Dr Kreseda Smith and Dr Richard Byrne are members of the Rural Security Research Group at Harper Adams University – Kreseda is also a member of the Executive of ISSRC.

Their latest research paper, “Horizon Scanning Rural Crime in England”, has been published in the Crime Prevention and Community Safety journal. The full-text view-only version of the paper is provided online by Springer as part of their commitment to content sharing.

In the article, Kreseda and Richard observe that rural crime scholarship emanating for the United Kingdom is scant, particularly when compared with the volume of research being produced in United States and Australian contexts.

The paper considers emerging rural crime threats in England and ‘horizon scanning’ as a methodology to aid practitioners both in the United Kingdom and internationally.

The emerging crimes considered in the article are:

• Poaching and hare coursing
• Agrochemical theft and counterfeiting
• Theft of commercial solar panels
• Heritage crime and illegal off‑roading
• Cybercrime and drones
• Modern slavery