Tennessee botches lethal injection of Christa Gail Pike

Christa Gail Pike, 50, was scheduled for death by lethal injection in Tennessee on Sept. 30 for murdering and carving a pentagram into her JobCorps classmate, Colleen Slemmer, in 1995 in Knoxville. But Pike’s execution failed, with the media hearing her loudly snoring behind the curtain for nearly 40 minutes after being dosed with pentobarbital.

Pike survived two doses. At 7:46 p.m. on Sept. 30, prison officials closed the curtains to the media. They were reopened three minutes later, to Pike snoring, and closed again at 8:06 p.m., reports Tony Gonzalez, Catherine Sweeney and Tasha A.F. Lemley for Louisville Public Media. "At that time there was an announcement to escort media witnesses out of the area."

The Tennessee Department of Corrections issued a statement saying every protocol was followed, and Gov. Bill Lee said a third party would investigate what happened. This isn't the first botched execution in Tennessee. The lethal injection of Tony Carruthers was called off in 1994 after Tennessee executioners failed for over an hour to place an IV to administer pentobarbital.

According to Billy Witz and Emily Cochrane for The New York Times, Pike’s lawyers "called for Gov. Bill Lee to reduce her sentence to life in prison, calling the botched attempt to end her life with two doses of pentobarbital "cruel and torturous." Pike likely survived because the drug was degraded or did not enter her bloodstream. Slemmer’s mother wants to move forward with the execution.

Local law enforcement ICE arrests in three Appalachian states hit record-high numbers this summer

Some rural places are benefiting financially from a large number of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrests because of revenue generated from incarcerating people in their local jails. In Kentucky, “four county jails earned $2 million or more by holding people for ICE during (President) Trump’s second term, as of April 2026,” Morgan Watkins reports for Louisville Public Media.

A review by the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting and the Appalachia + Mid-South Newsroom analyzed ICE open-records data requested by the Deportation Data Project at the University of California, Berkeley, and University of California, Los Angeles.

 
They found that ICE arrests by local law enforcement in Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia have increased since last year. They were up by 18% in Kentucky in June 2026, 30% in Tennessee in May, and 87% in West Virginia in January. These increases happened following “Operation Country Roads,” a federally assisted crackdown resulting in 650 arrests. 

Watkins reports that ICE conducts arrests in three different ways: taking custody of immigrants who are already in jail or prison for non-immigration reasons, through street arrests, and through 287(g) programs, which deputize local law enforcement officers as immigration agents. Tennessee’s state government incentivizes local officers if they sign up. More officers in Kentucky, Tennessee and West Virginia have signed up in the first nine months of 2026 than in all of 2025.

Immigrants aren't just taken into custody, Watkins writes, they are held in local jails as de facto detention centers. Watkins reports that in Kentucky "ICE earnings help offset the sizable costs of running their jail.”

Residents in Franklin County, Arkansas, rebel against Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders' prison plans for their community

The proposed Franklin County prison would sit on land south
of the Arkansas River, above. (Wikipedia photo)

Franklin County, Arkansas, might be small and red-leaning, but some of its residents are ready to duke it out with Republican Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders over a $825 million, 3,000-bed prison she has planned for 815 acres of rocky Franklin County land, reports Cameron McWhirter of The Wall Street Journal. The state quietly purchased the large track of property for the proposed prison to avoid a bidding war.

When news of the planned prison began to circulate, many Franklin County residents were shocked and angered. "Marc Dietz, 55, a businessman and rancher who operates a family-owned radio station in Ozark, said many locals felt blindsided," McWhirter writes. Dietz told him, "We’re a small county, not enough votes, and she thought she’d run roughshod."

Location of Franklin County in
Arkansas (Wikipedia map)

The resistance in Franklin County, where Sanders received 76% of the vote in her 2022 gubernatorial bid, dealt her a major setback in fulfilling her campaign promise to address the state's prison overcrowding problems. Sanders told the Journal, "Some people want this to be a fight over the money and different things. But what it really is is, do we care about the safety and security of our citizens, or do we not?”

The battle between Franklin County residents opposing the prison and state officials and lawmakers pushing to get it done "has seeped into Board of Corrections appointments, state budget discussions, a GOP primary — and some odder places," McWhirter explains. One resident has lined his farm fencing "with plastic skeletons and placards reading, 'This Prison is Going to Kill Arkansas.' Other residents joined RASH, or 'Republicans Against Sarah Huckabee.'"

Since Sanders announced the prison plan, "funding for it has stalled in the state Senate, blocked by a handful of Republican senators," McWhirter reports. "State Sen. Bart Hester said he and most GOP legislators back the Franklin County location, but a few holdouts. . . are blocking the move."

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."

Some residents in rural Mason, Tenn., don't want a migrant detention center in their town, but it's coming anyway

At times, the town meeting devolved into the mayor, left,
shouting at citizens. (YouTube, WREG, Memphis, Tenn.)

Despite raucous pushback from residents and activists during a recent town meeting in Mason, Tenn., the evening ended with the mayor and council members approving agreements to transition the town's closed prison into a migrant detention facility managed by a private company.

"The first vote of the meeting resulted in approval for a contract with CoreCivic to resume operating the facility, which was closed in 2021," Adrian Sainz of The Associated Press reports.  "The second vote was to approve an agreement with Immigration and Customs Enforcement."

Eddie Noeman, Mason's mayor, who emigrated from Egypt, saw reopening the facility as a way to boost the town's lagging economy. "Noeman said he wanted to bring jobs and economic development to the town," Sainz explains. "With a population of about 1,300, Mason is located about 40 miles northeast of Memphis. When it was open, the prison was the town’s largest employer."

Before the start of the contentious meeting, Mason board member Virginia Rivers said she was not in favor of the town being connected to an ICE facility. She told Sainz, "I don’t like what ICE stands for, how they treat the people.” 

Once the contracts were approved, CoreCivic released a statement touting all the benefits the center will contribute to the town, such as good-paying jobs and tax generation.

Overall, CoreCivic has a darker reputation in Tennessee. Sainz reports, "The company has spent more than $4.4 million to settle about 80 lawsuits and out-of-court complaints alleging mistreatment — including at least 22 inmate deaths — at four Tennessee prisons and two jails from 2016 through September 2024."

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.

Extreme heat in Louisiana prisons spikes suicide watch needs by about 30%, new study finds

Being in prison during a hot Louisiana summer is so miserable that prisoner suicide watch incidents increased significantly on extreme heat days, according to a new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association. “Researchers from Emory University analyzed data from 2015 to 2017 to examine how the heat index related to suicide watch incidents in six prisons. At the time, only one had air conditioning," reports Gina Jiménez for Inside Climate News. "The study adds to the body of research that has found a link between suicide and hot weather, but also to new research on prison mortality and climate."

Studies on prison population health are rare. "The walls and restrictions that keep these individuals out of public life also keep them out of the public eye: most of what we know about people in prison comes from the prison system itself," reports the Prison Policy Initiative, which is why this new study is important. Grady Dixon, a climatologist from Fort Hays University, told Jiménez: "It’s so novel, and I am very excited that it is being published in a medical journal. Any shortcomings the study can have are just minor compared to the widespread impact this paper can have just by publicizing this issue."

The study defined extreme heat using categories and the heat index. Jiménez explains, "The number of people put under suicide watch increased 36 percent when the heat index was above 90 degrees. . . . Scientists have consistently found that unusually hot weather is often associated with suicides and other adverse mental health outcomes."

"Although not every person put on suicide watch commits suicide, it’s a measure of the distress that happens during heat," said David Cloud, the study’s lead author. Cloud told Jiménez, “Prison is stressful enough, and then you add this layer of heat that people are powerless to escape."

Ky. congressman who wants a prison tries to do a Manchin: Use an appropriations bill to override the other branches

The reclained strip mine and proposed prison site (Photo from NoNewLetcherPrison via Kentucky Lantern)

Rep. Hal Rogers of Kentucky's 5th District, the longest-serving member of the House, a member of the Appropriations Committee and its former chair, has wanted the federal government to build a maximum-secutity prison in Letcher County since 2006. The county is divided about the idea, and the Bureau of Prisons has soured on it. So Rogers put language in the his latest approproations bill that would require the Justice Department to issue an environmental impact statement and final decision approving the prison within 30 days of the bill becoming law, and says the agencies' decisions “shall not be subject to judicial review.”

Rep. Hal Rogers, R-Ky.

Rogers is following a tactic employed by another longtime Appalachian politician, Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who bargained for and won a provision in the latest major funding bill to clear the administrative and judicial barriers to the Mountain Valley Pipeline in his state and Virginia. But Rogers' gambit faces many more obstacles.

Rogers' bill for spending by the Justice Department and other agencies "will need to clear several hurdles before it could become law," Jamie Lucke reports for the Kentucky Lantern. "The House’s spending bills are likely to change significantly later this year," when its bill and the Senate's must be reconciled. "The Senate Appropriations Committee voted 28-1 earlier this month to approve its version of the Commerce-Justice-Science spending bill, which does not include any provision mentioning the Letcher prison."

Rogers "touts the prison as a source of employment and economic development in a poor region that has lost thousands of coal-industry jobs. The 16-member Letcher County Planning Commission has long sought a prison," Lucke reports. "A coalition of opponents — local and national — question the potential economic benefits. They say a proliferation of prisons in Central Appalachia in recent decades has done little to improve the economy, while supporting mass incarceration and putting prisoners and their families at great distances from each other."

Letcher County (Wikipedia map)

Two citizens' groups said this week that more public input is needed. “People in Letcher County deserve to have a say in this because we vote, we pay taxes, we live here and we love this place,” said Dr. Artie Anne Bates, a member of Concerned Letcher Countians. “We don’t want Rep. Rogers stuffing something down our throats that we are not in agreement with.” Rogers' office has not replied to the Lantern's or The Rural Blog's requests for comment.

The Bureau of Prisons approved construction of the prison in 2018, but in 2020 "the Trump administration pulled the plug, saying the prison was no longer needed because of a decline in prisoner numbers and that the $505 million set aside for the project would be 'wasteful spending'," Lucke notes. Recently, the Bureau of Prisons changed its plan to a medium-security facility, but "President Joe Biden’s 2024 budget proposal also would cancel funding for the prison."

UPDATE, 3/3/24: Rogers announced that the Bureau of Prisons "is moving forward with the proposed development . . . according to the agency’s new Draft Environmental Impact Statement." The public comment period on the statement and plan runs through April 15. For details, click here.

Finally Friday quick hits: National Ice Cream Month; farm co-ops; Appalachian traditions; farmers' survey; be kind . . .

July is National Ice Cream Month. (Image via AEI)

I scream. You scream. We all scream for ice cream! Well, maybe we don't yell quite as loud now. "U.S. consumers don't eat ice cream like they used to, reports Sarah Hubbart for Agricultural Economic Insights. "Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, consumption of regular-fat ice cream exceeded 17 pounds per capita. Since the mid-1980s, however, per capita consumption has decreased, reaching a low of 12 pounds in 2018 and again in 2021. . . . Luckily for the dairy industry, the per capita decline in consumption isn’t the only demographic trend in play."

A "life of crime" is usually negative, but not in all cases. "To address massive staffing shortages across its prisons, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice is building relationships with high school programs that train students for careers in corrections and law enforcement," reports Anya Slepyan of The Daily Yonder. "The agency is exploring the option of establishing a pipeline for high school students to become employees."

ICA logo

Cooperatives give farmers the power of collaboration. "If you've ever sipped Florida's Natural orange juice, buttered a dinner roll with Land O'Lakes, or spread Welch's grape jelly on a peanut butter sandwich, then you've done business with a farm co-op," reports Tim Burrack for The Scoop. "Co-ops are often invisible to consumers, even as they keep grocery prices in check by letting farmers like me stay economically sustainable. Here in rural Iowa, I work with a co-op that helps me buy crop inputs and bring to market what I grow."

Heat, wildfires, hurricanes, floods or other disasters can stress health systems to the breaking point. This tool kit aims to offer help. Tip sheets and response best practices are organized for health care providers, patients and administrators.

In Athens County, Ohio, traditions are celebrated and some are offered with "hands-on" lessons. "A new project seeks to showcase Athens County folkways in their past and present incarnations,"reports Keri Johnson of The Athens County Independent. "Athens County Living Traditions is a five-part event series that celebrates the folkways — art, music, craftsmanship and more — of the people of Athens County. . . . Living Traditions is funded through the Mid Atlantic Arts Foundation — specifically through its Central Appalachia Living Traditions program."

Shutterstock photo

If you would like to promote a better world, consider kindness as one of the simplest routes. It begins with a loop. "Begin each day with the resolution that you will treat others in a kindly. . . . Follow this up with a tangible act of kindness as soon as you can," writes Arthur C. Brooks of The Atlantic. While it's true, no matter how kind we are "legitimate disagreements will still divide us. . . . But the disagreements wouldn’t so commonly become insults and threats, and trolls would have less power."

The Mid-West Farm Report is calling all farmers for a "Match Made in Heaven, Livestock + Crops" survey: "The three-year venture aims to bring livestock back into cropping operations. The goal is to boost soil health and the farm's bottom line. Co-director of the project, Laura Paine, says that they're in their second leg of the project. They're surveying farmers about the opportunities and challenges in integrating livestock into crops. Take the survey here.

North Country Public Radio wins 3 Sigma Delta Chi awards; coverage of wildfires, prisons, Uvalde shooting also win

A disabled mother and daughter in northern New York lived
in this tent and in their car. (North Country Public Radio)

Several of the Sigma Delta Chi Awards for excellence in journalism, announced Saturday night by the Society of Professional Journalists, had rural resonance.

The rural media standout was North Country Public Radio, based in Canton, the seat of St. Lawrence County, New York. Its report on affordable housing, or the lack of it, won the award for public service in radio, and its report on uninspected housing for dairy workers won the award for small-market radio feature reporting. NCPR also won the contest's new award for regional political reporting with its profile of U.S. Rep. Elise Stefanik, chair of the House Republican Conference, whose district coves most of NCPR's coverage area, where it has 33 transmitters.

A prison in rural Illinois was the topic of "How the newest federal prison became one of the deadliest," a two-part story by NPR and The Marshall Project, which advocates criminal-justice reform. The package won the award for radio investigative reporting. The Intercept's five-part report on the effect of global warming and climate change on prisons and inmates won the award for science, environment or climate reporting.

Coverage of two major wildfires won awards. CBS's "60 Minutes" won the award for television investgative reporting for “What Happened at Grizzly Flats,” a California town destroyed by a mismanaged forest ifre; and KUSA-TV of Denver won the award for TV documentaries in large markets for “The story behind the Marshall Fire” near Boulder. 

Also in broadcasting, Virginia Public Media won the award for small-market television feature reporting for its story on black descendants of Thomas Jefferson; Scripps News and the Center for Investigative Reporting won the award for narrative podcast or radio documentary for their six-part "Inside the global fight for white power;" and NPR won the radio feature reporting award for interviews with the mother of one of the victims of the 2012 Sandy Hook, Conn., school shooting.

Journalism about the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, last spring, received two SDX awards. KPRC-TV in Houston won for deadline reporting, and the San Antonio Express-News won the large-market editorial award for its "Standing with Uvalde" series. David Plazas of The Tennessean won the smaller-market award for a collection of editorials. Jake May of the Flint Journal was a double winner for feature photo and small-circulation breaking-news photo.

Other awards of general interest included:

Fact checking: Glenn Kessler of The Washington Post for "The truth about Hunter Biden."

Washington correspondence: Nick Grube of Honolulu Civil Beat, for coverage of Hawaii's congressional delegation.

Editorial cartooning: Michael Ramirez, Las Vegas Review-Journal (small markets), and Gary Markstein, Creators Syndicate.

Magazine writing: Lizzie Presser of ProPublica and The New York Times Magazine for "I was never ready for this," a profile of a teenager from Copperas Cove, Texas, who became the mother of twins after a judge refused to let her get an abortion.

General column writing: Melinda Henneberger of The Sacramento Bee, for five columns.

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."

'Exodus' of prison employees puts more stress and strain on those who stay on the job; group calls inmate strike in Ala.

A guard tower in Beeville, Tex. (Photo by Eric Gay, Associated Press)

Across the country, prison systems are strained by an "exodus of corrections officers," making life inside the walls harder for both inmates and employees, reports Stateline, a publication of The Pew Charitable Trusts. States are raising salaries and increasing recruiting efforts to attract more potential employees to prisons — which are disproportionately located in rural areas.

"In February, 8,043 of the 24,020 jobs inside the Texas correctional system were vacant, an all-time high. A recent pay raise has helped lower that number to just under 7,000," Stateline reports. Kansas and Florida both had nearly a quarter of their prison jobs vacant. Multiple states were raising wages for a dangerous job with a typical salary range from $42,909 to $53,482, depending on experience and location.

The staff shortages are worsening conditions for prisoners, as wait times for medical appointments, meals, showers and the delivery of ice and water to non-air-conditioned cells are delayed by a lack of staff, Stateline reports.

A tough job is also made even tougher by a lack of staff, but some longtime corrections officers told Stateline that the salary enables them to raise and house a family. On the other hand, Andy Potter, the founder of One Voice United — which advocates for corrections officers — told Stateline that the pay and benefits of the position don't match the high stress and danger of the job.

"The Alabama Department of Corrections said it has received reports of inmate work stoppages at all the major prisons in the state after a prison-reform organization called for a strike," AL.com reports. "The organization Both Sides of the Wall called for the strike beginning this morning as a protest of conditions in the state’s overcrowded, understaffed prisons, which the Department of Justice says hold men in conditions that violate the Constitution."

Quick hits: An ode to 'leather britches'; webinar on covering methane Sept. 7; communities repurpose shuttered prisons

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.

A beloved community theater company in a Colorado mountain town has found a way to survive the pandemic and thrive. Read more here.

Twenty-one states have partly or fully closed prisons and other correctional facilities since 2000; local leaders have found creative ways to repurpose the buildings as apartments, office space, whiskey distilleries, and even movie studios. The moves have served to strengthen the communities and their economies. Read more here.

The presence of Asian longhorned ticks has been confirmed in 17 states across the U.S. That's of particular concern to cattle producers since the ticks carry a highly transmissible disease called Ikeda that is sometimes fatal to cattle. Read more here.

The Rural Health Information Hub has a newly updated resource guide on rural home health services. Read more here.

The Society of Environmental Journalists will host a free Sept. 7 webinar to discuss the latest science, data, and policy initiatives around methane, tips on covering methane, and ways to track methane in your local region or around the world. Read more here.

The Daily Yonder offers up a contemplation of the love-em-or-hate-em Appalachian dish called shuck beans or leather britches. Read more here.

Three weeks after the Federal Communications Commission spiked rural broadband funding for Starlink and LTD Broadband, the agency has authorized an extra $800 million from the Rural Digital Opportunity Fund for six providers to build out broadband in over 350,000 locations in 19 states. Read more here.

Rural residents are disproportionately jailed, especially women, poor, and people of color; webinar Friday, Jan. 7

Rural residents are far more likely to be incarcerated than their suburban and urban peers, according to a new report from prison-reform organization Vera Institute for Justice, with incarceration statistics updated through spring 2021. The report is the latest update of the Incarceration Trends Project, launched in 2015 as an interactive tool with more than four decades of jail and prison incarceration data. (You can search for state-level trends here and county-level trends here). A webinar at 11 a.m. ET Friday, Jan. 7, will discuss the findings — learn more or register here — but here are some highlights:

• Jail admissions in major cities have declined over the past few decades, but have risen "dramatically" in rural communities and smaller cities; as of spring 2021, about half of all Americans in local jails were in rural areas or smaller cities. Local, state and federal policies have all contributed to this trend.
• More specifically: as of spring 2021, out of every 100,000 residents ages 15 to 64 in rural counties, 297 were in jail. That number was 231 for small and midsize metro residents, 156 for urban counties, 150 for suburban counties, and 196 for the U.S. population overall.
• More than 10 times the level of women incarcerated in the 1970s are incarcerated today, and they're disproportionately rural.
• People of color and poor people of all ethnicities are disproportionately incarcerated in the U.S., especially in rural areas.
• About two-thirds of people in county jails have not been convicted of a crime.

Referendum roundup: New York state rejects looser voting rules; Maine adopts vague 'right to food' amendment

Off-year elections are usually pretty quiet, but voters are often asked to decide questions large and small. This week there were 24 statewide refernda in six states. Here are a few with rural resonance:

In Maine, by share of population the most rural state, two-thirds of voters approved a first-in-the-nation constitutional amendment establishing a "right to food," even though there's considerable confusion over what it means. "Described as an outgrowth of the food sovereignty movement, the amendment says Mainers have a right to grow and consume food of their choosing," Chuck Abbott reports for the Food and Environment Reporting Network. That extends to popular issues such as raw milk and the right to save and exchange seeds as long as it doesn't violate laws or exploit natural resources.

"Supporters used the campaign to make the case the amendment would ensure the right to grow vegetables and raise livestock in an era when corporatization threatens local ownership of the food supply," Patrick Whittle reports for The Associated Press. "They positioned the amendment as a chance for Mainers to wrestle control of the food supply back from large landowners and giant retailers with little connection to the community."

Abbott reports, "Opponents said the amendment was so broadly written that it could override animal cruelty laws or open the gate to domestic livestock in urban backyards. The Bangor Daily News said the ambiguous wording would put judges in charge of interpreting what the amendment means at the practical level." The paper also noted that the amendment doesn't expressly mention hunger.

In Colorado, 54 percent of voters rejected a measure that would have raised $150 million to partially fund private, out-of-school learning for children by raising the marijuana tax five percentage points to 20%, Jenny Brundin and Bente Birkeland report for Colorado Public Radio.

Proposition 119 aimed to help children falling behind because of the pandemic by providing tutoring, enrichment opportunities in the arts, career and technical training, physical therapy, mental health services, support for students with special needs, and mentoring. However, "opponents of the measure said it would have taken dollars away from public education and would have instead funded private companies to provide services," Brundin and Birkeland report.

In Texas, voters approved two constitutional amendments by broad margins. "Proposition 3, which was approved 63% to 37%, bars governments from taking any action that "prohibits or limits religious services," Asher Price reports for Axios Austin. "The proposition is part of a much broader national Covid-19 debate that pits public health officials bent on stymieing the disease's spread against pastors who say they were protecting their practice of religion."

And Proposition 6, approved by nearly 88% of Texas voters, "gives residents of nursing homes and long-term care facilities the right to designate an 'essential caregiver' who could not, under most circumstances, be barred from in-person visits," Price reports. "The proposition comes after stories of elderly people enduring months of isolation as part of the fight against Covid-19." It's unclear whether nursing homes could bar essential caregivers who are unvaccinated or unmasked. Since nursing home workers must be vaccinated, it stands to reason that visitors would be more likely to infect residents. That could be particularly deadly, since nursing home residents are far more likely to die from Covid-19 than others.

Voters in New York rejected three amendments that would have broadened voting access by allowing same-day registration without proof of residency, let voters get absentee ballots without needing an excuse, and requiring that incarcerated New Yorkers be counted as living at their last place of residence in redistricting, Dana Rubinstein reports for The New York Times. Broadened voting access measures tend to benefit urban—and therefore more liberal—voters. And rural areas generally gain more political clout when prisoners are counted as local residents in redistricting.

Analysts say the measures were defeated because the language on the ballot was hard to understand, and because the Democratic party made little effort to boost the propositions, while the state Republican party used the ballot issues as lightning rods to turn out their base in an otherwise quiet election cycle, Rubinstein reports.

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: Meatpackers rely more on special-visa workers; pastor's book calls for different thinking about rural churches

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.

A pastor's new book challenges readers to change the way they think about rural churches: "Look at the assets of rural churches and encourage congregations to build on them on their own terms, not on the terms imposed by others." Read more here.

Prison populations have long been used to artificially bump up rural population counts (which increases their political power and sometimes brings in more state and federal spending). Before the 2020 census, only two states (Maryland and New York) outlawed the practice. But now seven other states have joined them. That could have big implications as state legislatures begin redrawing political maps. Read more here.

A new fall foliage prediction map will help you plan your leaf-peeping. Read more here.

"It's been a slow death": Guests on CBS's "60 Minutes" describe cutting ties with parents and siblings over QAnon conspiracy theories. Read more here.

Meatpacking plants have long relied on immigrant labor. Now, some are turning to foreign workers with visas. Read more here.

From his porch in rural Missouri, a Congressional aide is helping interpreters escape Afghanistan. Read more here.

The Agriculture Department is giving up to $200 million in pandemic assistance to timber harvesters and haulers. Read more here.

Roundup: Study shows masks work; county map shows senior vax rate; Covid worse for unvaxed pregnant women

Screenshot of New York Times map shows full-vaccination rates by county; click image to enlarge.

Here's a roundup of recent news about the pandemic and immunization efforts:

Many senior citizens still aren't vaccinated, making the Delta variant surge deadlier. Though access is a problem for some seniors, many in rural areas are more likely to refuse the shots. The story has a county-level map showing the percentage of unvaccinated seniors in your county. Read more here.

A massive, randomized study confirmed that widespread use of surgical masks in a community limits the spread of the coronavirus. The study, which tracked more than 340,000 adults in rural Bangladesh, is by far the largest randomized study on the subject. Read more here.

Increasing vaccine mandates have spurred a cottage industry in fake vaccination cards. But selling or buying fake cards is a federal crime, this article warns, and some have already been charged. But local judges have a lot of latitude. Read more here.

Correctional officers are spreading the virus in prisons, especially those located near communities with high infection rates. Read more here.

Medical experts stress the importance of vaccination for pregnant women. Unvaccinated pregnant women who are infected with the coronavirus are 15 times more likely to die from Covid-19, 14 times more likely to get intubated, and 22 times more likely to have a preterm birth than vaccinated individuals. Read more here.

More than 220 children's hospitals nationwide are begging the Biden administration for help, saying that a surge of young Covid-19 patients has them at or near capacity, and they expect to see even more patients. Read more here.

The Pfizer coronavirus vaccine is associated with an increased risk of myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart. But the side effect is rare and usually mild, and people are more likely to suffer from it if they get infected with the coronavirus, a new study found. Read more here.

Oklahoma nurses and doctors beg people to get vaccinated to help ease hospital overcrowding. "I have zipped up too many body bags," said one. Read more here.

A regenerative tissue engineer and a biomedical engineer give a short TED Talk explaining how the mRNA coronavirus vaccines were created so quickly. Watch the video here.

In a recent column, agricultural economists Harwood D. Schaffer and Daryll E. Ray give their perspective on rural vaccine resistance. The decision whether to vaccinate is not strictly a personal one, they write, since unvaccinated people are more likely to spread it to others. As Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. said, they write, "The right to swing my arms in any direction ends where your nose begins." Read more here.

Prisoners working in meatpacking plants may have spread the coronavirus between those two risky settings

Many meatpackers hire prisoners in work-release programs. Prisons and slaughterhouses have been two of the highest-risk settings during the pandemic, and such workers may have spread the coronavirus from one facility to another, reports the Midwest Center for Investigative Reporting.

"Nearly 400,000 prisoners in the U.S. have contracted coronavirus and about 2,700 have died, according to the Marshall Project. Investigate Midwest tracking has found that at least 50,000 meatpacking workers have gotten sick since March and 259 have died," Madison McVan reports. "It is unclear how widespread the connection between Covid-19 cases in jails and meatpacking plants might have been. Some work release programs were suspended early in the pandemic . . . but isolated incidents were reported across the country."

It's often difficult to prove a cause, but a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention study from April "determined incarcerated workers at two Idaho food processing plants — CTI Foods and CS Beef — contracted Covid-19 at work and carried the virus to the correctional facilities where they lived," McVan reports. The Idaho Department of Corrections barred prisoners from working at CTI until after the pandemic because the plant didn't follow the department's required safety standards. 

"The CDC study described how collaboration among Idaho departments resulted in more testing availability, reassignment to safer worksites and a shared pool of information," McVan reports. 

Bruce Wells-Moore, deputy chief of Idaho's probation and parole division, told McVan, "We had to go and say, 'We want to continue to work with you. But if you can’t impose and implement these protective measures — masks, social distancing — we aren’t going to be able to send our folks to do your work. I know that we’re small, and we’re rural in many ways . . . but if this can help establish a pattern or a process for other states to follow, I think that’s brilliant and I want to be part of that."