This collection aims to stimulate debate about a major gap in contemporary criminological research. By failing to engage in a more theoretical and analytical discussion of rurality, criminologists have diminished the importance of complex sociological, geographical and demographic phenomena and have helped perpetuate a simplistic yet enduring perception of two diametrically contrasting communities: the crime ridden urban and the crime free rural. This perception has also led policy makers to look to rural communities for answers to urban crime problems. The authors argue that, whilst there are qualitative and quantitative differences between rural and urban communities' experiences of crime and crime control, the rural is all too often an undifferentiated "other. within the countryside one finds very different groups with very different experiences of crime and criminal justice. the collection combines crime surveys, empirical case studies and theoretical analyses to provide the most comprehensive examination of rural crime available.