Locating Crime in Context and Place: Perspectives on Regional, Rural and Remote Australia

The urban focus of crime has dominated the attention of criminologists. Although images of idyllic, crime-free areas beyond the cityscape persist, there is scant academic consideration of the realities and variances of crime across regional, rural and remote Australia. Contributors to Locating Crime explore the nexus between crime and space, examining the complexities that exist in policing, prosecuting and punishing crime in different zones. The various authors draw upon original knowledge and insight and utilise innovative research and an interdisciplinary approach to their work. The broad theme of Locating Crime is centred on ‘context, place and space’, but several sub-themes emerge too. Contributors grapple with a number of issues: contextualisations of rurality; notions of ‘access to justice’; the importance of building ‘social capital’; the role of history; and of proactively addressing offending rates with crime prevention measures. This original research adds significantly to criminological understandings of crime in different spaces and offers novel insights of the impact upon victims and communities affected by crime in non-urban environments. Twelve scholarly chapters are grounded in criminological, legal and socio-legal frameworks and incorporate theoretical and practical knowledge from other fields such as history, sociology, cultural geography, media, cultural studies and Indigenous studies. The contributions from four professionals with expert knowledge of specific facets of criminal justice systems in Australia offer evaluations often absent from scholarly criminological literature. By melding both academic and practitioner discourse into the same work, this book allows a greater appreciation of the nexus between thought and practice.