Rural Crime

This entry addresses the research literature exploring the nature and extent of rural crime in the United States, and theoretical explanations of rural crime. First, it is important to develop an understanding of what is meant by the term rural. The definition of a rural community has been debated by social scientists for quite some time, and differences in the definition of rural have implications for our understanding of rural crime.

Much of the criminological literature has ignored rural-urban differences in crime rates, and theories have commonly been tested using large cities as the unit of analysis. If crime were exclusively a large-city phenomenon, such a focus would be justified. However, the existence of rural crime, and differences in the rates and types of such crime, have important implications for criminological theories.