A Structural Analysis of Social Disorganisation and Crime in Rural Communities in Australia

DOI10.1375/acri.37.1.114
AuthorJoseph F. Donnermeyer,Patrick C Jobes,Herb Weinand,Elaine Barclay
Date01 April 2004
Published date01 April 2004
114 THE AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY
VOLUME 37 NUMBER 1 2004 PP.114–140
Address for correspondence: Patrick C. Jobes, PhD, CRC Research Fellow, Australian
Institute of Criminology, GPO Box 2944, Canberra, ACT 2601, Australia. Email:
pat.jobes@aic.gov.au
A Structural Analysis of Social
Disorganisation and Crime in Rural
Communities in Australia
Patrick C. Jobes,Elaine Barclay and Herb Weinand
University of New England, Australia
Joseph F. Donnermeyer
Ohio State University, United States
This paper extends research on rural crime beyond North America by
analysing associations between census measures of community
structures and officially reported crime in rural New South Wales
(Australia). It employs social disorganisation theory to examine variations
in crime rates between different kinds of rural communities. A typology of
rural communities was developed from cluster analysis of demographic,
economic and social structural measures of rural local government areas
(LGAs) in NSW. Six distinct types of rural communities were found to
have unique crime characteristics. Structural measures were statistically
associated with four types of crime. Overall, the findings support social
disorganisation theory. Crime generally decreased across an urban–rural
continuum, and more cohesive and integrated community structures had
less crime. One highly disorganised type of small community had
extremely high crime.These analyses demonstrate how specific structures
of rural places are linked to rural crime.
This paper summarises analyses of crime in rural areas of New South Wales
(NSW), Australia. The analyses, description and interpretation of the data follow
the structural differentiation approach (Sampson, 1985; Sampson, Raudenbush, &
Earls, 1997). The kinds of structures of which people are part, the kinds of processes
that operate within the structures, and the kinds of positions they occupy within
the structures, largely determine how people engage in crime. The empirical
purpose of the analyses is to identify and measure how variations in community
characteristics are linked to crime in rural Australia. The theoretical purpose is to
test whether social disorganisation forms the foundation for the empirical findings.
Data analyses are presented for rates of four types of crime in rural Australia;
assault, break and enter, malicious damage, and motor vehicle theft. Measures of
demographic, economic and social characteristics are drawn from the 1996 Census
and comprise the independent variables; that is, variables that theoretically are
associated with, and antecedent to the crimes. Three types of summaries are
presented. First, statistical summaries describe the quantitative empirical relation-
ships between the structural variables being analysed. These include regression analy-
ses, the development of cluster analyses for rural community structures, and analyses
of variance of crime between clusters. Second, graphic summaries portray the
geographical distributions of many of those relationships in rural areas. Third, the
quantitative analyses are interpreted through a social disorganisation perspective.
Non-metropolitan Local Government Areas (LGAs) in New South Wales
were the source of measures of community for the analyses of secondary data.
These LGAs ranged from very rural and remote locations to those bordering on
metropolitan areas. The analysis found that rural communities in Australia fall
into six distinct types. Analyses further indicate that those clusters have distinct
patterns of crime. The distributions of crime can largely be explained through a
social disorganisation orientation.
Structural Analysis of Crime and Social Disorganisation
Thorsten Sellin (1938) long ago articulated the foundation of criminology as the
study of how normative structures and processes influence criminal behaviour. The
structural orientation assumes that behaviour occurs in a geographic location
because of local structures and their influences. Structural factors influence
whether people become criminal or law-abiding (Beirne & Messerschmidt, 1995).
Structures also influence their substantive types of behaviour. The types of crimes
criminals commit are strongly influenced by their position in the social system
and the nature of that social system (Blumstein, Cohen, Roth, & Visher, 1986).
Stable structures that are more homogeneous are assumed to be more cohesive and
integrated, that is, more socially organised (Carter, Phillips, Donnermeyer, &
Wurschmidt, 1982).
In this study, the community is the unit of analysis. The object of this analysis is
to describe the relationship between crime and the contemporary structure of rural
communities in Australia. This research broadens the understanding of both the
facts of rural crime, and the factors that underlie the processes that lead to crime to
rural Australia. It starts with the simple assumptions that rural communities in
Australia are quite diverse, and that rural communities can vary greatly in structure
and how this structure influences crime rates.
Rural communities have long been identified as different from urban communi-
ties (Durkheim, 1933). However, focusing on rural crime in modern societies
requires some acknowledgment of urban settings for two reasons. First, as part of
the larger gesellschaft, people in rural areas are subject to many ubiquitous influences
from urban society (Toennies, 1957). Fischer (1980) maintains that rural areas in
urban societies evolve toward and follow urban trends in both social organisation
and crime. The same organisation and processes that influence behaviour in cities
are present in many rural areas in a somewhat modified form (Thurman &
McGarrell, 1997; Weisheit & Donnermeyer, 2000). Second, there is no absolute
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A STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS OF SOCIAL DISORGANISATION AND CRIME
THE AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY

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