Farm-to-prison programs can provide inmates with healthier food, support area farmers and cut some state food costs

Farm-to-prison food can sometimes help states save money.
(Graphic by Adam Dixon, Offrange)

A small but growing number of programs are working to create farm-to-prison pipelines that provide fresher food to inmates while supporting area farmers. "Using nutritious, local ingredients in a prison setting to cook food from scratch is far from the norm," reports Liz Susman Karpfor for Offrange. "A handful of correctional facilities throughout the country are reshaping the unhealthy, tasteless, even toxic diet that has historically been served to people in prison."

In states such as Vermont and Maine where department of corrections are using farm-to-prison and made-from-scratch programs, the objectives are better inmate rehabilitation outcomes, overall inmate health improvements and food cost savings. 

DOC offices that want to begin farm-to-prison initiatives should start by getting support to work through procurement processes. Karpfor explains, "Each state possesses different, often cumbersome, and poorly understood procurement policies."

While some DOC officials may believe farm-to-prison food will be expensive, many times it saves the state money. The Mountain View Correctional Facility in Maine uses flour milled in the Northeast and bakes many of its bread items from scratch. Karpfor reports, "Baking a sub roll in-house costs 5.8 cents, versus 33 cents for one purchased via a state contract."

Kyle Moore, who is the food service manager at the Marble Valley Regional Correctional Facility in Rutland, Vermont, "sometimes purchases seconds or an oversupply at lesser cost," Karpfor writes. "His staff is testing products from Salvation Farms, an enterprise using agricultural surplus to build a resilient food system in Vermont."

Michigan and Oregon have "developed high-quality kitchen and gardening apprenticeships in which participants receive certifications and can sometimes be paid," Karpfor adds. While the list of states using farm-to-prison models is small, over the past five years it has grown "exponentially."

ICE contracts help some rural jails shore up their budgets, but the money comes with strings attached

Ozark County Jail, Mo., transports and temporarily holds
detainees for ICE. (Photo by Jesse Bogan, Marshall Project)

Small, rural law enforcement offices hurting for money are signing up for Immigration and Customs Enforcement contracts, but the money to assist with national mass deportation efforts comes with added oversight and risks.

Sheriff Cass Martin from Ozark County, Missouri, "sees his prayers answered in a new contract with ICE that could boost his $1.1 million annual budget," reports Jesse Bogan of the Missouri Independent. "An enormous ramp-up in detention capacity is underway. New contracts are being negotiated. . . . Ozark County is already reaping the benefits by raising wages and hiring for new positions in law enforcement."

Martin saw the ICE contract as a possible answer to his budgeting shortfall. He told Bogan, “We were really hurting. The day after the inauguration, a federal inspector showed up here at the jail wanting to look at everything throughout the facility."

Ozark County is one example of how a small, rural law enforcement office can become an effective "arm" for ICE. "They’ve made 525-mile runs from Ozark County to the federal building in St. Louis, down to the Greene County Jail in southwest Missouri, then back home," Bogan adds. "They’ve picked up detainees 325 miles away in Oklahoma and taken them to the tarmac at Kansas City International Airport."

But the added work and money have strings attached. ICE "detention and transportation contracts come with much more scrutiny and oversight than typical jail work, especially in Missouri, which doesn’t have statewide jail standards," Bogan reports. "Still, ICE reported that eight detainees had died nationally while in custody this year, as of May 5, including one death in a rural Missouri jail."

At least in Ozark County, local input on ICE contracts has been minimal; however, local officials working on ICE details haven't broadcast their federal negotiations. "Just one [local resident] attended a recent county commissioner meeting," Bogan writes. "Two years’ worth of meeting minutes didn’t mention the ICE contract in detail. The county commissioner said he wanted to wait until federal money started coming in before listing projected revenue in the county’s $7 million annual budget."  

Rural jails lack mental health resources. Inmates can linger for weeks in tiny cells awaiting psychiatric care.

Local jails weren't build to house mentally
ill populations. (KFF Health photo)

Many rural jails lack resources to manage inmates who need mental health treatment. In Polson, a small town in northwestern Montana, "when someone accused of a crime needs mental health care, chances are they’ll be locked in a basement jail cell the size of a walk-in closet," reports Katheryn Houghton of KFF Health News. Jails across the U.S. have problems similar to Polson, where demand for inmate mental health treatment exceeds any state's capacity to provide it.

Polson's basement jail cell was intended to be a short-term solution to keep mentally altered inmates away from the rest of the jail population until a psychiatric bed opened up. Houghton writes, "Last year, a man sentenced for stealing a rifle stayed in that cell 129 days. He was waiting for a spot to open at Montana’s only state-run psychiatric hospital after a mental health evaluator deemed he needed care."

Some jailed individuals haven't been found guilty of crimes because a judge ordered mental health care completed before allowing the case to move forward. At the Grays Harbor County Jail, located in the small town of Montesano, Washington, "approximately 20-30% of the jail population is made up of inmates who are supposed to be receiving [mental health] care," reports Susannah Frame of KING-TV in Seattle. The facility's medical ward is "the size of a closet. There are no mental health professionals on staff. There is not enough staff to safely deal with a crisis."

Wyoming, Nevada and Oregon jail systems have similar struggles. "More than half of Wyoming’s 23 sheriffs told lawmakers there that they were housing people in crisis awaiting mental health care for months," Houghton reports. "Nevada has struggled despite a $500 daily fine for each jailed patient whose treatment is delayed. Disability Rights Oregon has said delays in that state continue after two people died in jail while on the state’s psychiatric waitlist."

In Polson, Vincent River has been the jail's only mental health provider for 25 years. "He said he’s not always available because he’s the only psychologist in four northwestern Montana counties evaluating whether a person in jail needs psychiatric care," Houghton writes. "River said he can’t get people into any psychiatric bed in Montana because there are too few. Instead, he tries to stabilize people while they’re jailed. . . . Some are released without care if they linger too long on the state hospital’s waitlist."

Rural jail offers newly released prisoners with addiction disorders a long-lasting drug to prevent relapse

Cost is a major barrier to using Sublocade as an
addiction treatment for prisoners. (Adobe Stock photo)

In rural Maine, a county jail began giving a long-lasting form of buprenorphine to inmates with drug addictions before they left incarceration. The medicine, which curbs opioid cravings for 28 days, helps past inmates avoid "withdrawal, relapse and overdose — dangers that newly released prisoners confront nationwide," reports Jan Hoffman of The New York Times.

Once out of jail, addiction sufferers can face several obstacles to staying in recovery while re-entering their communities. Maine's Somerset County sheriff, Dale P. Lancaster, was discouraged by the number of inmates who would leave prison and die from overdoses. Lancaster pushed for the extended-release medical treatment. Hoffman writes, "According to a recent analysis in Health and Justice, the switch had a remarkable effect. The long-acting injection afforded newly released prisoners a crucial buffer period after they were discharged, with more time to set up continuing addiction treatment and stabilize their lives."

People suffering from drug addictions are more likely to end up on the wrong end of the judicial system. "Of the more than 1.2 million prisoners in the United States, up to 65 percent of prisoners have active substance use disorders, according to some studies," Hoffman explains. And while those institutions have an opportunity to treat the addicted, few have the resources or staffing. In the case of extended-release shots of buprenorphine, known as Sublocade, the treatment's cost remains a big barrier, with the list price for a monthly injection about $2,000, while a month's supply of pills ranges from $90 to $360.

But the success of Maine's program may help turn the tide. "After being released, the Somerset County prisoners who got the shot were three times as likely to continue treatment as those at another rural Maine jail who received the daily pills" [which are discontinued upon release], Hoffman adds. "Between September 2022 and September 2023, three prisoners from the jail where the pills were dispensed died from overdoses within three months of being released; a fourth died by suicide. None of the former Somerset prisoners who had received the injections died."

Dr. Alane O’Connor, co-chair of Maine's Opioid Response Clinical Advisory Committee, said that "as word of the Somerset program spreads, she is getting inquiries from other county sheriffs about how to bring the shots on board," Hoffman reports. "She is also hearing from former prisoners." O'Connor told Hoffman, "Many wanted to stay on the shots, so they would come back to the jail asking our help in finding a provider."

Cheap prison labor is used to supply businesses with all sorts of products; but prisoners can be vulnerable to abuse

Prisoners are forced laborers without 13th Amendment
protections. (Photo by Rebecca Blackwell, AP)

Less than a decade ago, a New York Times story ran with this headline, "A Small Indiana County Sends More People to Prison Than San Francisco and Durham, N.C., Combined. Why?" The story goes on to explore America's prison belt, which was brimming with rural residents, often sentenced for drug crimes by more conservative courts. But, if sending people away for extensive sentences is a rural answer to crime, residents may want to know what the incarcerated do while serving those sentences.

Angola, Louisiana, is home to the country's largest maximum-security prison, which used to be a Southern slave plantation but is now a vast farming facility with prisoner labor. "Unmarked trucks packed with prison-raised cattle roll out of the Louisiana State Penitentiary, where men are sentenced to hard labor and forced to work, for pennies an hour or sometimes nothing at all," reports Robin McDowell and Margie Mason of The Associated Press. "The cows are bought by a local rancher and then followed by The Associated Press another 600 miles to a Texas slaughterhouse that feeds into the supply chains of giants like McDonald's, Walmart and Cargill."

Prison workers are vulnerable to exploitation and abuse. "If they refuse to work, some can jeopardize their chances of parole or face punishment like being sent to solitary confinement," McDowell and Mason write. "They also are often excluded from protections guaranteed to almost all other full-time workers, even when they are seriously injured or killed on the job."

The 13th Amendment to the Constitution outlaws slavery and involuntary servitude "except as punishment for a crime," AP reports. "That clause is currently being challenged on the federal level, and efforts to remove similar language from state constitutions are expected to reach the ballot in about a dozen states this year."

Meanwhile, many U.S. prisons "lease" incarcerated people for labor. "An analysis of data amassed by the AP from correctional facilities nationwide traced nearly $200 million worth of sales of farmed goods and livestock to businesses over the past six years," McDowell and Mason write. That amount does not include sales to state and government entities. 

Corporations who "hire" prisoners not only harness cheap, reliable labor, but they may reap additional benefits such as tax credits and other financial incentives. "Incarcerated workers also typically aren't covered by the most basic protections, including workers' compensation and federal safety standards," AP reports. "In many cases, they cannot file official complaints about poor working conditions."

Linking prison labor to shelved products requires following a complex web, but AP found "Mammoth commodity traders that are essential to feeding the globe like Cargill, Bunge, Louis Dreyfus, Archer Daniels Midland and Consolidated Grain and Barge have in recent years scooped up millions of dollars' worth of soy, corn and wheat straight from prisons, which compete with local farmers."

To read how AP reporters crisscrossed the country to uncover agriculture trading practices tied to prison labor, read the full story here.

A rural Indiana county gets creative: Their skilled worker training begins at the courthouse

A student welds during one of Lawrence County’s courses.
(Courtesy photo, Joe Timbrook via The Daily Yonder)

Need skilled workers? It might be time to train them. "Indiana's Lawrence County — an area known for its limestone quarries and being the birthplace of three astronauts — has had to get creative to close the education gaps and labor shortages afflicting much of rural America," reports Nick Fouriezos of The Daily Yonder. "About seven years ago, a local mayor aired out his frustrations to Joe Timbrook, director of career development for the Lawrence County Economic Growth Council. His message, Timbrook recalled recently, was simple: All the area's employers were complaining that they couldn't find any skilled workers."

That 2018 exchange got Timbrook thinking -- where could he find these elusive workers? He started discussing the problem with other Lawrence County leaders "who together realized that the county had about 2,500 adults aged 18 to 65 that didn't have even their high school diploma, much less postsecondary training. Handwritten signs on telephone poles were the only way most people were learning how to get their high school certification," Fouriezos writes. "With the help of an Indiana state grant, the Lawrence County Economic Growth Council came together in 2018 to start addressing its workforce gaps. Perhaps the county's most innovative re-education effort began in its courthouse."

While starting re-education in a courthouse is unusual, the innovative approach paid off. "The council persuaded local judges and prosecutors to include in all plea agreements a 3-week training course for in-demand fields such as machining, welding, and construction. From there, the students can continue pursuing 8-week and 10-week certification courses paid for by the state, Fouriezos reports. "Once the growth council saw the success of the program, it started opening the program to other adults as well." Timbrook told him: "I have judges texting me on the weekends about how the class is doing. . . . We're just trying to figure out what this community needs and fill the gaps."

The lack of skilled workers is a nationwide problem. "Key industries lost scores of workers in recent years and have struggled to get them back. Manufacturing lost 1.4 million jobs at the onset of the pandemic in March 2020, and hasn't replaced them, with nearly 700,000 open jobs as of March 2023," Fouriezos explains. "Even if every unemployed person with experience were employed, manufacturers would fill only around 75% of their vacant jobs, according to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which notes similar deficits in education, health services, and wholesale and retail trade."

Fouriezo reports, "Using local data to assess what already works and expand it is especially critical in areas with few educational institutions, says Dakota Pawlicki, director of "Talent Hubs" at Civic Lab, an education nonprofit that partnered with Lawrence County to systemize their outreach strategy. 'With a lot of national organizations, there is this perception that rural areas are at a deficit,' Pawlicki says, but that perspective can lead to many hidden strengths of rural areas being overlooked. 'In Lawrence County, their unique asset just happened to be something that was happening inside of jail.'"

Why are so many Americans behind bars? It's complicated.

The Conversation Chart by Jeffrey Bellin, from CC-BY-ND data

In a country known as "the land of the free," it's hard to reconcile how so many people end up behind bars. "The U.S. continues to imprison a higher percentage of its population than almost every other country. The U.S. incarcerates 530 people for every 100,000 in its population, making it one of the world's biggest jailers," reports Jeffrey Bellin for The Conversation, a platform for journalism by academics.

"As a former prosecutor and a researcher who studies the criminal justice system, I have found that understanding how the U.S. incarceration rate grew over the last few decades is the key to understanding its root causes," Bellin explains. "I think the public debate can improve if people develop a better understanding of how mass incarceration arose and its tenuous connection to crime."

Incarceration rates intertwine with spikes in serious crimes such as homicides and longer sentences, Bellin notes. "Over time, this led to today's aging prison population and many people being held long past the time they would have been released at other times in this country's history. . . . The number of people incarcerated in state prisons for homicide increased by over 300% between 1980 and 2010. . . . But the scale of the increases for other offenses, like drug crimes, is even larger – rising 1,147% over this time frame.

"Substantially reducing prison and jail populations will require a better understanding of the link between incarceration and crime. It is not simply the case that incarceration goes up because people commit crime; instead, the story is much more complicated," Bellin explains. "That is because we use incarceration for two purposes: to obtain justice on behalf of victims and to try to change people's behavior."

Bellin points out two types of cases in the nation's criminal courts. The first type involves violent crimes such as murder or sexual assault. The second type "are cases like drug offenses and weapons possession, which are not typically about obtaining justice for victims but are supposed to further policy goals like preventing drug use." Over the last several decades, courts have increased sentence years and the number of actions that can lead to prison time. The result is massive incarceration.

Is there a solution? Bellin writes, "Substantial progress at reducing the incarcerated population will require reversing both trends. First, returning sentence lengths for all offenses, including serious violent crimes, to their historical norms. And second, resisting this country's growing habit of relying on incarceration as a tool for achieving policy goals."

By addressing inmates' mental health problems, some rural counties aim to stop a cycle of incarceration

Photo via RHIHub

Rural jail population statistics paint a grim picture of traumatized, abused or mentally ill individuals who volley between jail and life outside without ever receiving treatment; rural counties aim to change that dynamic by addressing mental health needs during incarceration, reports Gretel Kauffman for Rural Health Information Hub.

Washington County, Texas, pop. 35,000, is one of those countries. Eric Hensley, the county's chief sheriff's deputy overseeing jail operations, "heard about a psychological telehealth program at nearby Texas A&M University. Hensley immediately began to wonder how the technology could be used in the Washington County Jail," Kauffman reports. "Three years later, an estimated 150 people incarcerated in the Washington County jail have participated in virtual group or one-on-one counseling through a partnership between the jail and the Texas A&M Telebehavioral Care program, and two other rural Texas counties have replicated the program in their own jails, too."

In Marion, Ohio, pop. 36,000, "seeing familiar faces in the courtroom was a common occurrence for James Boleyn," Kauffman reports. "Boleyn, who serves as Director of Specialized Dockets for Marion Municipal Court, told Kauffman, "We were running into this situation again and again, and we decided we needed to do something as a community and say, 'How can we interrupt this cycle and better resource these individuals?'" Kauffman adds, "In 2021, Marion County signed onto the Stepping Up Initiative, a project by the National Association of Counties that encourages counties to improve and expand mental health resources in their local criminal justice systems. . . .The county is focusing its efforts inside the jail, which hasn't offered mental health treatment services up until this point."

Many communities address inmates' mental health needs while helping them plan for life upon release. Kauffman reports, "While rural communities may have fewer mental health resources available to people recently released from jail, that simplicity can also help to streamline the transition process, Erin Comartin, an associate professor in the Wayne State University School of Social Work, noted. In one rural community she worked with, the mental health center and jail were a parking lot away from each other." Comartin told Kaufman: "It was really great because when the jail was releasing somebody, they just call over and say, 'Hey, do you want to come to the other end of the parking lot and help this person get back into services?'"

Isaac Saldivar, a psychologist working virtually with clients in the Washington County Jail and two other rural county jails, "describes jail-based mental health services as having the potential to produce a 'dramatic domino effect' throughout rural communities," Kauffman writes, "The more they heal, the healthier the community becomes." Saldivar told Kauffman: “These are community members that are hurting and need healing. That's someone's friend, someone's brother, someone's sister, someone's father. And the more they heal, the healthier the community becomes.”

America's addiction problem is in its prisons; they're getting hotter in a warming world, and are disproportionately rural

Shutterstock photo

Addictions to opioids or methamphetamine often form a web of crises, and incarceration can be one of them. While it's hard to directly tie drug addictions in rural areas like Appalachia to incarceration in one of the region's prisons, the correlation bears review, as do the conditions in U.S. prisons.

For rural populations, imprisonment rates have increased beyond those of cities. "You're more likely to go to jail if you live in a rural community," reports Debby Warren for Nonprofit Quarterly. "For decades, your odds of getting locked in jail in cities greatly exceeded your odds of getting jailed in rural areas. . . . Today, people in rural counties are more than twice as likely to go to jail as people in urban areas. And the gap continues to grow. Jail populations have dropped 18 percent in urban areas since 2013 but have climbed 27 percent in rural areas."

With those rates in mind, the National Institute on Drug Abuse reports, "The substantial prison population in the United States is strongly connected to drug-related offenses. While the exact rates of inmates with substance use disorders are difficult to measure, some research shows that an estimated 65% percent of the United States prison population has an active substance-use disorder. Another 20% percent did not meet the official criteria for an SUD but were under the influence of drugs or alcohol at the time of their crime."

If many rural people with SUDs are in prison, what are those prisons like? They are hot. They are also more black than white. "Temperatures within America's prison walls are often unbearable. . . . 38.5% of incarcerated people are Black, even though we only make up 13.6% of the population," reports Maya Richard-Craven of Word in Black. David Dosa, an associate professor of medicine at Brown University, "has studied heat in prisons for the past three years and is the co-author of a 2022 study about extreme heat in Texas prisons. Only 30% of living units in Texas prisons have air conditioning. . . . The problem is particularly acute in the South. As the Prison Policy Initiative reported in 2019, 'Although 95% of households in the South use air conditioning, including 90% of households that make below $20,000 per year, states around the South have refused to install air conditioning in their prisons, creating unbearable and dangerous conditions for incarcerated people.'. . . It's not just an issue of being hot and uncomfortable. Dosa and his fellow researchers found more people are dying in prisons without air conditioning compared to those with air conditioning."

While extreme heat in prisons is not new, it has been reported since the 1940's, climate change has exacerbated the problem that has not been addressed in some of the hottest states. Richard-Craven writes, "According to the Prison Policy Initiative’s 2019 report, at least 13 states — Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Kansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, North Carolina, South Carolina, Texas, and Virginia — do not have universal air conditioning in their carceral facilities. . . . Emery Nelson, a public affairs specialist for the Federal Bureau of Prisons, said that the bureau takes the impact of heat on incarcerated individuals seriously — people are 'treated on a case-by-case basis.'. . . Nelson wrote that 'Heat stroke is treated as a medical emergency and appropriate care is rendered to the inmate patients. There are nursing and paramedic protocols to treat heat-related illness, to include instructions for vital sign monitoring, interventions such as IV fluids and body cooling, as well as indications of when to transfer to a higher level of care.'"

"That raises the question — what was happening in December 2020 when Tommy Lee Rutledge, a 44-year-old Black man, died in an Alabama prison mental health ward from extreme heat? His body temperature reached 109 degrees, and a federal lawsuit brought after his death noted that 'he was literally baked to death in his cell,' Richard-Craven adds. Julie Skarha, an environmental epidemiologist at Brown University, told Aryn Baker of Time magazine: "At this point, the state [of Texaas] has probably spent more money fighting these AC bills than it would actually cost to install AC in these facilities. In the context of climate change, AC is not a luxury. It’s a human right.” Baker reports, "But as temperatures keep rising, the costs of medical care for heat-stressed prisoners, wrongful death lawsuits and staffing for ever-hotter prisons will too. . . . Part of the problem is that legislators still see air conditioning as a luxury, says Skarha. No one disputes the need for TV in prison, which is arguably less important for human health than air-conditioning."

Deaths in rural jails: Stories from Ala. and W.Va. highlight broken systems that seem not to protect the incarcerated

Photo by Walker County Sheriff's Office, Alabama

"Your son died in jail." Alongside the pain of taking that in, the human response is, "How? Why?" Nationwide, an unknown number of people die in jail. Relatives of those who have died in West Virginia jails "have similar stories of languishing in heartache and confusion while desperately seeking answers to what happened to their loved ones behind bars," reports Dan Lawton of Mountain State Spotlight. "Of the 52 people who died in West Virginia’s jails and prisons last year, the state hasn’t finished the investigations into 17 of them, going back as far as March."

Lawton introduces Kimberly Osborne, whose son, Ryan Scott Smith, died in his cell at Southwestern Regional Jail in December. "Over that time, she has pleaded with correctional officials, the Medical Examiner’s Office and the State Police for any scraps of information that shed light on his final moments. . . . They haven’t told her anything, except that the case is under investigation. . . . She doesn’t know when — or if — she’ll get a complete account of what happened in the hours before the jail’s warden called to tell her that her son was dead. Osbourne told Lawton, “I’m just trying to get justice for Ryan."

Like Osbourne, "The families of those who have died in jails have been met with similar responses. They make fruitless calls to agency after agency. They wait in limbo for investigations that never end, are denied records that might provide clarity and receive little to no sympathy from public officials, including Gov. Jim Justice, about their losses," Lawton reports. "While there is pending legislation intended to make what happens in the state’s jails more transparent, it may not be forceful enough to provide many families with the information they need."

In Alabama, the story of Anthony Mitchell echoes jailhouse cruelty and a code of silence, reports Sarah White-Koditschek of AL.com: "Mitchell, 33, alarmed his cousin Steve Mitchell when he showed up at his house, acting psychotic, and insisting he must enter a 'portal to hell' in his mother’s attic to retrieve the body of his long-ago stillborn brother. After a 911 call, Mitchell was picked up by sheriffs’ deputies . . . . The Sheriff’s Office spokesperson, according to the suit, told the family they’d get him medical help in Walker County Jail. Instead, guards tased Mitchell and locked him in a freezer, killing him, the suit alleges. The suit filed Monday also contends jail leadership began a cover up of Mitchell’s death hours before he died. . . 'This case,' the suit says, 'therefore presents an appalling question: how does a man literally freeze to death while incarcerated in a modern climate-controlled jail, in the custody and care of corrections officers?'”

It did not end there, "A former deputy also filed a separate, but related lawsuit. Former Corrections Officer Karen Kelly sued the Walker County Sheriff’s Office and multiple officers for being fired and for retaliation after she shared videos with Mitchell’s family of him being abused in the jail."

"Security footage from 4 a.m. that morning showed Mitchell lying naked on a pile of trash on the cement floor of his cell as officers laughed at him, according to the suit," Whites-Koditschek reports. "Video also showed jail nurse, Alicia Herron, enter the cell and spend a couple of minutes inside, appearing to give no medical treatment, according to the suit."

Whites-Koditschek adds, "Jon Goldfarb, attorney for Mitchell’s estate said the videos show correctional officers laughing as Mitchell lay naked and dying. Goldfarb told Whites-Koditschek, “This is the worst case of inmate abuse I have ever seen . . . . People who have seen these videos think they are watching something in Russia or Abu Ghraib . . . . but this happened in our own backyard in Walker County, Alabama."

Use of force in Pa. jails common with mentally compromised inmates; 2/3 of people in U.S. jails are just awaiting trial

(Mixed media by Tom Downing, WITF)

In its investigation into Pennsylvania's county jails, WITF, the state's public television station, found that "One in three uses of force from 25 jails during the last three months of 2021 involved a person who was having a mental health crisis or who had a diagnosed mental illness," Brett Sholtis reports. "The situation brings risks ranging from lasting psychological trauma to death."

In the U.S., "two-thirds of people in jails are there pre-trial — meaning they haven’t been convicted of a crime. Most are there on nonviolent charges such as parole violation, theft, drunkenness and drug possession," Sholtis reports. "Though their time in jail may be relatively short, those who fail to adapt can pay a heavy price."

One story Sholtis provided: "When police found Ishmail Thompson, he was standing naked outside a Dauphin County hotel, where he had just punched a man. A mental-health specialist working with the county prison said Thompson should be sent to a hospital for psychiatric care. But at the hospital, a doctor ran some tests and cleared him to return to jail. At the jail, when corrections officers tried to strip-search Thompson, he ran into a shower where he was 'wetting himself down,' prison records show. An officer pepper-sprayed him in the face and tried to take him to the ground. Thompson fought back. Staff flooded the area, handcuffing and shackling him. . . . About 20 minutes later, an officer saw that Thompson was taking 'short, abnormal breaths.' Five days later, Thompson died. The district attorney said no criminal charges would be filed."

Sholtis writes, "Most uses of force don’t lead to death — and the coroner did not determine whether Thompson’s death was due to being pepper-sprayed and restrained. But the practices corrections officers employ every day in Pennsylvania county jails can put prisoners and staff at risk of injury and can hurt vulnerable people who may be scheduled to return to society within months."

Craig Haney, a psychology professor at the University of California Santa Cruz, who specializes in prison conditions told Sholtis, "Some mentally ill prisoners are so traumatized by the abuse that they never recover, some are driven to suicide, and others are deterred from bringing attention to their mental health problems because reporting these issues often results in harsher treatment." While use of force is needed "for officers to prevent violence against others. However, records obtained by WITF show that a significant number of uses of force are against people who are not hurting anyone else," Sholtis reports. "WITF found that one in five uses of force — 88 incidents — involve a prisoner who was either attempting suicide, hurting themselves or threatening self-harm. Common responses by prison staff included what was used on Thompson — a restraint chair and pepper-spray. In some cases, officers used electroshock devices such as stun guns."

Weekly's investigation of local resident's jail death in another state prompts more coverage and a criminal investigation

In May, a Kentucky woman jailed on drunk-driving charges in Virginia died in custody. When her family wasn't satisfied with the explanations they received, they went to their local newspaper, The Mountain Eagle of Whitesburg. The weekly's Sam Adams investigated, and his reporting has prompted a criminal investigation, the Eagle reports.

Sherri Delynn Cook

"The daily media in Southwest Virginia and East Tennessee ignored the story for several days, but at some point a current or former Virginia law enforcement officer made sure the Va.-Tenn. media saw our coverage," Eagle Publisher Ben Gish told The Rural Blog. "They then began to report on the death . . . I am almost certain the entire matter would have been buried if The Eagle hadn’t started covering it — and covered it pretty aggressively, through Sam and our very limited resources. So community newspapers do still matter!"

Adams reported that Virginia's regional jail in Duffield told the family of Sherri Delynn Cook that she had been released on bail at 8:49 p.m., but "In reality, she had died more than an hour earlier, at 7:36 p.m., according to documents accompanying her ashes back to Kentucky." In his follow-up story, he reported, "When the family couldn’t find her . . . they kept calling back. Finally, at 9 p.m. on May 21, Fine said, they were told that Cook was dead. By that time, she had been dead at least 25 hours."

Quick hits: Missing factory parts slow supply chains; telehealth could help rural prisoners stop smoking...

Here's a roundup of stories with rural resonance; if you do or see similar work that should be shared on The Rural Blog, email heather.chapman@uky.edu.

One reason for the supply-chain issues plaguing the U.S. (and other countries): factories are having a hard time finding replacement mechanical and computer parts, which slows or halts production. Read more here.

The poultry muscle disease called white striping was nearly nonexistent 10 years ago, but today 99% of U.S. store-brand chickens have it, according to a newly published study from an animal welfare group. Meat from afflicted chickens has up to 224% more fat and 9% more protein than others, but doesn't taste any different. Since the stresses of factory farming cause the ailment, its frequency serves as a rough yardstick for the increasing popularity of such methods. Read more here.

The most common type of liver cancer is on the rise in rural America but trending down in cities, according to newly published research. Hepatocellular carcinoma is the most common type of liver cancer and the fastest-growing cause of cancer deaths in the U.S. Diagnoses are increasing at an annual rate of nearly 6%, approaching rates seen in cities. Rural residents most likely to be diagnosed include men aged 60-69, Black people, Alaskan Natives who live in high-poverty areas or Native Americans who live in the South and/or high-poverty areas. Meanwhile, lung, breast and colon cancer rates are falling in rural America. Read more here.

Telehealth may help smokers in rural prisons kick the habit, a study has found. Read more here.

A retired farmer's new book is a touching and often funny account of life on a farm. Read more here.

Quick hits: plague chipmunks; farmers' markets importance; what ballads and science fiction tell us about Appalachia . . .

Adorable and, possibly, dangerous.
Alamy Stock Photo by Sam Judy

Here's a roundup of stories with rural resonance; if you do or see similar work that should be shared on The Rural Blog, email heather.chapman@uky.edu.

Hopefully not coming to a tree near you: the U.S. Forest Service has had to close several top hiking spots on Lake Tahoe because of chipmunks with the bubonic plague (most small-mammal infections are in the West.). A park ranger said wild rodents in the Sierra Nevada commonly carry the virus and advises people to keep their dogs on a leash. Read more here.

A small Black-majority town in Virginia is trying to keep a supermarket chain from building a warehouse there, worrying it could destroy the rural character of their town. Read more here.

To cap off National Farmers Market Week: The markets are growing in their role as essential sources of healthy food for the rich and poor, say two landscape architecture professors. Read more here.

What ballads and science fiction tell us about Appalachia's past, present and future. Read more here.

Rural communities should harness the once-in-a-generation windfall from the American Rescue Plan to invest in and improve school STEM programs, writes a rural education expert. Read more here.

The Agriculture Department is taking applications for loans and grants for rural start-ups, small businesses, non-profits, institutions of higher learning, and more. Read more here.

A new report provides a road map for expanding chestnut agri-forestry in the U.S. Read more here.

The Vera Institute of Justice is inviting applications for grants to rural organizations seeking alternative solutions to incarceration. Read more here.

Journalism chops and receptionist charm will get you a job and a home in West Virginia. Read more here.

Local jail operating costs rose by $25 billion over past 40 years, but recent cost-cutting could help long after pandemic

"The cost of operating local jails has increased by $25 billion in the last four decades despite drops in both crime rates and jail populations, according to recent research from the Pew Charitable Trusts," Kate Queram reports for Route Fifty. "But mandated population decreases during the Covid-19 pandemic helped jails in some jurisdictions find creative cost-cutting measures that could continue long after the threat of the virus has passed, local officials said last week during a webinar hosted by the National Association of Counties."

Some counties kept jail populations down by issuing citations instead of arresting people and, at the officer's discretion, keeping them on house arrest. Others began assessing mental health during intake, then offering diversions such as treatment centers, Queram reports.

"Reducing operating costs in jails can produce significant savings for county governments, which spend more on correctional services than on things like libraries, courts, parks and recreation, fire protection, and water and sewer, according to Pew," Queram reports. "In 2017, the most recent year data was available, one out of every 17 county dollars went to jails, accounting for roughly 6% of county budgets across the country."

Those costs kept rising even as crime and jail admissions fell by double digits from 2007 to 2017, Queram reports. Prisoner populations stayed mostly stable because they were staying longer, on average. But during the pandemic, governors in many states mandated a reduction in prisoner populations, which led to a 25% drop in jails from June 2019 to 2020. But that didn't immediately translate to big savings in operation costs because jails had to spend more on medical costs, cleaning and personal protective equipment.

The prompted some law enforcement officials to consider whether jails had been incarcerating the right people before the pandemic. "If they can be supervised in the community during covid, why can’t they be supervised in the community after covid?" Martha Travis, director of standards and accountability at the Davidson County Sheriff's Office in Tennessee. "It’s really an opportunity for each and every community to evaluate their processes. Who do they have in jail? Do we have the right people in the jail?"

Overcrowding, lack of resources spur rural-jail death spike

An inmate in the Boyd County Detention Center in Catlettsburg, Ky., died of withdrawal symptoms. (Google Maps image)

America's smallest jails have some of the highest death rates in the nation, spurred by overcrowding and lack of resources, Katie Rose Quandt reports for The Atlantic.

"Across the country, an average of roughly three people died each day in local jails of all sizes in 2016, according to the Bureau of Justice Statistics — a rate that is almost certainly an underestimate. A disproportionate number of those deaths happen in America’s smallest jails," Quandt reports. "Mortality rates were highest in jails holding a daily average of fewer than 50 people between 2000 and 2012, the last period for which BJS reported mortality by jail size; suicide rates were inversely correlated with jail size from 2000 to 2007. Small-to-midsize jails tend to have fewer resources to provide adequate mental-health and medical care, suicide prevention, and drug treatment—services that many people entering jails need. They also often have less oversight and are more overcrowded than their larger counterparts. In many ways, small institutions are the most troubling example of America’s epidemic of preventable deaths in jails—and they are also the least likely to draw public attention."

Jail deaths are almost certainly underreported, not least because many jails routinely release prisoners who are near death, said Jasmine Heiss, director of the Vera Institute of Justice’s "In Our Backyards" initiative, which studies rural incarceration trends.

Recent criminal-justice reforms have led to slow declines in the overall incarcerated population since its 2008 peak, but that's mostly been in state and federal prisons along with large urban jails. "The opposite is true, however, in the rest of the nation’s 3,134 local jails, which are operated by counties or cities and typically hold people who are awaiting trial or serving short sentences," Quandt reports. "Over the same time frame, jail populations shot up 27 percent in rural areas, and 7 percent in small-to-midsize cities."

One reason for rural jail population spikes: even overcrowded jails are increasingly taking in populations from elsewhere to make money. "Roughly 80 percent of jails around the country rented out bed space in 2013 to other counties, federal agencies like the U.S. Marshals Service and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or state prison systems. This especially bloats jail populations in rural areas: In 2013, 46 percent of people in rural southern jails were being held for other jurisdictions," Quandt reports. "This trend has completely changed the landscape of local jailing in states like Kentucky. . . . Instead of de-carcerating, the state farms out half its prison population to county jails for $31.34 a day, leaving people serving multiyear sentences in small jails with worse access to programs, services, and health care. . . . Around the country, state departments of corrections limiting their intake during the pandemic have become yet another contributor to growth in jail populations."

Many Kentucky counties seem to be trying to replace coal-related jobs with incarceration jobs, according to Judah Schept, a professor at Eastern Kentucky University who studies rural incarceration. "You have counties becoming reliant on jail infrastructure," he told Quandt. "You have folks who live there anticipating work opportunities at jails and prisons, because coal employment is gone. And you have increasing numbers of people actually going into jail."

"Sometimes, when small counties build massive jails with the intention of housing state and federal detainees, this increased bed space can actually enable more local incarceration," Quandt reports, citing a rural sheriff's quote in a Vera Institute report: "They said, 'If you build it, they will come,' And that’s what happened. The judges knew there was room, so they threw them in jail."

Overcrowding "can mean less programming, fewer services, unsafe conditions, and more time locked down in cells. These problems coincide with other structural difficulties confronting small jails," Quandt reports. That can affect officer retention, the availability of rehabilitative programs, and health-care services.

But jails increasingly serve as first-line resources for mental health, addiction and homelessness in infrastructure-poor rural communities, according to Heiss. "In the absence of broader societal support systems, incarceration has become the catch-all solution in areas hit hard by poverty, unemployment, and the meth and opioid epidemics," she told Quandt.

A Vera Institute data analysis "found that smaller counties are less likely to have resources for programs like pretrial services and diversion programs that keep people out of jail," Quandt reports. "They also use pretrial detention at a higher rate than many jails in bigger cities." About two-thirds of the U.S. jail population is awaiting trial (many because they can't afford bail), compared to 50% before 1993. About 75% of people reported to have died in jail between 2006 and 2016 were awaiting trial.

But pretrial detention doesn't seem to keep the public safer. "A Prison Policy Initiative analysis of bail reforms around the country found that releasing more people before trial does not lead to more crime," Quandt reports. "Pretrial detention does, however, keep people in dangerous and overcrowded jails, instead of allowing them to await trial safely from home."

The story illustrates rural jail disparities with the story of Christopher Hall, a Kentuckian who died in early 2019 from withdrawal symptoms while awaiting trial in the Boyd County Detention Center. Because of previous jail deaths, the county jailer had resigned and the newly elected successor began his tenure just weeks before Hall's death. A corrections expert who analyzed the jail's logbooks said the new jailer had inherited a broken system and hadn't had time to fix the jail's problems. But, Quandt writes, "some structural problems—overcrowding by the courts, an unequal society that often uses incarceration as a solution to mental illness and addiction—cannot be fixed by any one jail or jailer."

Interest-group report on Kentucky and Tennessee jail costs show how and why rural jails are getting more crowded

The Grayson County Detention Center in Leitchfield, Ky., has added another wing with 200 beds for women since this picture was taken. It houses many state prisoners and federal detainees, to the benefit of the rural county's budget.

A new report from the Vera Institute of Justice examines state spending on local jails across the rural-urban spectrum in Kentucky and Tennessee in 2019. It's a topic worth examining, the report says, because millions of people are booked into local jails for crimes related to poverty, mental illness, and substance use. Most people in jail haven't been convicted, and are incarcerated because they can't afford to pay bail. Putting a community's most vulnerable in jail instead of treating them is "a harmful practice that diverts scarce resources away from the community," says the Institute, which generally opposes cash bail. 

Jails are also increasingly holding state-sentenced prisoners and detainees ofederal authorities such as the Immigration and Customs Enforcement, the U.S. Marshals Service, and the Bureau of Indian Affairs, the report says. Jails are typically paid a daily rate for people they house for such authorities, which effectively creates a market for jail beds and ties county revenue to continued incarceration.

"While jail populations have been declining in the nation’s major cities over the past decade, they have continued to rise in small and rural counties," the report says. "And although many communities saw substantial declines in jail populations following the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic, many jails began to refill in the second half of 2020. By the end of that year, three out of five people incarcerated in local jails were in smaller cities and rural communities." Read more here.

The report shows how jail spending varies across counties in both states and how reducing the locally held jail population could reduce government spending. 

Illinois the first state to eliminate cash bail; issue disproportionately affects poor, helps overcrowd rural jails

"Illinois this week became the first state in the country to eliminate cash bail, a system that critics say leaves poor people—most often minorities—in jail for months awaiting trial," Kate Queram reports for Route Fifty. "Under the new law, judges will not be able to set any kind of bail for most defendants. Instead, they’ll use a risk assessment system to determine whether a defendant is a good candidate for release. Detention is a last option to be used only when “it is determined that the defendant poses a specific, real and present threat” to another person, or 'has a high likelihood of willful flight.' Judges will still be able to detain defendants charged with felonies, including murder and domestic battery."

The issue disproportionately affects the poor, who often can't make bail and must pay bond companies (typically 10 percent of the bail) to get out of jail, CNN reports. Those who can't bond out are stuck in jail, contributing to the overcrowding that's especially pronounced in rural and county jails. The numbers of people awaiting trial far outnumber people serving sentences.

Growing support for elimination of cash bail could make prison expansion—a popular rural economic tactic—less profitable, according to bail reform proponents.

Prioritizing prisoners for virus vaccine sparks controversy

As states decide how to roll out vaccines for the novel coronavirus, giving priority to prisoners has proved controversial. 

"The very nature of jails and prisons—people living in close quarters with restricted movement and limited options for social distancing—has made them more susceptible to the coronavirus than much of the rest of society,"  David Montgomery reports for Stateline. "But even though long-awaited vaccines are finally at hand, prisoner advocates fear that public antipathy toward inmates and politicians’ reluctance to make them a priority will delay or restrict the drugs’ arrival behind bars."

Prisons are seeing unusually high infection rates. "Approximately 20 percent of all inmates in state and federal prisons have been infected, a rate more than four times as high as that in the general population, according to a recent analysis by the Associated Press and the Marshall Project," Montgomery reports. "Nationwide, at least 275,000 prisoners have been infected and more than 1,700 have died, according to the report."

Prisons and jails have been a major vector of community coronavirus transmission, especially in rural areas where prisons tend to be located. That's because it's not just incarcerated people getting infected; prison and jail workers also often carry the virus back home with them, Montgomery reports.

Quick hits: New books explore Dolly Parton's music; new podcast series examines the 1980s farm crisis

Here's a roundup of stories with rural resonance; if you do or see similar work that should be shared on The Rural Blog, email us at heather.chapman@uky.edu.

Decades of corporate-friendly farm policies wrecked rural America, writes a retired Wisconsin dairy farmer. Read more here.

Prisons and jails continue to be a major vector for coronavirus transmission. Read more here.

Two new books explore Dolly Parton's music. Read more here.

The agricultural downturn in recent years was seen as the most challenging stretch for the farm economy in decades. Agricultural Economic Insights has launched a new podcast series, "Escaping 1980," that examines the 1980s farm crisis that brought a wave of bankruptcies and reshaped the industry. Listen to the first episodes here.

Though rural areas disproportionately voted for President Trump, most of his voters came from cities and suburbs; rural areas only have about 20% of the nation's population). Read more here.

A new book chronicles a rural Alabama woman's battle to access basic sanitation services, revealing the scope of the problem for many rural residents and the factors that feed the crisis. Read more here.