Established‐Outsider Relations and Fear of Crime in Mining Towns

Using Elias and Scotson's (1994) account of established‐outsider relations, this article examines how the organizational capacity of specific social groups is significant in determining the quality of crime‐talk in isolated and rural settings. In particular, social ‘oldness’ and notions of what constitutes ‘community’ are significant in determining what activities and individuals are salient within crime‐talk. Individual and group interviews, conducted in a West Australian mining town, revealed how crime‐talk is an artefact of specific social figurations and the relative ability of groups to act as cohesive and integrated networks. We argue that anxieties regarding crime are a product of specific social figurations and the shifting power ratios of groups within such figurations.