Rejoinder to Rural Transformations and Rural Crime Book Review published in Rural Society (Vol. 32, Iss. 3)

A review of a book we edited, Rural Transformations and Rural Crime (Bowden Harkness, 2022) was published in Volume 32, Issue 3 of Rural Society (Scott, 2023) in December 2023. In his review, John Scott makes two key but misleading charges: first is an intimation that rural criminology is dominated by a clique of scholars; and second that the book by and large lacks ‘critical’ analysis to his liking. The reviewer provides a glimpse of a broad analysis of the field and adopts an independently minded position. Indeed, some observations and claims are made that should rightly be part of a wider debate in criminology broadly, about its relevance, impact and contribution to the social sciences: legitimate and important questions that ought to be addressed. However, a few errors in the review need to be corrected and cannot go unchallenged.