The development of the social sciences in Canada, the United States and Mexico and other countries in Central America has been heavily influenced by these countries’ European counterparts. This common root can be traced back to their colonial histories, but also to the constant waves of European immigrants after they gained independence, which contributed to shaping the populations in these three countries. Intellectuals and scholars were also part of these European immigration waves, especially in the context of the two world wars.

To some extent, these countries can be considered settler societies; that is, their histories are replete with the decimation and ongoing marginalization of the Indigenous and Black populations by European immigrants. This shared past informs current responses to crime, as these countries adopted the laws and justice systems of their colonizing nations. To a considerable extent the criminological research carried out in North America today also displays a distinctively Western orientation and has focused primarily on urban crime and justice.

Canada

Canada’s rural population has been decreasing for decades, but the overall rural property and violent crime rates have been increasing and are now higher than the city rates, according to a study by Perrault (2019). Despite those trends, studies of rural crime and justice have traditionally been relegated to the periphery of criminological research.

A review of the historical literature shows that issues such as access to justice for rural peoples, rural policing and delivering community correctional services outside the cities were often addressed indirectly. Grygier’s review of the criminological research of that era, for example, did not cite any exclusively rural research. Grygier’s review also found that most crimerelated studies were carried out by law professors, sociologists and social workers, although historians such as Marquis also increased understandings of the economic, political and social arrangements that shape responses to urban and rural crime.

The focus of Canadian scholars has often been on crime and the operations of justice systems, rather than developing theoretical explanations for rural crime. Hagan’s work on sentencing disparities for Indigenous peoples in the 1980s, for example, increased awareness of their over-representation in Canada’s justice system.