Farm Crime: Out of Sight, Out of Mind: A Study of Crime on Farms in the County of Rutland, England
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Farm Crime: Out of Sight, Out of Mind: A Study of Crime on Farms in the County of Rutland, England Gavin Sugden1 Reports from a number of informed sources now indicate that British farms are suffering some of the highest levels of crime in their existence. This paper concentrates on one identifiable farming region within the United Kingdom—the county of Rutland— and reports on the findings of a detailed farm crime survey carried out in 1996. The findings reveal a level of crime quite possibly unsuspected even by the farmers themselves. Introduction This paper records the findings of a comprehensive crime and security survey of farms in the district (now county) of Rutland, central England. The survey took place during the summer of 1996 and covered the two-year period from 6 April 1994 to 5 April 1996.2 The survey was undertaken in response to a range of reports of increasing levels of farm crime within the agricultural industry, typified by the 1995 announcement by the NFU Mutual3 that rural burglaries had now reached record levels and that the cost of farm theft had risen to almost £14 million per year.4 Rutland was chosen as the location for the survey because it is an easily identifiable region in the heart of the English shire counties. It is some 400 sq km in area, and is devoted almost exclusively to the business of farming and agriculture. Local NFU sources5 indicated that there were up to 200 arable and livestock farms in the district; probability sampling was therefore used to select 40 farmers for in-depth interviews. Farmers are, as a breed, busy and hard-working people; they are also, initially at any rate, somewhat taciturn and reserved, particularly to outsiders. That 40 farmers gave up their time to be interviewed on the subject of farm crime was therefore a significant occurrence. Underlying reasons for this lay in three areas. Firstly, farm crime was a problem that was of concern, at least to an extent, to the general farming community in Rutland; secondly, the networking and preparatory work undertaken by the researcher prior to the commencement of the investigation meant that he was already known in the county; and thirdly, farmers (like most of the population) incline towards helping people rather than hindering them as long as they are asked nicely. As a whole, the farmers interviewed were hospitable, entertaining, informative and interested. Furthermore, the interviews seemed to operate on a quid pro quo basis: farmers were invited to concentrate on their individual security situation and to assess its overall effectiveness. Quite clearly this was a mental exercise that few had seen fit to carry out at any stage prior to the interview. Farm crime, as a specific area of research, has been something of a neglected topic for criminological study; what little work there is, is predominantly American in origin and of
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Crime Prevention and Community Safety: An International Journal
little direct relevance to crime on farms in the UK.6 The research c
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