On Expanding the Data Diversity of Rural Criminology

• In Event: Methodological Challenges in Rural Criminology

Abstract

As rural criminology continues its emergence as a distinctive subfield within criminology, it faces two major and inter-linked challenges. The first challenge is theory – the extent to which mainstream theories are borrowed wholesale, OR commonly accepted theories are critiqued and revised by scholars to better fit a rural context, OR, rural criminologists develop their own theories to account for the rural dimensions of crime and criminal justice. It is likely that some of all three will be necessary, depending on the topic and the preference of the rural scholar who engages with a rural criminological topic. The second challenge is research, specifically, the scholar’s preference or bias for specific types of data that answer a theoretical or research question. In this paper, a review of data sources used in the recently published (2016) Routledge International Handbook of Rural Criminology will frame the discussion of data diversity for rural studies. It concludes that the only (and obvious) answer is to fit the data to the theory and the goal of the research, but given the nature of so many issues associated with rural crime and criminal justice, and the need for to develop an explicit international perspective, rural criminology will likely be more qualitative in its approach to data collection and analysis.

Author

• Joseph Donnermeyer, The Ohio State University