13th Biennial International Conference
Criminal Justice and Security in Central and Eastern Europe: Perspectives of Rural Safety, Security and Rural Criminology
September 13-15, 2021 / Ljubljana, Slovenia
13th Biennial International Conference
September 13-15, 2021 / Ljubljana, Slovenia
Dear Participants,
The Programme & Organising Committees of the Biennial International Conference "Criminal Justice and Security in Central and Eastern Europe: Perspectives of Rural Safety, Security and Rural Criminology" have decided to organise the 2021 conference fully online. The conference will take place on September 13 – 15 2021 on the Zoom platform.
Participation at the conference is free of charge (no conference fee will be charged) but it is necessary to register for the conference by 31 May 2021. Good news: the registration deadline is postponed to Tuesday 15th June 2021.
Do not hesitate to contact us in case of any questions regarding programme or organisational matters.
Sincerely yours
Programme & Organising Committee
Studies show populations of urban and rural communities differ in interpersonal relations (frequency and trust), common interests, feelings of belonging, and in knowing other inhabitants in the community (informal control). Moreover, unemployment, housing problems, crime, and cultural conflicts are more pronounced in urban areas.
The modern rural-urban dichotomy is undoubtedly raising questions about cyberspace challenges and threats; the spectrum of ecological crime issues; food production and farming; access to public health services; cost of living; cross-border crime problems focusing on migrations, etc.
Although official data suggest a higher level of crime in urban environments, this does not reflect a realistic picture of the actual situation and needs of the rural environment. Studies show that in rural settings the fear of crime is increasing and specific forms of criminality are more frequent (e.g., drug and alcohol abuse, domestic violence). Moreover, cities have experienced a decline in violent crime in past decades, while this does not apply to rural environments, where, for example, the number of serious violent crimes is stable and does not show a similar decline.
Many security challenges in both rural and urban environments are of a social nature, as they are generated by unemployment, poverty, lack of prospects, social exclusion and similar problems. Among the most common forms of crime in rural environments are interpersonal conflicts, drug and alcohol abuse, and domestic violence, but the main problem is that some rural communities are more tolerant of these problems and not even taking some forms of crime seriously.
Organizers will appreciate it if the authors could relate their papers to the leading theme - rural safety and security – and rural criminology
Gorazd Meško
A tentative title: Urban vs. Rural Safety & Security in Slovenia
Gorazd Meško is Professor of Criminology at the Faculty of Criminal Justice and Security, University of Maribor, Slovenia. He teaches Criminology and Victimology (undergraduate), Criminology and Crime Control Policy (M.A.) and Comparative Criminology (Ph.D.). His research interests include crime control, crime prevention and provision of security, delinquent behaviour and legitimacy of formal social control institutions. He is currently a lead researcher in a project on Local Safety and Security in Slovenia – Urban and rural perspectives (2019-2024).
Andrew Wooff
A tentative title: Policing rural communities: The role of the police in enhancing rural safety and security
Dr Andrew Wooff is a Lecturer in Criminology and Programme Director for the Policing and Criminology degree at Edinburgh Napier University. He is a member of the Scottish Institute for Policing Research and has worked with a number of police organisations, including Police Scotland, South Yorkshire Police Force and the London Met.
Andrew teaches in a range of areas, including policing theory and practice, penology, community safety, research methods and youth crime. Andrew has published in national and international peer reviewed journals on a variety of topics and has contributed to a number of edited collections, including the International Handbook of Rural Criminology. He has undertaken a number of studies examining policing and crime in rural locations, including examining the impact of, and responses to, antisocial behaviour on rural Scotland (2010-2014).
Andrew is currently Principle Investigator on a SIPR funded project which seeks to understand, measure and improve public confidence in rural policing (2018-2019). He was PI on a recently completed project which examined the use of Special Constables in rural locations (2019) and was Co-I on a study which examined the use of police custody in rural Scotland (2016-2018).
Anton Petrovskiy
Anton Petrovskiy worked as a detective in the Police Department of Krasnodarskyi krai. In 2003 he defended a dissertation on “Individual Criminological Prediction of Gang Activities” at the St. Petersburg Institute of the General Prosecutor's Office and got a degree Candidate of Juridical Science. In 2012 he was granted the title ‘Docent – Assistant Professor’ by the Ministry of Education of Russia. Currently, he works at the Department of Criminal Law and Criminology at Kuban State University in Krasnodar. His research interests are related to criminological prediction, Islamic law and linking criminal law and criminology as well as rural criminological perspectives. He is also a member of the Krasnodar regional public commission that evaluates activities of magistrate judges and a member of the editorial board at the “Russian Criminological Outlook”, a scientific criminological bulletin. His recent research has been related to studying rural crime and social control in Southern Russia.
Joseph F. Donnermeyer
Dr. Joseph F. Donnermeyer is professor emeritus in the School of Environment and Natural Resources at The Ohio State University, and is a Research Associate at the Center on Research on Violence at West Virginia University. He is the founding editor of the The International Journal of Rural Criminology and editor of the new Routledge monograph series on Rural Criminology. Dr. Donnermeyer is the author/co-author of over 100 peer reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and books on issues related to rural crime, and was the editor of the Routledge International Handbook of Rural Criminology in 2016. To be published soon, Dr. Donnermeyer is preparing a monograph titled The Criminology of Food and Agriculture. He currently serves as the chair of the Division of Rural Criminology in the American Society of Criminology, and president of the newly founded International Society for the Study of Rural Crime.
Vania Ceccato
Vania Ceccato is Professor in urban and community safety at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm, Sweden. Her research is on the situational conditions of crime and fear in urban and rural environments. She is the author of several books including Rural crime and community safety (2016, Routledge) and of recent articles devoted to rural criminology with examples from Sweden and Brazil. She coordinates the national network Safeplaces (Säkraplatser) funded by The Swedish National Crime Prevention Council (BRÅ) that creates a number of initiatives devoted to improvement of knowledge among practitioners on the situational conditions in which crime occurs and the best ways to prevent it.
Majda Černič Istenič
A tentative title of the plenary speech: Perception of rural (in)security and (un)safety among urban and rural populations in Slovenia
Majda Černič Istenič, a sociologist, is associate professor at the Biotechnical Faculty, University of Ljubljana and a senior research fellow at the ZRC SAZU Sociomedical Institute.
Her research falls within the scope of various sociological sub-disciplines such as sociology of the family, the link between sociology and demography and rural sociology. Using both quantitative and qualitative methodological approaches, she focuses on different aspects of life of urban, rural and farm populations.
Her recent research and publications cover topics of knowledge exchange among actors in agricultural system, urban agriculture, gender issues, intergenerational relations, aging and the well-being of the farm population. She has participated in several national and international research projects under European Commission’s Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Framework Programme, Erasmus + Programme and European Territorial Reference Framework ESPON 2013 Programme.
Gorazd Meško
Chairman of the Program Committee
e-mail: Gorazd.Mesko@fvv.uni-mb.si
phone: +386 1 300 8 328
Bojan Dobovšek
Chairman of the Organising Committee
e-mail: Bojan.Dobovsek@fvv.uni-mb.si
phone: +386 1 300 8 347
Bernarda Tominc
Secretary General
e-mail: Bernarda.Tominc@fvv.uni-mb.si
phone: +386 1 300 8 331