Women and Crime in the Rural-Urban Fringe
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Date
2013-12
Authors
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
Ohio State University. Libraries
Abstract
This article focuses on human actors and a spatial setting which are rarely the subject of
criminological inquiry. Both the actors (drug-involved low-level female offenders) and the
setting in which they reside (the rural-urban fringe) have been relegated to some nether world of
criminal justice scholarship: they are considered neither significant nor consequential enough to
warrant scientific interest, and when they do enter the scholarly picture it is often in a caricature-like
way. Indeed, the women of interest here, drug-involved recidivist property and public order
offenders, often have been reduced in the media to drug-addled, crystal-meth scarred beings with
minimal voice, little context, and even less meaning, inhabiting a world that is defined simply for
what it is not - neither urban, nor rural. The research took place in four upstate New York
counties, with data collected by way of intensive, qualitative interviews from four sources: the
Sheriffs in each county, other law enforcement personnel (including members of the road patrol
and drug task forces for the county), jail staff, and 20 women being held in local county jails who
met the selection criteria. In framing the inquiry, emphasis was placed on exploring the effects of
the rural-urban fringe setting on the women’s entry into drug / criminal activity and the roles
played by community institutions, arrangements, and opportunity structures to facilitate their
involvement in these pursuits.
Description
Keywords
Drug-involved Rural Women, Rural Women Drug Use, Rural Women and Crime, Rural Gender Roles, Rural Domestic Violence
Citation
International Journal of Rural Criminology, v2, n1 (December, 2013), p. 53-74