Here's an excerpt from SMU Law School's Deason Center for Criminal Justice Reform announcement of a webinar/talk by Drs. Jennifer Schwartz and Jennifer Sherman of Washington State University:
Mass incarceration has increasingly become a rural phenomenon. Join us on Wednesday, June 21, as our guests discuss their research about jails in rural Washington State.
Dr. Jennifer Schwartz and Dr. Jennifer Sherman challenge the popular perception of jails as "revolving doors" for people who are addicted to drugs or convicted of violent felonies. Their research shows that a large proportion of people are in rural jails for missing court dates, noncompliance with release conditions, unpaid fines, driving with a suspended license, and other minor offenses.
Mass incarceration has increasingly become a rural phenomenon. To learn more about the causes and consequences of rural incarceration, the authors conducted a mixed methods study across six counties in rural Washington State. Contrary to local perceptions that jails acted as “revolving doors” for drug addicts and serious felons, quantitative analyses of jail data (2015-2019) showed that a large proportion of jail stays were due to minor offenses like missed court dates, noncompliance with release conditions, unpaid fines, and/or offenses related to driving with a suspended license. The authors dub this constellation of charges system navigation problems (SNPs), which were responsible for a plurality of pretrial incarcerations and jail re-entries. The authors argue that SNP charges work to criminalize rural poverty and marginality through both financial and non-financial means. This study highlights the importance of place-based dimensions of social inequalities, illustrating how rurality intersects with net-widening legal practices to contribute to jail use and mass incarceration.
Register for the event here.
You can see here more of these sociologists' work on rural criminal justice issues in Washington State, completed as part of the Vera Institute's Rural Jails Research and Policy Network.
No comments:
Post a Comment