Coronavirus in rural America (Part CLXXXII): Wall Street Journal reports on dramatic rise in violent crime in rural places during first year of pandemic

The headline is "Rural America Reels from Spike in Violent Crime; Murder rates didn't soar only in cities during the pandemic; small-town sheriffs and prosecutors are overwhelmed with cases."  Dan Frosh, Kris Maher and Zusha Elinson reported on June 11.   An excerpt follows:  

Violent crime isn't just rising in the nation's cities. Murder rates across the rural U.S. have soared during the pandemic, data show, bringing the kind of extreme violence long associated with major metropolises to America's smallest communities.

Homicide rates in rural America rose 25% in 2020, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. It was the largest rural increase since the agency began tracking such data in 1999. The CDC considers counties rural if they are located outside metropolitan areas defined by the federal government.

The rise came close to the 30% spike in homicide rates in metropolitan areas in 2020.

The CDC hasn't analyzed 2021 homicide data yet. In some rural counties, murder rates remained high last year, while in others they have begun to recede along with Covid, data from local law-enforcement agencies shows. County sheriffs are trying to hire more deputies. Small-town prosecutors, unaccustomed to handling numerous homicides cases, find themselves overwhelmed with them.

The authors contrast what's happening in rural places with what is happening in urban places.  

In cities, law enforcement and civic leaders have blamed the increase in violent crime on factors such as police pulling back after racial-justice protests, the proliferation of guns, initiatives to release more criminal suspects without bail and a pandemic pause in gang-violence prevention programs.

The story also speculates about the causes of this spike:  

In rural counties, where ties between police and locals are often less fraught, officials say the reasons for the rising violence are hard to pinpoint. They speculate that the breakdown of deeply rooted social connections that bind together many small communities, coupled with the stress of the pandemic, played a role.

Pastors point to the suspension of rituals such as in-person church services, town gatherings and everyday exchanges between neighbors. Such interactions can serve as guardrails, helping to prevent conflicts from turning violent. The psychological and financial stress due to isolation and job loss were especially pronounced in remote areas, where social services were limited even before Covid-19 struck, local leaders say.

As the pandemic took hold in the spring of 2020, fights between family members, acquaintances and even strangers escalated more frequently into deadly confrontations, authorities in some rural counties said.

The story features detailed reports about homicide spikes in three counties, White County, Arkansas, Flathead County, Montana, and Marion County, South Carolina.  Each of these counties experienced up to dozens of murders in short periods of time early in the pandemic.   The story quotes Rebecca McCoy, the prosecutor in White County, population 77,076, "It was like people lost their ever-lovin minds."  The story notes that White County is a dry county--meaning alcohol cannot be legally sold there--with "poultry farms and a Christian university." It is also the region in which the HBO documentary "Meth Storm," took place.