ABSTRACT
Rural criminology is the scholarly study of crime in the rural localities and among the rural peoples of societies around the world. Only recently did the world’s population become a majority urban population (Population Reference Bureau 2007), yet ironically, rural criminology’s development coincides with this rural-to-urban demographic tipping point. In the relatively short span of 20 years, the field of rural criminology has grown from the status of being mostly unknown to one that is now beginning to inform the broader field of criminology. Yet both its champions and those who care little for a criminological focus on the rural can make equally strong arguments that rural criminology remains marginalized and that it may never be more than the warm-up act before the headliner band – that is, an urban-focused criminology that rocks the audience with so-called ‘real’ theory, research and practice. Hence the questions: how did this urban bias arise, and why is it only now, in the middle of the second decade of the twenty-first century, that a handbook of this type is finally being published?
