Crime in rural and regional areas

Until recently there has been little research on area differences in crime in Australia (O'Connor & Gray, 1989; Jochelson, 1997; Crime Research Centre, 1999; Hogg & Carrington, 1998; Carcach, 1997; Barclay, 2002; Hogg & Carrington, 2003; People, 2005; Moffat, Goh & Poynton, 2006). In terms of absolute numbers, most crime occurs in large cities for the simple reason that Australia's population is concentrated in coastal metropolitan centres. This is hardly surprising given the global trend across the 20th and 21st centuries for most people to settle in cities of increasing size. However this does not mean that crime in rural and regional areas is not worthy of study in and of itself. This chapter provides an overview of available current data measuring crime in Australia's States and Territories broken down into regions and localities. The data is limited, has reliability problems and lots of gaps.