The rural enterprise crime complex: ‘undefendable rural space’ and the threat from the fortress farm

Abstract

In response to the concept of the ‘fortress farm’ and its appropriation of traditional defensible space theory, this article introduces the conditions of undefendable rural space and the rural enterprise crime complex. Perspectives that invert traditional theory to determine contexts conducive to the incidence of rural enterprise crime. Empirical data from extensive fieldwork on crimes against wild animals in rural England is used to argue that the fortress and undefendable rural space can in effect serve to ‘design-out’ crime control and lock crime in. A dichotomous outcome, which creates a fortress for relatively powerful human insiders and a rural enterprise crime complex for persecuted non-human outsiders. A biocentric species justice perspective is adopted to counter the anthropocentric paradigm that arguably prevails in contemporary rural criminology.