@article{ref1,
title=""Dead in the water": Is rural violent crime prevention floating face-down because criminology can't handle context?",
journal="Crime prevention and community safety",
year="2007",
author="Bell, Erica and Hall, Rob",
volume="9",
number="4",
pages="252-274",
abstract="The paper explores the challenges of capturing context in criminology with reference to one kind of small-N situation - violent crime in rural communities. An illustrative analysis of the violent crime prevention research and select adjunct debates about method, including case-based approaches, was undertaken. First, the paper explores the need for methods offering diversity-oriented ways of understanding country, community, and the individual in situ in the community. Second, it examines how the challenges of &quot;context&quot; are being described in wider debates: about the technical limitations of &quot;big Q&quot; methods for criminology; about the relevance of research evidence; about case-based analyses. Third, it sketches the value of Charles Ragin's diversity-oriented, small-N method for enriching understandings of context. The paper concludes that Ragin's method can add value to local rural crime prevention practice and related micro-social policy development by illuminating the &quot;black box&quot; of individual cases.Keywords: criminology research methods, case study methodologies, rural violent crime, local community crime prevention<p />",
language="",
issn="1460-3780",
doi="10.1057/palgrave.cpcs.8150051",
url="http://dx.doi.org/10.1057/palgrave.cpcs.8150051"
}