Is More Better? Rural Resident Perspectives on the Need for More Police Services

• In Event: Advances in Rural Criminology: Policing in Rural Communities

Abstract

In many rural areas of the United States, communities do not have an on-site police presence. Technically, police may be “only a phone call away” for rural residents just as they are in other, more urbanized locales, but as a practical matter police in rural jurisdictions are often many miles and many hours away. This means that the wide range of police services and the immediacy of police response that people in nonrural communities take for granted are much more limited in rural areas. Discussions of these urban-rural differences in the provision of police services – and especially direct, ready access to them for community residents – tend to frame the fact of rurality itself as a barrier to justice, and furthermore these critiques often assume that rural residents desire and prioritize a more robust police presence. Using data from the 2022 Alaska Police—Public Contact Survey, this study directly examines this key assumption, that residents of rural communities with limited or no direct access to police services believe their communities need an increased police presence.

Author

• Brad A. Myrstol, University of Alaska Anchorage