Patterns of Rural and Urban Crime: A County-Level Comparison

Abstract

Community policing, crime mapping, and the recent attention to theories of social disorganization are all examples of the renewed appreciation for understanding the social and environmental context within which crime occurs. However, most studies of the ecological context of crime have focused on urban settings, with little research attention in less metropolitan areas. Despite a growing interest in rural crime, it remains an under-studied issue. The study reported here used a national county-level data set to consider whether variables commonly used to predict urban crime patterns can be applied similarly to more rural settings. The results showed that, although ecological and structural factors did a good job of predicting urban patterns of crime, they were less predictive of crime rates in more rural counties. Further, the constellation of variables that best predicted urban crime rates was not identical to the set that best predicted rural crime rates.