“Dead in the Water”: Is Rural Violent Crime Prevention Floating Face-down because Criminology Can't Handle Context?

Abstract

The paper explores the challenges of capturing context in criminology with reference to one kind of small-N situation – violent crime in rural communities. An illustrative analysis of the violent crime prevention research and select adjunct debates about method, including case-based approaches, was undertaken. First, the paper explores the need for methods offering diversity-oriented ways of understanding country, community, and the individual in situ in the community. Second, it examines how the challenges of “context” are being described in wider debates: about the technical limitations of “big Q” methods for criminology; about the relevance of research evidence; about case-based analyses. Third, it sketches the value of Charles Ragin's diversity-oriented, small-N method for enriching understandings of context. The paper concludes that Ragin's method can add value to local rural crime prevention practice and related micro-social policy development by illuminating the “black box” of individual cases.