text-only page produced automatically by LIFT Text Transcoder Skip all navigation and go to page contentSkip top navigation and go to directorate navigationSkip top navigation and go to page navigation
National Science Foundation Home National Science Foundation - Social, Behavioral & Economic Sciences (SBE)
 
Social, Behavioral & Economic Sciences (SBE)
design element
SBE Home
About SBE
Funding Opportunities
Awards
News
Events
Discoveries
Publications
Advisory Committee
Career Opportunities
See Additional SBE Resources
View SBE Staff
SBE Organizations
Behavioral and Cognitive Sciences (BCS)
Social and Economic Sciences (SES)
Science Resources Statistics (SRS)
Proposals and Awards
Proposal and Award Policies and Procedures Guide
  Introduction
Proposal Preparation and Submission
bullet Grant Proposal Guide
  bullet Grants.gov Application Guide
Award and Administration
bullet Award and Administration Guide
Award Conditions
Other Types of Proposals
Merit Review
NSF Outreach
Policy Office
Additional SBE Resources
Advisory Committee Members Only
Other Site Features
Special Reports
Research Overviews
Multimedia Gallery
Classroom Resources
NSF-Wide Investments


Discovery
Violent Crime and Civic Engagement in Rural Communities

Sociologist Matthew Lee designs a new conceptual model to study violence in rural settings

City of Clarksdale in the Coahoma County, Mississippi Delta region

City of Clarksdale in the Coahoma County, Mississippi Delta region.
Credit and Larger Version

August 12, 2008

Violent crime doesn't just occur within city limits. It's a troubling aspect of life in rural areas as well, but researchers interested in understanding the nature of violent crime in non-urban settings faced a special challenge--the conceptual framework for studying violence in urban areas and neighborhoods doesn't work for rural areas. So says Matthew Lee, a sociology professor at Louisiana State University.

"Unlike the urban setting, most rural communities do not have neighborhoods in the traditional sense of a relatively small and well-populated spatial unit," Lee explains, "and in many communities, the nearest neighbors are actually miles away."

So Lee, a recipient of a prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award--given to outstanding researchers near the beginning of their academic careers who are committed to integrating research and education--developed a new conceptual model and it led him to identify factors that explain the variation in crime rates among rural areas.

Just as some cities experience more violent crime than others, the same is true for rural areas. Lee defines violent crime "as the official reported rate of murder, robbery and aggravated assault." Rape statistics are not included because "there are serious problems with underreporting for that crime," he asserts.

He points to Mississippi's Delta Region, parts of Appalachia and Louisiana's Florida Parishes as having high rates of violent crime, despite their predominantly rural character.

Lee published the results of his research in Civic Community in the Hinterland: Toward a Theory of Rural Social Structure and Violence, which appeared in the May 2008 issue of the scholarly journal Criminology.

Civic Community

For his study, Lee looked at counties that had populations of between 1,000 and 25,000 residents and that reported at least 90 percent of their data to the Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) Urban Crimes Report (UCR) between 2000 and 2002. He discovered that rural areas having a stronger civic community experienced significantly lower rates of violent crime. The decreased rate in crime is because the capacity of the communities themselves to integrate their members, regulate their behavior and collectively solve community social problems is substantially enhanced, according to Lee.

Indicators of civic community include the existence of locally oriented businesses, the length of time people lived in the same house, rates of home ownership, the number of congregations, civic associations, family farms and other groups (such as the PTA/Parent-Teacher Association and the Girl Scouts), and the level of voter turnout.

Lee and other social scientists who share the civic community perspective generally assert that communities with a strong local cooperation base, a locally oriented business climate and a participatory culture can withstand extra-local pressures and solve local problems more easily and efficiently.

"Communities with high levels of 'civic engagement'--individual and collective actions designed to identify and address issues of public concern--are better off on a variety of civic welfare outcomes, including lower poverty and unemployment rates, higher median incomes and lower violent crime rates," Lee explains.

While Seattle, Wash., is not a rural area, Lee cites it as an example of successful civic engagement. Others also share that view. According to the Social Capital Community Benchmark Survey (part of an ongoing initiative of Robert D. Putnam, distinguished scholar and social capital researcher at the John F. Kennedy School of Government of Harvard University), the city of Seattle scores high on 'civic leadership,' 'associational involvement,' and other similar indicators.

Lee points to the effects of globalization as a key factor in the shift of a peaceful rural area to one with rising violent crime. Such change leads to significant community-level 'structural differentiation'--this occurs when a society goes from simple to a more complex organization. These changes include the corporatization of agricultural production, the disruption of local communities through the development of energy boomtowns--a community that experiences sudden and rapid population and economic growth--and the moving of young adults to metropolitan labor markets.

"Currently, a substantial body of research suggests that communities dominated by giant corporate interests are vulnerable to the vicissitudes of global markets and profit-driven corporate decision makers," Lee noted.

Lee is now researching civic community and violent crime rates in rural settings from 1980-2000. And, although he maintains ongoing research of rural communities in the United States, he hopes to start a project on murder in the city of New Orleans before and after the flooding due to Hurricane Katrina.

--  Giselle Aviles-Maldonado, (703) 292-8063 gavilesm@nsf.gov

Investigators
Matthew Lee

Related Institutions/Organizations
Mississippi State University
Louisiana State University & Agricultural and Mechanical College

Locations
Louisiana
Mississippi

Related Programs
Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Program

Related Awards
#0237968 CAREER: Institutional Structure, Civic Engagement, and Crime in Nonmetropolitan America
#0440264 CAREER: Institutional Structure, Civic Engagement, and Crime in Nonmetropolitan America

Total Grants
$701,705

Related Websites
Crime and Policy Evaluation Research Group, Louisiana State University: http://www.lsu.edu/capergroup/
Professor Matthew Lee's Web Page: http://appl003.lsu.edu/artsci/sociologyweb.nsf/$Content/Lee?OpenDocument

border=0/


Print this page
Back to Top of page
  Web Policies and Important Links | Privacy | FOIA | Help | Contact NSF | Contact Webmaster | SiteMap  
National Science Foundation Social, Behavioral & Economic Sciences (SBE)
The National Science Foundation, 4201 Wilson Boulevard, Arlington, Virginia 22230, USA
Tel:  (703) 292-5111, FIRS: (800) 877-8339 | TDD: (800) 281-8749
Last Updated:
August 22, 2008
Text Only


Last Updated: August 22, 2008