The Crime Report (https://thecrimereport.org/tag/rural-justice/)
The decline parallels the drop in state and federal prison populations between 2007 and 2017, according to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics. But about two-thirds of those confined to jail cells in 2017—roughly 425,000 people—hadn’t been convicted of any crime.
The Hampton Roads Regional Jail in historic coastal Virginia has been struggling with inmate deaths, staff shortages, and funding issues for more than a decade. But getting help from local and state politicians has been an uphill battle.
More than 30 research and advocacy organizations around the country will participate in a National Partnership for Pretrial Justice aimed at developing alternatives to money bail and pretrial detention, Arnold Ventures announced Tuesday.
Faced with declining tax revenues, towns and counties in the economically depressed Appalachian coal region rely on state subsidies for jails and prisons to maintain services, says a Vera Institute study.
Jail authorities in one western Pennsylvania county saw a 54 percent increase in the number of females, many of them single mothers, compared to 3.5 percent for men. It’s part of a national trend that some ascribe to the opioid crisis and others to the inequities created by money bail.
Jail authorities in Iowa’s rural Wayne County have earned nearly $1 million by housing inmates from nearby counties. That’s helped fund some long-needed improvements in health care for inmates.
Butler County, Pa., jail authorities have set aside special cells, some of them padded, for inmates whose behavior renders them unfit for the general population. But they concede this doesn’t address the real needs of individuals who find scant help in the outside world.
Nebraska began shifting more inmates into stricter post-release supervision regimes to relieve prison overcrowding after legislators passed a sentencing reform package in 2015. But it’s added a new burden to already-stressed local jails and courts.
Sharp disparities between the imprisonment rates of urban and rural Americans illustrate the “new dynamics of mass incarceration” in the U.S., the Vera Institute of Justice said Friday.
With growing numbers of women incarcerated around the country, some local authorities are developing innovative programs to help ensure they never return once they’re released. Floyd County in southern Indiana opened a jail-based counseling unit this year that appears to hold promise.