Vera Institute, Arnold Ventures partner with WSU and U of Georgia to study rural jail expansion

Last week, the Vera Institute of Justice, with support from Arnold Ventures, announced new partnerships with research teams at Washington State University and the University of Georgia to address rising jail incarceration rates in rural areas to form a Rural Jails Research and Policy Network.  Regular readers will know that I've devoted a lot of reporting here on Legal Ruralism to goings on with rural jails, including here, here and here (all collecting sources and prior posts), so I'm excited to see what these new partnerships will reveal.

Over the course of a year-long grant, the researchers at WSU and U of Georgia will form partnerships with criminal justice stakeholders in rural counties surrounding each university.  These partnerships will permit researchers to collect and analyze jail data to identify drivers of jail growth in rural areas.  The researchers will also host convenings of stakeholders to discuss unique issues facing rural criminal justice systems. They will also work to develop rural-focused policy and practice solutions to reduce jail incarceration and help to bring those solutions to the attention of state-level policymakers. The project will conclude with a national convening where the researchers and stakeholders will share their findings with a larger audience.

According to Vera, the selection process for this grant was quite competitive.  Vera received applications from university-based researchers in 24 states, and from many different disciplines: sociology, public policy, government, criminal justice, public health, and psychology. This wide response is encouraging and shows that academics from a broad range of study recognize the need to invest research and resources in rural areas around the country.  The robust response also suggests that many researchers understand the impact of criminal justice systems on the wellbeing of entire communities.

From the Department of Sociology at Washington State University, Dr. Jennifer Sherman and Dr. Jennifer Schwartz will work in a group of rural counties on the eastern side of the Cascade Mountains. Divided physically from the more urban western side of the state, rural communities in eastern Washington often report that their voices are not well-represented in state government, an issue I've written about here. As a result, well-intentioned criminal justice reform policies often are not workable for their smaller systems.

From the Department of Sociology and the Institute of Government at the University of Georgia, Dr. Sarah Shannon and Dr. Beverly Johnson will lead a team of researchers who will work in clusters of rural counties in southwest and northeast Georgia. The UGA team will focus on the specific impact of private probation services and lack of mental health resources on growing rural county jail populations, as well as on the effect of state-level criminal justice reforms on local systems.

In both Washington and Georgia, many rural counties have experienced steadily rising jail populations in recent years. Local governments in both places indicate that they do not have the time or resources to develop sustainable solutions tailored to their rural environments. This project aims to help change that, and to develop a method for developing reforms that can be replicated in other rural areas of the country.

I am looking forward to hearing more as these research projects progress, and I'll be sharing periodic updates here.