Crime, Violence, and Criminal Justice in Rural America: Toward a Rural Neighborhood Effect

The United States is unique among rich countries in the world in its level of contemporary mass incarceration, a massive social change that has reshaped the nature of inequality and social mobility. We have more than tripled the number of prison facilities since 1970. Despite employing nearly 450,000 corrections officers, occupying a land mass of roughly 600 square miles, and costing conservatively $30 billion to build, this massive public works project has transformed the American countryside virtually unnoticed, with nearly 70% of U.S. facilities being built in rural communities. We suggest that mass incarceration—more than 2 million locked up annually—was not possible without the transformation of the American countryside through the prison boom—the increase from roughly 500 to nearly 1700 carceral facilities. There is a longstanding belief that the rural town leaders and politicians responsible for the prison boom are almost exclusively white, male, Republicans. We explore the political, social, and economic influences of prison building across states, regions, and cities/towns. Using multilevel modeling, we find that racial and economic disadvantage predicts prison building in towns, and party affiliation of state legislatures predicts prison building across different periods of the prison boom. While others find a link between Republican Party strength in state legislatures and mass incarceration, our findings suggest that prison building, like other types of punishment, results from bipartisan political support for the state's ability to punish. We conclude by advancing an expanded theoretical approach to the prison boom.

This chapter outlines how people living in rural places often have different challenges than their suburban or central city counterparts. It describes differences between rural communities where contrasts can be just as striking as those between rural and nonrural places. Over the past couple of decades, rural poverty has been increasingly associated with both the lack of a middle class and little investment in infrastructure, including schools. Opportunities for teachers and teacher quality also differ in rural America. Service sector jobs that have replaced many of the steady jobs in manufacturing and extraction—and that dominate the tourism industry in amenity-rich places—are often less stable, offer lower pay and fewer benefits, and provide little opportunity for career advancement. The United States has been growing older since the turn of the 20th century, and rural places in particular have continued this trend into recent years.

Rural America has undergone dramatic changes in the last half century. Brown and Schafft (2011) survey these changes in Rural People and Communities in the Twentyfirst Century. The book synthesizes research on the social, economic, and political aspects of life in rural America. Intended for students, policy-makers, and academics, the book is an introduction to the many issues facing these communities today. The authors introduce their work with a compelling argument for the importance of rural communities. The rural population, comprising 17 % of the US population, is larger than ‘‘other important subgroups’’ like Hispanics (Brown and Schafft 2011:11). Moreover, most of the nation’s infrastructure and natural resources exist in rural areas. American society is deeply invested in a collective rural identity. The ‘‘rural mystique’’ idealizes rural life as ‘‘somehow more moral, virtuous, and simple’’ than urban life (10). A collective memory of idyllic life before urbanization means that many Americans want to preserve such communities, even if they never experience rural life firsthand. Rural People and Communities includes sections on rural places in urban society; rural communities, institutions and environments; rural populations; rural economy and socioeconomic well-being; and policy recommendations. Each chapter relates empirical data to macro-level changes and policy debates, and each spotlights diverse theories to interpret the data. This technique makes this book a ‘‘toolkit’’ that equips readers with a broad range of analytic frames. For example, ‘‘Understanding Community in Rural Society’’ compares perspectives of ‘‘community as a social system’’ and ‘‘community as a field of social interaction,’’ to show how they can be fruitfully combined for a robust understanding of community life (38–46). Particularly compelling were Chapters 9 (‘‘Farms, Farmers, and Farming’’) and 10 (‘‘Poverty’’). Poverty is often considered an urban problem. However, the magnitude and quality of poverty in rural areas differs greatly from urban environments. Rural areas suffer from deep, persistent poverty. Whereas urban families cycle in and out of economic instability, rural families experience fewer fluctuations. The rural poor are at high poverty risk but numerically few, rendering them largely invisible in national poverty programs. These policies, designed to alleviate urban problems, are unsatisfactory outside the city. For example, in addition to living far from basic services such as grocery stores or medical facilities, rural workers often face a long, costly commute. Transportation costs quickly make work ‘‘economically irrational’’ for those who cannot relocate to pricier urban markets. However, the nation’s largest anti-poverty program, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, is ‘‘contingent on work effort... [and has] strict time limits’’ trapping the rural poor in employment costs that outstrip financial returns (199). Chapter 9 dispels myths of widespread agricultural labor in rural communities. Many Americans assume that agricultural and rural policies are synonymous, but this conflation is misguided. Shifts over the last 200 years have undermined agriculture as a ‘‘viable livelihood strategy’’ for many (Brown and Schafft 2011:183). Agricultural lands are increasingly under the control of fewer individuals. At the time of publication, only 7 % of rural Americans were involved in farming. Brown and Schafft (179) suggest that, rather than just examining agriculture, scholars focus on ‘‘food systems,’’ the ‘‘complex set of social, economic, and L. R. Moore (&) University of Kentucky, 211 Lafferty Hall, Lexington, KY 40506-0024, USA e-mail: LaurenRMoore@uky.edu

Rural communities account for somewhere between 72% and 97% of the land mass in the United States and approximately 15–20% of the country’s population (United States Census Bureau. New census data show differences between urban and rural populations [Press release]. Retrieved from https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2016/cb16-210.html, 2016; United States Department of Agriculture. Rural America at a glance 2016 Edition. Retrieved from https://www.ers.usda.gov/webdocs/publications/80894/eib-162.pdf?v=42684, 2017). Furthermore, rural communities are an important part of the American mythos, representing a population and lifestyle that features heavily in the identity of America (Stamm. Rural behavioral health care: An interdisciplinary guide. American Psychological Association, Washington, DC, 2003). As such, rural communities and people occupy both a large and socially important piece of the United States. Likewise, being only 20% of the population, rural residents are also an often overlooked and underserved minority. The dominant urban culture often portrays rural people in negative stereotypes that can both exacerbate behavioral health problems and impact the quality of care received by rural residents. Further, prejudice against rural people and communities is manifested in the lived realities of rural disadvantage and policy marginalization, which lead to challenges for the delivery of quality behavioral health care in rural communities. Taking a public narrative model for understanding community health outcomes (N. V. Mohatt et al. Soc Sci Med 106, 128–36, 2014; Rappaport. Am J Community Psychol 28(1), 1–24, 2000), we review how stigma and prejudices manifest in rural community life and relate to persistent rural health disparities. The objective of this chapter is to provide rural mental health practitioners with a deeper understanding of the ways in which stigma and prejudice toward rural communities shape the landscape of mental health in rural America. In conclusion, we provide a series of recommendations to reshape the structural and cultural biases and provide effective rural behavioral health treatment and community action.

The US prison system has exploded since 1970, dramatically reshaping social, political, and economic life in rural communities. Since 2000, roughly one in five rural Americans resides in a prison town. The prison boom is the largest public works project perhaps since the New Deal. Despite a growing interest in prison building, there is a dearth of research examining prison impact – the economic, political, and social costs and benefits for communities that result from building a prison. In this paper, we fill this gap by studying the relationship between prison impact – measured as binary prison presence and cumulative prison count – on violent crime, specifically, intimate partner and domestic violence homicide (IPV/DV). We explore the theoretical foundations for this relationship, including the economic, geographic, and social effects of prisons and correction officers as a high-risk group for perpetrating IPV/DV. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we find evidence of a negative association between prison impact and IPV/DV homicide, with an additional prison in the county corresponding with 0.04–0.12 fewer homicide events. While we are not advocating for prison building as a violence nor crime reduction strategy for communities, our findings complicate the policy consequences of the prison boom, especially in rural communities.

This volume focuses on innovative school-university-community collaborations that are being implemented in rural places in the United States. A foundational belief that underpins the contributions to this volume is that rural communities contain within themselves the resources to promote and sustain vibrant educational endeavors. This belief has inspired a wealth of innovations that collectively offer a countervailing perspective to the view that global competitiveness is the preeminent goal of education, and that this goal is best served by “big education.” Since early last century, there has been a pervasive implicit, and sometimes explicit, assumption that rural places are bereft of the ability to educate children effectively. As repeatedly witnessed in this volume, in collaboration with universities, schools in rural places and the communities that both sustain and rely on them can appropriately configure the educational environment to optimally nurture the intellectual growth of children.The chapters in this volume are grouped into three parts that explore, in turn, the design features of innovative school-universitycommunity collaborations, some novel approaches to such collaborations, and the contours of parental and community involvement in such collaborations. Chapters discuss both larger scale collaborations that involve many school districts across wide -spread regions, and smaller scale collaborations that involve intensive engagements among the educators and members of smaller communities, and offer theoretical insights into the collaborative process itself. As mentioned above, two narrative threads run through the chapters: that effective collaborations address goals and aspirations expressed by those who are privileged to live in rural America, and that effective collaborations are oriented to building on the strengths inherent in the social fabric of those rural communities.

Inadequate access to anesthesia and surgical services is often considered to be a problem of low- and middle-income countries. However, affluent nations, including Canada, Australia, and the United States, also face shortages of anesthesia and surgical care in rural and remote communities. Inadequate services often disproportionately affect indigenous populations. A lack of anesthesia care providers has been identified as a major contributing factor to the shortfall of surgical and obstetrical care in rural and remote areas of these countries. This report summarizes the challenges facing the provision of anesthesia services in rural and remote regions. The current landscape of anesthesia providers and their training is described. We also explore innovative strategies and emerging technologies that could better support physician-led anesthesia care teams working in rural and remote areas. Ultimately, we believe that it is the responsibility of specialist anesthesiologists and academic health sciences centers to facilitate access to high-quality care through partnership with other stakeholders. Professional medical organizations also play an important role in ensuring the quality of care and continuing professional development. Enhanced collaboration between academic anesthesiologists and other stakeholders is required to meet the challenge issued by the World Health Organization to ensure access to essential anesthesia and surgical services for all.

A Comparison of Assertive Community Treatment and Intensive Case Management for Patients in Rural Areas

The unique health and aging challenges of rural populations often go unnoticed. In fact, the rural United States is home to disproportionate shares of older and sicker people, there are large and growing rural-urban and within-rural mortality disparities, many rural communities are in population decline, and rural racial/ethnic diversity is increasing.Yet rural communities are not monolithic, and although some rural places are characterized by declining health, others have seen large improvements in population health. We draw on these realities to call for new research in five areas.First, research is needed to better describe health disparities between rural and urban areas and, because rural places are not monolithic, across rural America. Second, research is needed on how trends in rural population health and aging are affecting rural communities. Third, research is needed on the ways in which economic well-being and livelihood strategies interact with rural health and aging. Fourth, we need to better understand the health implications of the physical and social isolation characterizing many rural communities. Finally, we argue for new research on the implications of local natural environments and climate change for rural population health and aging.

Panel 2: finding solutions through partnerships, education, and technology: Speaker 1

Contents: Introduction, Rob I. Mawby and Richard Yarwood Part I Rural Policing: Rural police: a comparative overview, Rob I. Mawby Policing rural Canada and the United States, Joseph F. Donnermeyer, Walter S. DeKeseredy and Molly Dragiewicz Policing the outback: impacts of isolation and integration in an Australian context, Elaine Barclay, John Scott and Joseph F. Donnermeyer Rural policing in France: the end of genuine community policing, Christian Mouhanna Plural policing in rural Britain, Rob I. Mawby Governing Crime in rural UK: risk and representation, Daniel Gilling Big Brother goes to the countryside: CCTV surveillance in rural towns, Craig Johnstone Whose Blue Line is it anyway? Community policing and partnership working in rural places, Richard Yarwood. Part II Policing the Rural: Policing rural protest, Michael Woods Still 'out of place in the country'? Travellers and the post-productivist rural, Keith Halfacree Gypsies and travellers in the countryside: managing a risky population, ZoA" James A trip in the country? Policing drug use in rural settings, Adrian Barton, David Storey and Claire Palmer 'It's not all Heartbeat you know': policing domestic violence in rural areas, Greta Squire and Aisha Gill The thin green line? Police perceptions of the challenges of policing wildlife crime in Scotland, Nicholas R. Fyfe and Alison D. Reeves Policing poaching and protecting pachyderms: lessons learned from Africa's elephants, A.M. Lemieux Policing agricultural crime, Joseph F. Donnermeyer, Elaine M. Barclay and Daniel Mears Policing the producer: the bio-politics of farm production in New Zealand's productivist landscape, Matthew Henry W(h)ither rural policing? An afterword, Richard Yarwood and Rob I. Mawby Bibliography Index.

While there is a growing literature investigating the causes and consequences of the US prison boom—the tripling of prison facilities between 1970 and 2000—much less is known about current patterns of prison closures. We use novel data capturing the universe of prison closures (N = 188) from 2000 to 2022 to identify and characterize what we term “the prison bust”—the period since 2000 when prison closures began to climb and eventually eclipse new prison building. We show that the prison bust is, in part, a consequence of development-oriented prison-building policies that aggressively used prisons to stimulate struggling local economies. The bust is primarily concentrated in the counties that pursued prison building most aggressively, reflecting a highly cyclical and reactionary pattern of prison placement and closure. We also show that, relative to counties with at least one prison but no closures, closures are concentrated in metro counties with stronger local economies and multiple prisons. Overall, we highlight the prison bust as an important new era in the history of US punishment and provide a new dataset for investigating its causes and consequences. We conclude by discussing the theoretical and policy implications of these findings.

Background/Context: There is a growing concern about the ways in which geography affects the educational opportunity for America’s rural youth. Most research on this population has assumed that rural America is primarily White and that rural college access is stratified by an individual’s ability to complete the application process. Such approaches ignore race and the interplay among geography, admissions practices, and individual behavior and decision-making. Purpose/Objective/Research Question/Focus of Study: This study examines the postsecondary experiences and opportunity structures for Latino youth living in rural Latino communities in South Texas. The purpose of this study is to understand quantitively and qualitatively how the geographic context of a predominantly rural Latino area shaped the college-going process and pathway decisions for the Latino youth living within these rural communities. To critically understand beyond the individual and learn about how systemic conditions in rural Latino communities can usher in (dis)advantages in their postsecondary experiences and sort students into pathways, this study employed Núñez’s (2014) multilevel model of intersectionality framework. As such, this study asked the following research questions: (1) What is the college access experience for Latino youth living in rural communities in South Texas? (2) In what ways, if any, do rural Latino youth describe how their rural geography structures (in) equalities in the college-going process? (3) How are rural Latino youths’ college access and opportunity structured, and does this differ from other geographic contexts? Research Design: Using a three-phase mixed-methods design (QUAL→quan), this study interviewed 101 Latino youth living in three different rural areas in South Texas toward the end of their senior year of high school. The quantitative component of the study used descriptive and spatial data to further expand on, complement, and confirm the intersectional findings in the qualitative data. In the last phase, data were integrated, and inferences were made about how college access opportunities are structured for Latino youth living in rural communities. Conclusions/Recommendations: Using an intersectionality framework, this study identified several ways in which the geography of rural Latino communities is structured that render and perpetuate inequities and disadvantages for Latino youth pursuing college. Rural Latino youth lived in communities that systemically experienced higher poverty, lower median incomes, and less access to resources and opportunities as compared with (sub)urban metro areas. Most students discussed how these geographic conditions played a role in the ways that bounded the opportunities they experienced during their college-going process and their decision to enroll at a college within close proximity to their rural region. This study has implications for how intersectionality frames can expand our understanding of the unique characteristics of rural regions that creates both opportunities and challenges for rural Latino youth pursuing postsecondary opportunities. This is significant given that most higher education researchers, policymakers, and practitioners conflate the racial/ethnic diversity of rural areas with whiteness and being White. In doing so, they overlook the presence of Latinos in rural areas and ignore their intersecting assets and challenges, hindering effective policy solutions that can better support historically marginalized students.

The purpose of this study is to examine criminal activity in rural America, particularly drug-related activity, by analysing trends in offending for four rural communities of the mid-west. The present study has three main objectives. First, discover how many offences in these rural areas are drug-related offences. Second, discover differential offending, with an emphasis on drug offending, based on location of each area of study.1 Third, uncover overall trends of offending in each of the rural communities examined.

This toolkit serves as a guiding document for frontier, rural, and micro-urban communities to implement a Health in All Policies (HiAP) framework in rural America. Too often, rural America is overlooked when it comes to public health and policy work. This tool will guide public health practitioners, community planners, elected officials, healthcare providers, and those who are interested in improving community and public health by analyzing and improving local policy in rural communities. Barriers to accessing healthcare services are well documented in rural communities. Rural populations often face greater challenges accessing healthcare services compared to their urban peers such as long distances to primary care, lower insurance coverage rates, higher health needs, and higher rates of poverty [1–4]. Incorporating a HiAP framework in rural areas is an effective way to decrease health inequities and disparities between urban and rural communities.