Sociological studies of crime and change in population size, based upon quantitative police statistics, have focused almost exclusively on urban areas. The direct relationship between population growth and the incidence of crime found in these studies has been generalized, by assumption only, to small rural cities experiencing population decline. The present analysis of a declining rural city, based upon quantitative and socio-historical data, describes how the economic, political, formal

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... l, and value systems of a community can become functionally dependent upon a locally organized liquor-vice complex. The functional dependence of the social structure of the community on the criminal complex contributes to the explanation of a situation wherein a positive relationship between population growth aid the incidence of crime is followed by a negative relationship between population decline and the incidence of crime.