Joseph F. Donnermeyer

The Role of Place in Understanding Safety and Security Anywhere in the World

Abstract: There is a long history within criminological scholarship for examining the role of place in understanding crime and its consequences for the safety and security of citizens. As well, crime, safety and security are connected to each of the 17 goals found in the United Nations statement of sustainable development, but especially to goals number 11 and 16, namely, make cities and human settlement safe, resilient and sustainable and promoting peaceful and inclusive societies that provide access to justice for all.

Within criminology itself, a number of prominent theories were developed to understanding the role of place. These include thinking about crime, safety and security of places with relative levels of social disorganization and “broken windows”, understanding the relationship of crime to poverty and inequality, analyzing subcultural enclaves and criminal subcultures, looking into the relationship of the routine activities of victims and their intersection in time and place with offenders, examining specific locations within communities with unusually high levels of crime, and considering the ways that forms of social capital (i.e., social efficacy) influence crime.

Each of these theories – social disorganization, broken windows, social structural inequality, disadvantage and crime, criminal subcultures, routine activities theory, hot spot theory, and the theory of social efficacy – and their relative strengths and weaknesses. One over-arching weakness

Dr. Joseph F. Donnermeyer is a professor emeritus in the School of Environment and Natural Resources at The Ohio State University and an adjunct professor at both the Center on Research on Violence at West Virginia University and the Centre for Rural Criminology at University of New England. He holds the title of “Academy Professor” as a member of the OSU Emeritus Academy, and served in 2019-2020 as chair of the Academy’s Steering Community.

Dr. Donnermeyer’s specialization is rural criminology, and a deep interest in the application of criminological theory to the understanding of rural crime. He is the author/co-author of over 100 peer reviewed publications issues related to rural crime and rural societies. He was the editor of Routledge International Handbook of Rural Criminology (2016), co-editor of the Encyclopedia of Rural Crime (2022), is currently preparing the Criminology of Food and Agriculture (a monograph for Routledge), and is the editor of the new Routledge Monograph Series in Rural Criminology.

Dr. Donnermeyer was a visiting academic in the School of Social Science at the University of New England on several occasions in the past, working collaboratively with various scholars on issues of rural crime in Australia. He is a co-founder of both the International Society for the Study of Rural Crime and the Division of Rural Criminology in the American Society of Criminology. He is the founder and currently serves as the co-editor of the International Journal of Rural Criminology .

Dr. Donnermeyer is a graduate (with both a M.A. and a Ph.D. degree in Sociology) from the University of Kentucky, and is a native of the Bluegrass state.

E-mail: donnermeyer.1@gmail.com