I have a confession.
I watch a lot of True Crime and have always been fascinated with the psychology of criminal offending, particularly that of serial killers and others whose offenses stem from profound mental and emotional disorders.
Ever since I snuck my parents’ paperback copy of Helter Skelter off their bookshelf when I was 11 — far too young to be reading about the Manson cult — I’ve been interested in why people kill, especially in such horrific ways.
But what’s even more fascinating than the psychology of murderers is the psychology of people in small towns or rural areas who always seem shocked when one of those awful crimes happens where they live.
A few nights ago, I was watching a show about some grisly crime out in the so-called “heartland.” And, as always happens in these cases, they interviewed someone who looked utterly confused by the whole thing.
As she put it, wide-eyed with amazement:
Of course not.
Because violence and murder only happen in New York or Los Angeles.
Everyone knows that.
Then came the clincher. It’s a line you’ll often hear in these situations. It’s the one about how…
Ok, first off, why not?
Doors have locks for a reason. They’re not decorations.
It’s not like the people at the big city door-makin’ place were trolling you when they put that chain thingy on there, Ethel. Or the deadbolt.
Didn’t y’all read In Cold Blood?
In 1959, Perry Smith and Richard Hickock went to the Clutter farm in Holcomb, Kansas, to rob the father, Herb Clutter, because they wrongly believed had large amounts of cash in a safe.
It turns out the Clutters didn’t lock their doors either.
Once inside, Hickock and Smith killed everyone: Herb, his wife, and two kids.
I mean, I know high school reading lists are being purged of LGBTQ content, but does that mean we don’t teach Truman Capote anymore?
And hell, even without Capote’s classic, don’t y’all have the Investigation Discovery channel? It seems like every other show is about some crazy shit happening in some out-of-the-way place.
Where it’s not supposed to.
But where it does. A lot.
Rural and small-town crime is not rare
This denial has always fascinated me.
Mainly because the idea that crime and violence are rare in rural and small-town spaces is so demonstrably false.
Google the Oklahoma Girl Scout murders, the Texarkana Moonlight Murderer, or the Bear Brook Murders for just a few examples of bad things happening in the places and to the people believed to be safe.
Dennis Rader, also known as the BTK Killer, wasn’t stalking the mean streets of Chicago.
Herbert Baumeister lived on a farm in Indiana — married with children. He also picked up men at gay bars and killed them, burying 11 on his property.
And Alaska — not exactly known for gritty urbanicity — has more serial killings and killers per capita than any state in the nation and the highest overall violent crime rate in the U.S.
Oh sure, I know the retort. Those are extreme outliers, you might insist. On balance, it’s logical for people in rural areas to be shocked by violent crime because the rates of it really are lower there than in the cities.
Yes, crime rates are generally lower in rural areas for reasons that any criminologist can explain.
Rural communities have lower population density, and having many people packed into tight spaces — as cities do — increases the opportunity for interpersonal violence and the conflicts that often precipitate it.
Additionally, rural areas have less concentrated poverty, which has been shown to correlate with violent crime in dozens of countries.
But despite sociological forces that predict lower crime rates in rural areas, the differences between them and urban ones aren’t as large as you probably think.
- Research has found that violent crimes are especially unlikely to be reported in rural areas, thereby masking the extent of the problem in official data. Only 42 percent of such crimes — and fewer than 56 percent of serious violent crimes — are reported to police in rural areas.
- When looking at victimization claims tallied by the Justice Department — including for incidents not reported to local law enforcement — violent crime rates are only about 20 percent higher in urban versus rural areas, and aggravated assault rates are the same or higher in rural communities.
- Most of the difference in violent crime rates between urban and rural areas is due to massive differentials in robbery rates. This makes sense, given far fewer potential targets in rural areas for this particular crime. But when it comes to homicide, the differences are minor: 5 homicides per 100,000 people in urban areas and nearly 4 per 100,000 in rural areas.
Crime trends also refute the notion that rural areas are significantly safer than cities.
- Violent crime has been rising just as fast in rural communities as in urban ones. By 2018, the rural violent crime rate had climbed above the national average, doubling in rural West Virginia and tripling in rural New Hampshire in the last couple of decades.
- As for homicide, although cities saw a 30 percent spike in 2020 — a phenomenon about which the media and politicians have made much noise — rural areas saw a similar 25 percent increase in the same period.
- Interestingly, despite the belief that places like New York City are uniquely dangerous cesspools of murder and mayhem, the homicide rate there is lower than in non-metro areas — meaning rural and semi-rural communities. So you have a statistically more significant chance of being killed in one of those supposedly safe spaces than in New York.
Of course, the people who would blame liberal prosecutors and anti-police sentiment for rising crime in the cities can’t apply such simplistic analysis to comparable increases in rural areas and small towns.
Nor can they point to lax gun laws or not enough people being armed for self-defense. Most people in rural areas have guns, yet victimization is still common and increasingly so. They aren’t warding off kidnappers, murderers, or brutal husbands with their A.R.s, shotguns, or entire arsenals of weaponry.
Instead, sadly, those weapons are too often being turned against family members, neighbors, or even oneself, as rural suicide rates are also high and rising — far more so than in urban spaces.
Why the denial?
So why the denial about such things?
If story after story of violence in small towns and rural communities exists — enough to fill entire seasons of True Crime shows — and if data suggests such things are nearly as prevalent there as in cities, why are people shocked when another such event transpires?
In part, it’s likely the idyllic stereotype we’ve crafted of rural life for hundreds of years with its presumed simplicity and wholesomeness.
But that stereotype is itself linked to another one.
Namely, the one about the urban spaces and the people who live there — a stereotype infused with racial bias and antipathy.
Cities are typified as Black and brown, poor and dirty, and thus, dangerous because the stereotype of Black folks as violent is one of the most deeply embedded in our culture.
Images of marauding gang members around every corner waiting to beat little old ladies over the head for their purse or carjack you at gunpoint or attack white tourists are ubiquitous in the imaginations of white America.
And for rural and small-town folk with little experience in urban spaces, it’s easy to assume the worst, given a news media that mainly feeds them images of big-city crime because that’s where news bureaus are located.
And, of course, the Law and Order franchise is set in New York, so it’s no wonder that a nation reared on episodic evidence of mayhem there for 30 years might think negatively of the place and its residents.
Stereotypes of violence and deviance are dangerous to the very people who believe them
Sadly, once people accept these common stereotypes, they let down their guard to dysfunction and deviance in their own locales.
Just like suburbanites often overlook the risk of school shootings — only to experience a disproportionate share of the most extreme among them — so do rural folk put themselves at risk by presuming that safety naturally follows from their geographic and demographic milieu.
Additionally, a failure to appreciate the problems of rural crime and violence — especially domestic violence — results in fewer resources being available to those who need them in those communities.
From counseling to trauma-informed health care to shelter services to drug or alcohol rehabilitation, rural folks are harmed by the mentality that violence and crime are big city problems.
In a long string of them, it’s yet another example of why our racial stereotypes can prove hurtful not only to those against whom they are deployed but even to those against whom they aren’t.
It’s another good reason to make challenging those biases and the injustice that flows from them a priority for everyone.
Because if you’re too busy patting yourself on the back for living in the nice, safe places where nothing bad ever happens, you’ll likely miss that the next Hickock and Smith are already out there.
And they know damned good and well that your doors aren’t locked.
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This post was previously published on Tim Wise’s blog.
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You may also like these posts on The Good Men Project:
White Fragility: Talking to White People About Racism | Escape the “Act Like a Man” Box | The Lack of Gentle Platonic Touch in Men’s Lives is a Killer | What We Talk About When We Talk About Men |
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Photo credit: iStock
Diversity is the best way to inoculate society against the danger of these people’s racism and ignorance. I almost hate to say it but the ignorant country dwellers would pose a clear and present danger to us if we are unable to diversify them.
Take it from Sherlock Holmes:
https://victorianweb.org/authors/doyle/rural.html