What's Wrong with Criminology? Empirical and Theoretical Inadequacies in the Rural Boomtown Literature

• In Event: Advances in Rural Criminology: Crime and Security in Rural Communities I

Abstract

Test-flight, rehearsal, shakedown, and dry run are four ways to express that even the best ideas require application to detect faults and weaknesses. This principle applies equally to criminological research and theory. While developing a monograph on violence against women in the context of rural boomtown communities due to resource extractive activities, such as fracking, we discovered five primary fault lines in the extant literature. Each is identified and discussed in our presentation. They are: (1) inadequate attention paid to the differential impacts within the context of a region’s history, including colonialism, especially to first peoples; (2) the relative failure of the social impact assessment literature and rural sociology literatures to accurately and fully account for the impact of crime, even though a great deal of focus was and continues to be on impacts of police and criminal justice resources; (3) although improving its eyesight, in the past the green criminology literature was largely gender-blind; (4) the conceptual inadequacies of current criminological theories of crime and place, especially social disorganization theory; and (5) ignoring literatures from other fields, such as public health and feminist studies. For each, we provide recommendations to improve future criminological attention to boomtown research.

Authors

• Joseph Donnermeyer, The Ohio State University

• Walter DeKeseredy, West Virginia University

• Jayne Mooney, John Jay College of Criminal Justice / CUNY Graduate Center

• Fintan Mooney, Boston University