operation of
courts.  Going as far back as Wiers' 1939 study of
juvenile court cases, a number of researchers have
compared the operation of rural and urban courts. 
Wiers found the crime rate was lower in rural
areas and that courts more often handled cases
informally.  More recently, Austin (1981) found
that social background factors were more important
in rural criminal courts, whereas urban courts
were more legalistic and formal.  In his analysis
of juvenile justice in Minnesota, Feld (1991, pp. 
206-207) observed:

Urban courts operate in communities with more
disrupted families, more racially heterogeneous
populations and less residential stability, all of
which provide fewer mechanisms for informal social
control. . . . Accordingly, urban counties place
greater emphasis on formal, rather than informal,
mechanisms of social control.

In another study, Feld (1993) identified some of
the differences between rural and urban juvenile
courts and suggested how those differences
influenced the handling of juvenile offenders:

Urban courts appear to cast a broader, more
inclusive net of control that encompasses
proportionally more and younger youths than do
suburban or rural courts.  There also appears to
be a relationship between social structure,
procedural formality, and severity of sanctions. 
The more formal, urban courts hold larger
proportions of youths in pretrial detention and
sentence similarly charged offenders more severely
than do the suburban or rural courts (pp. 158-
159).

Others have considered not only the structure of
rural courts but have compared the sentencing
practices of rural and urban courts.  Hagan (1977)
found that urban courts were more bureaucratized
with heavier caseloads and larger, better-trained
staff.  Hagan also found that the less formal
nature of rural courts accounted for the harsher
treatment of minorities in rural courts.  Myers
and Talarico (1986) concluded that simple rural-
urban distinctions in sentencing were too
simplistic.  For example, urban courts were more
likely to sentence rapists to prison, but when
rural judges used prison they gave longer
sentences.  They also suggest that using an
official label for a crime (such as homicide) may
mask important rural-urban differences in the
nature of the offense. 

In her study of rural courts, Golden (1981) also
emphasized how activities that appear similar on
the surface may have very different meanings in
rural and urban courts.  She cites the example of
plea bargaining, which is common in both urban and
rural courts but is used very differently in each. 
In busy urban courts, plea bargaining is used to
expedite case processing, whereas in rural courts
plea bargaining may more often be the result of
"informal personal interaction between the
functionaries in the system, as well as their
proximity and familiarity (p. 41)."
In rural areas, this close professional network
extends beyond lawyers and judges to include most
actors in the justice system.  The number of
actors in rural justice systems is small, and
their interactions are frequent and expected to be
long-term.  As Fahnestock (1991) notes:

Over half of the rural counties in the United
States rely on part-time prosecutors.  The active
bar often consists of a dozen or fewer members,
including the prosecutor and the attorney(s) who
represent local government.  Often, there are five
or fewer sheriff's deputies and a single probation
officer, and each is known to the judge.  The
clerk of court's staff frequently numbers two or
three.  In short, fewer than 30 people routinely
work together, a group about the size of a small
family reunion (p. 14).

The extent to which these close working
relationships can shape the operation of the
justice system in rural areas is well illustrated
by a judge who commented that he was hesitant to
find defendants not guilty because that "would be
like saying the sheriff lied (Fahnestock, 1991, p.
19)."

In addition to these professional networks, rural
justice professionals may be strongly connected to
their rural communities through longstanding
social and family networks, some of which span
generations:

The small scale of rural communities results in a
web of interrelationships among justice system
workers and the community at large.  The defendant
may be the judge's mother's hired hand.  The
plaintiff may attend the judge's church or be his
or her daughter's Little League coach.  The
prosecutor may be the judge's former law partner. 
Rural judges cannot recuse themselves every time
they know someone involved in a case.  Indeed,
many rural judges recuse themselves only when they
have witnessed the alleged offense or they have a
direct interest in the matter before them
(Fahnestock, 1991, p. 14).

Under these conditions it becomes nearly
impossible for criminal justice officials to
separate their social and professional lives. 
Thus, it has been observed that judges in rural
areas have no truly private lives, a condition
which is probably also true for rural police:

Unlike the urban judge, the rural judge has no
anonymity.  Whether eating out, grocery shopping,
seeing a movie with the family, playing golf, or
walking down the street, the rural judge is often
scrutinized.  Whatever the rural judge does
outside the court reflects on the judicial office
(Dilweg, 1991, p. 28).

Rural judges are always accessible, so they always
must be "on."  They cannot run out for milk or gas
up the car without an awareness of their judicial
role. . . . Nearly every rural judge has stories
about encountering the mother of someone they have
just sent to prison (Fahnestock, 1991, p. 65).

Because they are highly visible as both citizens
and officials, the professional, community, and
family roles of rural justice officials sometimes
collide.  As one judge recounted:

You know, I had to sentence my own son to prison. 
When he got arrested, I thought about recusing
myself.  But then I thought about how it would
look to the community.  Folks would say, `He can
sentence other people's sons to jail, but he won't
send his own.'  So I stayed on the case.  I took
his plea and gave him a stiff sentence.  It was
the hardest thing I've ever done, but it was the
right thing to do for the court (Fahnestock, 1991,
p. 13).

Fahnestock (Fahnestock and Geiger, 1993) also
argues that rural and urban courts function
differently and that assessing them may require
different criteria.  While urban courts may
emphasize speed and procedural correctness, rural
courts are more focused on using the court as a
forum to solve problems.  As Fahnestock and Geiger
(1993) have observed:

To rural judges, parties are not just docket
numbers and fact patterns.  They are known
individuals, with families and problems, whose
actions are viewed in the context of community
values.  At their best, rural judges can fashion
responsive, tailored solutions that address the
actual needs of defendants, victims, and litigants
(p. 258). . . . Therefore, rural courts regard
movement of the entire caseload as less important
than their ability to deal with any one case in a
way that satisfies the interested parties and the
community (p. 262).

The picture of law that emerges suggests important
points of difference between urban and rural
areas.  Like rural police, rural courts are
compelled to be more responsive to the local
community.  Urban courts are more likely to focus
on following proper procedures and on the
processing of cases, while rural courts are more
likely to focus on outcomes--i.e., given what is
known about the offender, the victim, and the
community, what is the most just disposition of a
case?  For officials in urban courts, determining
whether "justice" has been served requires
focusing on the process, whereas in rural courts
"justice" is more likely to be measured by looking
at outcomes.

RURAL JAILS

In addition to the judicial branch, some
discussion has focused on rural jails, which are
generally the responsibility of local sheriffs. 
As was true of police departments, research tends
to focus on urban jails, but by far the greatest
number of facilities are in rural areas. 
According to the 1988 National Jail Census, two-
thirds of the jails in the U.S. have a daily
population of less than 50 inmates (Innes, 1990).

Most observers agree that while urban jails tend
to be seriously overcrowded, rural jails are more
likely to operate under their rated capacity
(Klofas, 1990).  Mays and Thompson (1988) found
that rural jails are not only underutilized but
are often older than urban jails and more poorly
staffed.  Because the fixed costs of running a
jail exist apart from whether the cells are full
or empty, the per-inmate cost of running jails in
rural areas is about double that in urban areas. 
Further, the lack of staff and programming mean
that rural inmates are less often separated by age
and are less often supervised, which may partly
account for their substantially higher rates of
homicide, suicide, and death from illness and
natural causes (Mays and Thompson, 1988).  In
rural areas, the fiscal conservatism that leads to
small budgets for jail structures and jail
services may create problems for the local
sheriff, who can still be held "individually
liable for the safety and welfare of inmates (p.
432)."

Mays and Thompson (1988) also argue that sheriffs
in rural areas have fewer support services
available to more quickly process inmates and move
them out of the jail.  For example, limited
probation services may leave fewer alternatives to
jail for misdemeanants.  Also, the rural practice
of relying on part-time judges may have a direct
impact on the jail.  "The result may be a less-
than-timely dispositions in bail hearings,
preliminary hearings, trials, and other functions
that require a judge's presence (p. 431)."

The economic plight of some rural areas leads
local sheriffs to raise money by housing jail
inmates from urban areas or from rural areas with
no jail.  Federal authorities also contract with
local jails to hold prisoners or to house illegal
aliens for the Immigration and Naturalization
Service (e.g. "Haitians suffer from isolation in
rural jails," 1993).  Housing inmates for other
jurisdictions may be a good fiscal move by the
sheriff whose jail receives the inmates and a
practical necessity for the official who must
reduce overcrowding.  Little is known, however,
about the full implications of this practice.  For
example, what is the impact of separating the
inmate from local connections, both legal and
illegal?  These connections would include family,
friends, employers, and legal counsel.  Another
issue is the type of inmate sent to rural jails. 
Do urban facilities send the most troublesome
inmates to rural jails, and does this facilitate
the spread of gang influence and other criminal
networks, particularly when inmates are shipped
across State lines?  Other questions arise about
the treatment of these inmates.  It was argued
earlier in this report that the behavior of rural
police is relatively visible to citizens, and they
are accountable to local citizens.  It is possible
that these immediate controls over police behavior
are substantially reduced when the client is not a
local citizen--perhaps not even a citizen of the
United States.  While little is known about rural
jails, even less is known about short-term lockups
and holding facilities in rural areas.

PRISONS

The United States has been in a prison building
boom for over a decade, and most State and Federal
prisons are built in rural areas.  In rural areas
with high unemployment and no strong economic
base, citizens often lobby hard for new prisons
(Patrico, 1992).  One consequence of building
prisons in rural areas is the cultural and racial
difference between the predominantly white rural
staff and urban minority inmates (Jacobs and
Kraft, 1978).  Aside from providing jobs, prisons
have an impact on the local criminal justice
system.  In most States felonies that occur within
prisons can be prosecuted in the local county. 
Although little is known about this issue,
Eichenthal and Jacobs (1991) have done preliminary
work and raised some interesting questions.  For
example, they found large variations in the
willingness of prison officials to pursue
prosecutions through the local courts, as well as
variations in the willingness of local prosecutors
to bring charges.  Among the problems associated
with investigating prison crimes, they note: 

The police investigators, especially when they are
from rural counties, are likely to have special
problems in establishing rapport with potential
inmate witnesses and in understanding the complex
norms and dynamics of the inmate social system,
which provide the context for the crime and the
key to the investigations (1991, p. 292, emphasis
added).

Eichenthal and Jacobs found that in some areas
prison cases accounted for as many as 25 percent
of the cases handled by local prosecutors.  Thus,
the burden on local courts is raised
correspondingly.  The cost of handling prison
cases can be substantial for these rural
communities, even when they are partially
reimbursed by the State.  These costs include
legal defense services for indigent defendants,
increased courtroom security, and secure detention
facilities during the trial.  In addition: 
Inmate defendants also may be more litigious and
less willing to settle the cases against them
quickly.  Indeed, for some inmates the opportunity
to travel back and forth to court and the county
jail may be viewed as a desirable break from the
deadening prison routine (Eichenthal and Jacobs,
1991, p. 294-5).

In fact, Eichenthal and Jacobs found that some
local prosecutors routinely declined to prosecute
prison crimes because of the costs involved.  In
addition, a locally elected prosecutor has little
to gain by spending time on crimes within the
local prison if that means less time on local
criminal concerns.  An exception to this might be
cases in which inmates assault guards who are
local citizens.

Another issue is whether having a prison in the
area influences the local crime rate.  This is
still an open question, although what little
evidence exists suggests that crime does not
increase when a prison is opened.  It seems likely
that even if crime does not rise because of the
prison itself, some forms of crime, such as
burglary, might increase as a consequence of the
economic development that accompanies the prison.

With the hundreds of studies that have been done
about prisons, it is ironic that so little has
been done exploring the relationship between
prisons and the rural communities in which most
prisons are located.  With no immediate end to
widespread prison construction, it is important to
have a better understanding of the impact of
prisons on the rural communities in which they are
built.

SUMMARY

It appears that criminal justice institutions
operate differently in rural and urban areas.  In
particular, rural officials are likely to have
much closer working relationships with others in
the system and to be less able to separate their
professional and private lives.  Rural courts are
less formal than urban courts, though not always
less harsh.  Further, the flexibility that
accompanies the less formal approach to case
processing may also lead to greater racial
disparity in sentencing.  In general, rural and
urban courts may operate under different
definitions of justice, with urban courts more
focused on justice as a process and rural courts
more focused on justice as an outcome.  

Nationally, most jails are small and in rural
areas.  Unlike urban jails that tend to be
overcrowded, rural jails are more likely to
operate under their rated capacity.  It is not
unusual for rural jails to house inmates from
other jurisdictions, as a way to offset operating
costs.

Prisons are usually built in rural areas.  Many
rural communities, particularly those with high
unemployment and a small tax base, actively lobby
to attract new prisons.  Locating prisons in rural
areas sets the stage for conflicts between rural
white staff and urban minority inmates.  While a
prison may not generate a substantial amount of
crime in the surrounding community, it may
increase the workload of the local justice system
in States where felonies committed in the prison
are prosecuted locally.  The boom in prison
construction in rural areas suggests the
importance of further study.

There are few aspects of the rural justice system
that are thoroughly understood, and there are
some, such as probation, about which almost
nothing is known.  It is clear that rural justice,
like rural crime, is shaped by the culture and
geography of small towns and rural areas.

VIII. POLICY AND RESEARCH ISSUES

Compared with urban areas, little is known about
crime and policing in small towns and rural areas. 
Most research on police has focused on urban
departments, while studies of crime have either
had a restricted urban focus or have used national
data in which rural and small-town issues are not
specifically addressed.  The discussion also
suggests that the issues are complex and that a
more careful study of rural and small-town crime
can be important for both serving the rural
community and for understanding crime in general. 

Rather than summarizing the "facts" about rural
crime and rural policing, this discussion will
highlight issues raised in the preceding
discussion.  The discussion first concentrates on
broad issues relevant to policy and research on
rural and small-town crime.  Following that, the
focus shifts to specific issues that require
further study.

GENERAL ISSUES

Careful consideration of rural and small-town
crime and justice requires that several general
issues be considered.  For most issues there is no
right or wrong approach, but an appreciation of
these issues is important in conducting research
and developing policies relevant to rural areas
and small towns.

Although the terms "rural" and "urban" are used
frequently in everyday language,
there are no precise meanings of these terms upon
which everyone can agree.  While some include only
unincorporated areas in their definition, we found
instances in which communities of 50,000 were
considered rural.  A similar problem of definition
arises when discussing small police departments. 
Many would define departments of 10 or fewer
officers as small.  However, one researcher was
told by a large-city police chief that more
attention needed to be focused on small
departments.  The chief then explained that small
departments are those with fewer than 300
officers.  Arriving at a precise definition of
rural areas or of small police departments, with
which everyone can agree--and that will be useful
in all applications--is both impossible and
unnecessary.  What is important is that
researchers and policymakers make clear what they
include in their definition and, where possible,
provide some justification for that definition.

While the term rural may defy precise definition,
there are differences between rural
and urban cultures, and these differences have
implications for crime and policing in small towns
and rural areas.  Even issues that appear similar
across rural and urban areas may have very
different meanings.  For example, both rural and
urban areas have pockets of extreme poverty, but
the implications of that poverty for crime are
very different in the two areas.  It appears that
the meaning of poverty, rather than the fact of
poverty is what is important.  In short, caution
should be exercised in applying urban solutions to
rural crime problems.  Not only is the study of
rural and small-town crime useful in its own
right, but it can also be a valuable tool for
challenging assumptions about crime that are based
on an urban perspective.

While much needs to be learned about rural-urban
differences, it is likely that differences among
rural areas are also great and merit further
examination.  It is not true that "sticks is
sticks."  For example, the culture and crimes of
rural Appalachia are quite different from those of
southwestern migrant workers or of Indian
reservations in the Plains States.  Thus, national
policies uniformly covering rural areas may be a
mistake, and research on rural crime problems in
one area may have limited applicability in another
rural area.  One of the challenges for future
research and policy will be to distinguish
features that are common across rural areas from
those unique to particular rural locations, and to
make policies that can be adapted to local needs.

Over the long term, understanding and responding
to rural crime will require a more careful study
of rural environments, but as the discussions
above suggest, these environments may present
methodological problems that need to be addressed. 
Geography and culture in rural areas also raise
questions about the applicability of urban
research methods to rural environments.  Urban
methods cannot simply be applied in rural areas
with the same results.  For example, streetcorner
interviews with urban drug addicts have no
counterpart in rural areas. It is not clear how
rural drug users who have not been identified by
authorities might be conveniently located by
researchers in rural areas.

These general issues form the setting for policy
and research involving rural and small-town areas. 
The challenges facing researchers and policymakers
in rural areas and small towns are formidable, but
the needs of these area are real and deserve
attention.

SPECIFIC AREAS FPR FURTHER CONSIDERATION

In the course of this study it became clear that a
number of specific issues merited further
consideration.  Some have been longstanding
problems while others are emerging concerns.  The
list that follows is by no means exhaustive and
the items are not listed in order of importance. 
The list begins with crime issues and then moves
to questions about police and the criminal justice
system in general.

o Gangs and gang influences.  Is there a gang
problem in rural areas and small towns?  What is
the nature of the problem?  How can it be
documented?  If there is a problem, what is the
appropriate response?  How are the problems and
solutions different in rural and urban areas?

o Drugs--production, transshipment, distribution,
use.  How do rural and small-town drug networks
differ from urban drug networks?  What role do
rural areas play in the production and
transshipment of drugs that are eventually
consumed in urban areas?  What is the nature of
the drug-use problem in rural areas, and what
features of the rural environment have an effect
on drug treatment?  Do police play a greater role
in drug prevention programs in rural areas?

o Crimes connected to highways.  How has the
construction of interstate highways influenced
crime in rural areas and small towns?  Are rest-
stop crimes a problem and, if so, what is the role
of rural police in dealing with the problem?

o Crime and violence in rural schools.  Are
violence, drugs, and guns a problem in rural
schools?  What features of the rural environment
shape the response to crime and violence in these
schools?  What impact does school consolidation
have on the problem?

o Domestic violence.  How is the detection of and
response to domestic violence different in rural
and urban areas?  What are the options for
disposing of domestic violence cases in rural
areas?  

o Impact of casinos and gambling.  What is the
impact on rural and small-town crime of nearby
casinos and riverboats?  What impact does this
crime have on local resources? 

o Crime in areas of transition (e.g., areas of
rapid growth or decline).  What happens to crime
when rural areas undergo sudden change?  Examples
include building a large factory in a rural area
or rapid urban sprawl that turns rural areas into
suburban communities.

o Crime by and the victimization of special
populations (senior citizens, tourists, etc.).
What special services or considerations are
required of the criminal justice system when
senior citizens begin moving into a rural
community in large numbers?  What are the issues
that arise when populations undergo dramatic
seasonal shifts because of tourism? 

o Crime by and against minorities in rural areas. 
Does the low representation of minorities in rural
areas change the way they are handled by other
citizens and by the criminal justice system?  What
about crime and justice in rural areas with
relatively large minority populations?

o Impact of technology on crime and the
victimization of rural citizens.  Have satellite
communications, improved telephone systems, faxes,
and modems made rural citizens more susceptible to
fraud and high-tech, deceptive practices?  How has
technology helped in crime prevention and calls
for assistance?

o Women and minorities in rural police work. 
Nearly all studies of women and minorities in
police work have been done in urban areas with
sizable minority populations and police forces
large enough to have several women and minority
officers working in the same department.  Are
women and minority police in rural areas doubly
isolated--both from citizens and from other women
and minorities in the department with whom they
can socialize?

o Attracting and retaining rural police officers. 
What steps can rural and small-town departments
take to improve the retention of police officers? 
Why do some rural departments seem to be training
grounds for police who wish to move to larger
departments, while other rural departments have a
relatively stable workforce?

o Getting training to rural police.  Where the
number of officers in a department is small, the
absence of one officer for training is an
inconvenience for everyone and sometimes means
periods of no police service for the local
community.  Problems with access to training are
compounded in areas where the distance required to
get training is long.  Are there strategies for
dealing with these problems?

o Explaining high rates of felonious killings of
rural police.  Why is the rate so much higher in
rural and suburban areas than in central cities? 
Is it because of police practices or because of
people with whom the police must deal--or a
combination of the two?  What can be done to lower
the felonious killing rates in rural and suburban
areas?

o Handling juvenile offenders in rural areas. Do
rural and small-town police handle juveniles
differently than do urban police?  How does the
distance from detention facilities influence the
decisions of police?  What are the options for
handling delinquent juveniles in rural areas?

o The role of rural police in crime prevention. 
Given their greater ties to their communities, do
rural and small-town police play a greater role in
crime prevention?  Does their informal knowledge
of much of the citizenry help them identify
problems in their earliest stages?

o Impact of prisons on crime and justice in rural
areas.  What is the impact of a prison on the
local community's crime rate?  What is the impact
of a prison on the local justice system,
particularly on the prosecutor and the courts?  

o Urban police officers who begin working in rural
areas.  It is our observation that some of the
rural-urban differences in policing we have
reported are most evident to officers who leave
urban settings to work in the rural environment. 
It is also our impression that such a move is
relatively common for retiring urban police who
view the move as a second career.  The adjustment
is often difficult for both the officer and the
local community.

 o A job task analysis of rural police work. 
Precisely how does rural and urban police work
differ?  What are the implications of these
differences for the content of training and the
evaluation of police performance?  That is, "good"
police work in rural areas may not be identical to
good police work in urban areas.

o Innovative uses of technology by rural police. 
The availability of less expensive computers, the
expansion of communication capabilities, and
similar advances in technology may have a
considerable impact on rural police.  Information
sharing, remote site training, and improved
communications across large jurisdictions are
examples of how technology may benefit small
departments.  Further, the falling prices of this
technology put it within the reach of more rural
departments than ever.  What are some of the most
innovative uses of new technology by rural
departments, and what can be done to make them
more widely available?

o Rural resource sharing. In rural areas with low
tax bases and scarce resources, are there examples
of resource sharing that work particularly well
for local police?

o Community policing in rural areas.  How can a
further study of rural policing help outline the
benefits and limits of community policing?  What
aspects of the rural police style are
transferrable to urban areas, and which are unique
to the rural setting?

o Working relationships among rural justice
agencies.  It appears that rural police, courts,
and other agencies work more closely than in urban
areas.  How does this influence the handling of
cases and the quality of justice meted out?

o Local, State, and Federal cooperation.  Why are
working relationships among local, State, and
Federal authorities more positive in some rural
areas than in others?  How does the trend toward
defining an increasing number of crimes as Federal
offenses affect crime and justice in rural areas? 
From a local perspective, are there offenses for
which this approach is helpful, and are there
offenses for which this trend is
counterproductive?

This brief overview of rural and small-town crime
and policing has raised more questions than it has
answered but suggests it is an area worth
considerable further attention regarding both
policy and research.  Studying crime across rural
areas and between urban and rural areas is useful
in the same way that studies of crime across
countries tell us much about larger patterns and
suggest what works and what does not work in
policing and crime prevention.  It should also be
clear that policies aimed at rural crime problems
cannot ignore the unique features of rural culture
that shape crime, citizen responses, police
activities, and the operation of the courts.

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