Rising incarceration rates in the rural South--and what to do about them

Olivia Paschal reports for Facing South, "How to reverse the rural South's rising incarceration rate."  The dateline is Madison County, Kentucky, population 92,987.  An excerpt follows:

In rural America, incarceration rates have been climbing over the last decade, even as they've plummeted in cities. The rural-urban disparities in criminal justice are not limited to incarceration: A recent study by Sam Sinyangwe, a data scientist and activist, found that police killings are rising in rural ZIP codes, even as they drop in urban ones. While crime rates in rural areas are significantly lower than in urban centers, incarceration there continues apace; the majority of people held in the South’s rural jails are in pretrial detention. 

Counties are building new and larger jails, and some are accepting new prison contracts — part of what scholars term "industries of last resort" for rural counties whose economies and budgets have struggled since the farm crisis of the 1980s and deindustrialization in the 1990s. 

Six other posts about this rural jails phenomenon nationally are here.

Coronavirus in rural America (Part LXVIII): Outbreak in rural California county dominated by prisons

Hailey Branson-Potts reports in the Los Angeles Times about a coronavirus outbreak in Susanville, the county seat of Lassen County, California, population 34,895, and the home of several state and federal prison.  What has happened is that the California Department of Corrections has transferred to High Desert State Prison several inmates from San Quinten, in Marin County/North Bay.  Those inmates, in turn, had been transferred from prisons in Southern California.  Here's the story's lede:

For months, rural Lassen County held a pandemic distinction as one of the only counties in California with zero confirmed cases of COVID-19. 

The sparsely populated Northern California county, which did not report its first coronavirus case until May 22, was one of the first in the state to ease social restrictions and reopen public life. 

But now, a major outbreak among inmates at a state prison in Susanville, linked to the transfer of inmates from San Quentin State Prison, has frustrated local officials who say the state’s movement of infected prisoners now poses a grave danger to their community.

Branson-Potts then quotes Richard Egan, the Lassen County spokesperson: 

The sentiment is really of disappointment with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, to disregard the impact on our community with regard to their policy of moving inmates around.

Read the entire story and don't miss the quotes from State Senator Brian Dahle and his wife, state representative Megan Dahle, who represent the area.  (For the record, Brian Dahle also represents my senate district down here in suburban Sacramento; it's a massive one in terms of territory covered--from the Oregon state line to the suburbs of the state capital).  They're frustrated by the transfer of prisoners during the coronavirus, especially into a community with so few health care resources.  The only hospital in Susanville has 25 beds.  Another concern is that folks working at the prison come from neighboring counties, including Modoc County to the north, Plumas County to the south, and across the state line into Nevada.  To date, Modoc County has recorded no coronavirus cases.

Other posts out of Lassen County are here,  here, and here.  Susanville was the subject of the 2010 documentary "Prisontown USA" by Po Kutchins and Katie Galloway.

Coronavirus in rural America (Part LXVII): Some rural parts of California losing out on coronavirus testing

Angela Hart and Rachel Bluth report for the Los Angeles Times, with this lede:

In April, Gov. Gavin Newsom launched a multimillion-dollar state initiative to bring COVID-19 testing to the people and places with the least access: rural towns and disadvantaged inner-city neighborhoods. 

California is now halting its expansion, citing costs, even as the state is getting walloped by record-setting spikes in new infections and double-digit increases in hospitalizations. 

The state will no longer fund new testing sites, despite pleas from counties for additional assistance — and it has closed some locations and moved them elsewhere. It also has threatened to pull testing out of underutilized sites, according to nearly two dozen interviews with county public health officials.  

One of the (somewhat) rural places where testing will cease: Shingle Springs, population 4,432, in El Dorado County, population 181,058.  Shingle Springs is basically exurban Sacramento.

According to the Times, Shingle Springs lost its testing site "because it couldn’t fill enough appointment slots."  

A Newsom administration official confirmed that the state wants to see counties fill at least 80% of testing slots at each location. And if testing drops below 50% for a few days or longer, counties are warned, the sites could be transferred elsewhere.

I wonder if the failure to fill testing slots is because of a certain "rural mentality" associated with places like Shingle Springs--or if perhaps the low rate of testing in western El Dorado County relates to the fact that most of the county's relatively few cases have been far away, in and around South Lake Tahoe.  The county stretches many miles from the Sierra-Nevada foothills just east of Sacrament to Lake Tahoe. 

Other arguably rural places that may lose testing sites if they don't get their numbers up are near Temecula in Riverside County and Mendocino County, where the state-funded site has provided "the only free testing available within a two-hour drive for some rural residents."

Coronavirus in rural America (Part LXVI): City folks still seeking country retreats, this time to buy

Just two stories on this topic in the past several days are one out of Wyoming (which is nearly rural in its entirety) and one out of New York.

WyoFile, Wyoming's non-profit news website, reported last week here, under the headline "COVID refugees bring mini-boom to some Wyo real estate markets." Angus M. Thuermer Jr. reports:

As Wyoming’s economy gets back in gear following a COVID-19 stay-at-home lull, one corner of the business world is seeing at least a mini boom — the rural refuge real estate market. 

From Torrington to Cody, Jackson to Sheridan, rental and real estate agents report brisk business driven in part, they believe, by big-city customers seeking new homes they think will be farther from trouble. 

Some of the surge could be called a COVID comeback. But enduring Wyoming qualities, from the state’s small population, to low taxes, rural landscape, mountains and rivers figure in a bounce-back in some communities that aren’t tied to energy production. 

“During the official quarantine, certainly we did get a lot of phone calls — some of them attributed to people saying ‘I want to get out of the big city and [move] to wide-open Wyoming,’” said Ty Pedersen, president of the Northwest Wyoming Board of Realtors and a Cody real estate agent. “There’s a prediction we will start to see more of that. The feeling is there’s going to be a little resurgence here for Wyoming.” 

While Cody has the draw of world-famous Yellowstone National Park, the Sheridan region’s own Bighorn Mountain beauty suggests a broader attraction. “I think in general people are looking for a more rural setting,” said Karen Chase, marketing manager for the Powder Horn Golf Club and community. “I would say they’re looking for a less populated area.”

At the other end of the rural-urban continuum (at least in terms of the state at issue) is this New York Times story about how the Catskills are booming because of refugees from NYC.  Julie Lasky writes of a run on houses in that region.    An excerpt follows:

In Sullivan, Ulster, Greene and Delaware Counties, urbanites with the wherewithal to venture beyond the city are snapping up primary and weekend houses, many in what real estate sales agents say is a financial sweet spot from $200,00 to $450,000. They are forging ahead despite the inconveniences and uncertainties of buying in a pandemic (masked, self-directed house tours; cautious lenders; virtual closings).

An early-quarantine story about a rural area in France that had escaped the pandemic is here.  

Coronavirus in rural America (LXV): Rural California's defiance on masks

The Sacramento Bee explained yesterday under the headline, "‘I refuse to bow to anybody.’ Rural California defies Gov. Newsom’s order to wear masks."  Dale Kasler reports with this lede:

Perched behind the counter of his cramped memorabilia shop in downtown Placerville, co-owner Lorenzo Smith isn’t about to tell his customers they have to put on a mask. 

It’s a matter of principle, he isn’t convinced it’s necessary, and he doesn’t particularly care that Gov. Gavin Newsom has ordered Californians to wear them. 

“Most people up here do not like the governor,” said Smith, whose shop is called Hangtown Originals. “The deal is, you have no right to tell me I have to wear a mask. I’m an American. ... I refuse to bow to anybody.”

Newsom issued his order June 18 in an effort to halt a recent statewide surge in COVID-19 infections and hospitalizations since he began relaxing restrictions and reopening the economy more than a month ago. 

But Californians aren’t listening — not all of them, anyway. And there seems to be a distinct split between urban California and the rest of the state. In big cities like Sacramento, compliance appears to be fairly high. In suburbs and small towns, Newsom’s edict is more likely to be ignored. 

Why the split? Some of it’s cultural; as a rule, rural Californians are more suspicious of what they see as government intrusion into their lives. Some it’s political; rural areas tend to vote Republican, and some residents are taking their lead from President Donald Trump, who has been disdainful of wearing masks. Polls show Democrats are more likely to wear masks than Republicans.

Call for Papers: Rural workshop at University of South Dakota School of Law, October 30, 2020

Call for Papers

Rural Legal Scholars Workshop

The University of South Dakota School of Law will host a workshop this fall for legal scholars whose work engages with rural issues. The workshop will be held via Zoom on Friday, October 30, 2020, from 9 am until 4 pm CST.

This conference will focus on works-in-progress about legal issues viewed through the lens of rurality or rural- urban difference. Submissions may encompass any topic that addresses or investigates rurality and the law. To the extent possible, participants will be expected to attend the full day of Zoom sessions and read and comment on other works. If you are interested in workshopping a paper, please submit a title and abstract to Hannah Haksgaard at hannah.haksgaard@usd.edu no later than Friday, August 7.

Final drafts for circulation to other participants will be due October 9.

If you wish to attend all or part of the conference as a commentator without workshopping a paper, please e-mail hannah.haksgaard@usd.edu.

The poorest towns in each U.S. state

I came across this link via USA Today, by Samuel Stebbins and Evan Comen.  It identifies the poorest towns and small cities in each state, those with a population between 1,000 and 25,000.  Of course, I immediately went to my home state, Arkansas, to see what the poorest place was.  It's Bald Knob, population 2,897, 61 miles northeast of Arkansas.  The poverty rate there is 31.3%, and the median home value is $81,900.  Wikipedia tells me that Bald Knob is

located at the intersection of two of the state's natural regions, Bald Knob is often promoted as 'where the Ozarks meet the Delta.' Bald Knob is also a leading strawberry producer in the state, known for its yearly Strawberry Fest held during Mother's Day weekend. It was once known as the leading strawberry producer in the world. Bald Knob was established in 1881.  

Bald Knob was named for a prominent, treeless ridge of layered rock that served as a landmark to pioneers.

Bald Knob is in White County, population 78,753, which is 87.7% white alone, not Hispanic or Latino; 4.6% Black or African American; and 4.4% Hispanic or Latino. 

In my adopted state, California, the poorest place is Orange Cove, population 9,564, which is in Fresno County, in the Great Central Valley.  The median home value there is higher, $129,000, as is the poverty rate, 47.8%.  Fresno County's population is right at 1 million, which is 28.6% white alone, not Hispanic or Latino; 5.8% Black or African American; and 53.8% Hispanic or Latino. 

Others of interest:

Selma, home of the famous civil rights era march, is Alabama's poorest town.  Population is 18,804, and the poverty rate is 41%.  Median home value is $90,200.  Selma is in Dallas County, population 37,196, which is 27% white alone, not Hispanic or Latino; 70.7% Black or African Aamerican, and just 1.2% Hispanic or Latino. 

Roodhouse, population 1,792 is Illinois' most impoverished small city, with a poverty rate of 22.3% and a median home value of $47,600.  It is in Greene County, population 13,886. which is 96.1% white alone, not Hispanic or Latino; and 1.3% each Hispanic or Latino and Black or African American.  It is in the southwest part of the state. 

Wyoming v. DC: The ultimate rural-urban comparison

Today on the floor of the U.S. Senate, Tom Cotton (R-AR), the junior senator from Arkansas, spoke out against statehood for DC.  In doing so, he invoked Wyoming, the least densely populated state in the continental United States.  Colby Ilkowitz and Jenna Portnoy report in the Washington Post: 

Sen. Tom Cotton (R-Ark.) argued Thursday that the District of Columbia does not deserve to be a state, asserting that while Wyoming has a smaller population, it has a greater right because it’s a “well-rounded working-class state.”

A day before the House votes on legislation to create the 51st state, Cotton cast the years-long effort to lift D.C. to statehood as a power grab by the Democratic Party. In a speech on the Senate floor, he dismissed the District as a city with little to offer other than lobbyists and federal workers. He made no mention of other defining aspects of the city, including its African American history, drawing outrage on social media and rebuke by some Democrats.

“Yes, Wyoming is smaller than Washington by population, but it has three times as many workers in mining, logging and construction, and 10 times as many workers in manufacturing,” Cotton said. “In other words, Wyoming is a well-rounded working-class state.”

 So much to say about this.  One thing I'll say is that Cotton is obviously dog-whistling about race--Wyoming is mostly white, and DC is mostly black.  A more subtle dog whistle, perhaps, is the reference to Wyoming residents being "hard working," the suggestion being that DC residents are not hard working, that black people don't work or don't work as hard as white people. 

Senator Chris Murphy (D-Conn) commented in a Tweet: 

Job shaming! Awesome! I’m in. Great idea. This CANNOT go wrong. Let’s rank the virtue of every profession and if your state has too many workers in the bottom 20% you get kicked out of America. Who wants to start??

But it gets worse.  Cotton also said this: 

Would you trust Mayor Bowser to keep Washington safe if she were given the powers of a governor? Would you trust Marion Barry?

And responding to this, I saw a Tweet that compared coronavirus cases in DC (where the virus is tamed, at least from now) to those in Arkansas, where the virus is currently spiking. 

Coronavirus in rural America (Part LXIV): Rural hospitals overwhelmed(?)

Two stories today discuss the issue of rural hospitals getting overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients as the pandemic spreads to rural America.  The first is out of Georgia, by the Atlanta Journal Constitution, headlined "Georgia shifts 80 overflow beds southward amid rural virus outbreaks." Johnny Edwards reports that the beds are going to Milledgeville, population 17,715, but when you look at a map, you see that Milledgeville is only about and hour and half drive from Atlanta, even less from the greater metro area.  Here's an except from Edwards' story:

The Georgia Emergency Management and Homeland Security Agency said Wednesday that it will move beds out of the little-used temporary facility at the Georgia World Congress Center and set them up 100 miles southeast inside a shuttered youth military academy. As the downtown Atlanta site was designed to do, Milledgeville’s makeshift hospital will treat patients with mild to moderate symptoms who don’t need ventilators or critical care, relieving hospitals that could be overrun in another surge.

The story quotes Governor Brian Kemp's news release, which says Milledgeville

is more centrally located for many medical facilities throughout Georgia.  We continue monitoring the virus data to enable us to ‘right size’ the resources and response so we can ensure every COVID-19 patient gets the care they need.

Edwards also quotes Amber Schmidtke, an assistant professor of microbiology at Mercer University School of Medicine in Macon.  She said:

I think it’s mainly motivated to help with some of the rural hospital burden, because there are many counties that don’t have a hospital ... And especially in Region H, the hospitals can be two counties away, and some of these counties take 45 minutes to an hour to drive through.

The other piece is an op-ed in the New York Times by two employees of a rural Texas hospital.  Donna Boatright and Jennifer Liedtke authored "In Texas, 6 Critically Ill Covid-19 Patients Would Overwhelm This Hospital."  They write from Sweetwater, Texas, population 10,906, in west Texas, the southern part of the panhandle.  Sweetwater is, the authors explain, best known as the "World's Largest Rattlesnake Roundup."  Here is an excerpt from their op-ed:

With just two ventilators, Rolling Plains Memorial Hospital in Sweetwater, Texas, has been terrified of Covid-19 ever since March. ... Even the slightest outbreak would overwhelm Rolling Plains, which sits on a major highway that carries tens of thousands of travelers a day. 

Rural hospitals in America have been fighting for survival for years, mostly because of their relatively high numbers of uninsured patients.

The piece provides a great deal of additional context on the rural healthcare crisis, and it is well worth a read in its entirety. Lots of local color and empathy-inducing detail.  Plus, there is a video to accompany the op-ed.

Postscript from WyoFile, featuring a hospital out of Campbell County, Wyoming, population 48,133. This is deeply reported story by Dustin Bleizeffer and Mason Adams, providing lots of context on rural hospital closures, particularly in coal country like this area which, like Appalachia, has been struggling with an economic downturn for some time. 

And here is a June 26, 2020 story from the Houston Chronicle, featuring Big Bend National Park in west Texas.  Jeremy Wallace reports, but it's behind a paywall.

Noam Levy reports for the Los Angeles Times in this related story also dateline June 26, 2020. This story, which references what is happening in Texas, Arizona,  Florida, and California, is not especially rural focused, but it does note the major outbreak in Imperial County, population 174,528, the state's most southeasterly county, bordering Mexico and Arizona.  Hospitals as far north as Sacramento are taking patients out of Imperial County, whose hospitals are overwhelmed.   Interestingly, Levy reports an urban-to-rural patient reversal out of Texas, a phenomenon I'd not previously seen:

“We can see the storm coming,” said John Henderson, who heads the Texas Organization of Rural and Community Hospitals. 

Henderson noted that several member hospitals in suburban and rural areas around Houston are already being called on to take very ill patients from overburdened medical centers in the city, which is experiencing among the worst coronavirus outbreaks.

Another postscript: Two stories about rural hospitals and clinics were filed on June 29, 2020.  One is on Capital Press, by Sierra Dawn McClain, dateline Bend, Oregon, about the travails of that state's rural hospitals in the COVID-19 era.  I was not familiar with Capital Press but its subhead is "Empowering Producers of Food and Fiber."  Here's an excerpt:

In rural Oregon, a healthcare crisis is festering. Gov. Kate Brown labeled healthcare providers "essential" during COVID-19, but the pangs of the lockdown have thrashed providers. 

In March and April, many rural hospitals and clinics sat nearly empty with outpatient procedures and elective surgeries postponed. Delayed care may have health impacts for patients, and the revenue drop battered already-fragile rural health systems.

The second story was posted on North Carolina Health News and is by Liora Engel-Smith.  The lede follows: 

Federal support to rural hospitals helped some of the state’s most cash-strapped facilities through the first phases of the coronavirus pandemic, but advocates say providers will likely need more support down the line. 

Through the federal coronavirus aid package known as the CARES Act, hospitals got money for care and testing of uninsured people for coronavirus, but urban hospitals, which generally have a larger share of coronavirus patients, got the bulk of that aid.

Coronavirus in rural America (Part LXIII): The childcare deficit aggravated

The Washington Post headline this morning is "Middle-income and rural families disproportionately grapple with child-care deserts, new analysis shows," and Amanda Becker reports.   Here's an excerpt about the rural issue:

Rural families nationwide had the fewest child-care slots relative to demand across all categories, the researchers found.

But most of the story is not about the rural deficit. Here are two more interesting excerpts about where the deficits are:

Lower-income neighborhoods had slightly more child-care capacity than middle-income neighborhoods, for example, which could be due to federally subsidized child-care programs and tuition vouchers, Malik said.

* * * 

Latino communities were more likely to be child-care deserts than white communities. Detroit, which is nearly 80 percent black, is a “vast child-care desert,” while the surrounding affluent, white suburbs have “abundant licensed child care,” the researchers found. In Milwaukee, the northern section of the city, which is heavily black, has more available child care than the southern part, which is heavily Latino.

Literary Ruralism (Part XXI): The Liars Club by Mary Karr

Mary Karr's memoir, The Liars' Club (1995), documents her childhood in east Texas in the 1970s, mostly in a place called Leechfield.  Like so many best-selling memoirs, this one features a mother struggling with mental illness.  In this scene, Karr's mother has just received an inheritance, and it has "liberated" her to start a bonfire of household possessions, including her children's furniture and toys.  Mary is watching the bonfire, pondering how she and her sister might be rescued.  She concludes that none of the neighbors will come to her rescue, writing:

So I know with calm how cut off we are from any help. No fire truck will arrive. None of the neighbors will phone Daddy or the sheriff.

I picture old Mrs. Heinz standing next door at her sink behind the window she cleaned down to the squeak every Saturday with a bucket of ammonia water into which she squeezed a lemon. She can see us out there. I feel her eyes on me. She’s wiping off the last plate from the drainboard and watching us and wondering should she come out. But she thinks better of it. Mother’s flinging things into the fire like one of those witches out of the Shakespeare play, and old Mrs. Heinz probably peers out from behind the ruffled Priscilla curtains that she copied herself on her sewing machine using dimestore gingham to look like the ones in the Sears catalogue. She probably takes one long gander at that hill of flaming toys and furniture and the picture frames of living fire and Mother stirring it all with a long pole and thinks to herself, Ain’t a bit of my business. The she lets the pink-checked curtain go so it fell across us. The other neighbors have done the same. I feel them all releasing us into the deep drop of whatever is about to happen. Each curtain falls. Each screen door is pulled tight, and every door hook clicks into its own tight eye, and even big heavy doors get heaved closed in the heat, and all the bolts are thrown. I can almost hear it happening all over the neighborhood. TVs get turned louder to shut out the racket of us. Anyone might have phoned Daddy and said, Pete, looky here. This ain’t none of my bi’ness, but…