ABSTRACT
In a recent review of rural policing Buttle (2006: 45) has highlighted the paucity of criminological research into rural crime and policing, and argued that from those studies which do exist, ‘it is apparent that rural crime is a rich and complex social phenomena and there are few assumptions that can be made in any given rural context.’ While Buttle successfully questions taken-for-granted assumptions as to the geography of rurality and rural crime he leaves related questions as to the plural character of wider networks of rural policing largely unexamined. Notwithstanding a belief that, ‘It would be useful to catalogue all the agencies (governmental/nongovernmental) that deal with numerous social problems often linked to crime’ (Buttle 2006: 11) the review is framed by the assumption that rural policing is primarily concerned with the maintenance of social order, defined explicitly through the law and/or informally through sets of tacit knowledges and carried out by police who are regarded as the state’s primary agents of ordering.
