The Structuring Vectors of Rural Community Safety: Brexit, Police Reform and Rural Social Transformation in the Irish Countryside

• In Event: Farm crime victimization: a global perspective

Abstract

Crime prevention and community safety, initially framed as part of the neo-liberalisation of society, has been shown through case studies, to operate in open systems, nuanced by regional governance traditions, professional power and practice traditions (Gilling et al, 2013). In addition, much of what is known within this critique of community safety politics has been discussed within a paradigm of urban security, not farm and rural security. In this paper, we aim to reveal the further complicating factors that shape rural community safety. These combine meta-level social transformations; national level factors shaping the governance of security, such as police reform; and international geo-politics in the guise of Brexit. We use our fieldwork in rural communities in Ireland to draw out the vectors that shape rural security and safety. We begin with the meta-level forces of late modern transformations involving the decline of agriculture and the rise of the informational economy bringing about new rural phenomena such as commuting. A second vector is police reform which puts community safety at centre stage, giving greater emphasis to community policing. Thirdly is the risk environment that has been created by Brexit whereby cross-border policing and security structures, established and working under the Good Friday Agreement have been thrown into a state of uncertainty. This is particularly acute in respect of the potential for a return to a ‘hard border’; the result would be to disconnect those communities that have been reconnected since the dissolution of the border, and to further destabilise the role of civil society. Drawing from our fieldwork exploring safety, security and resilience we note the overshadowing power of Brexit on the everyday resilience strategies of rural dwellers, especially agriculturalists, in border counties. Our analysis suggests that crime prevention and community safety in rural areas is complicated by a combination of ongoing and current structural forces, leading to a practical Sisyphean challenge for rural dwellers to gain ground in rural safety processes.

Authors

• Matt Bowden, Dublin Institute of Technology

• Artur Pytlarz, Dublin Institute of Technology