Confront the rural jail crisis by ensuring that plans to support and revitalize rural communities include strategies to reduce rural jail populations.

We need to reverse America’s rural jail crisis—this is the only way to shrink the overall footprint of the criminal justice system. Since 2013, the jail population has grown 27 percent in rural counties and 7 percent in smaller cities. As we work to support and revitalize rural America, it is critical to vastly reduce jail incarceration rates in these parts of the country. As a critical first step, we should eliminate the use of U.S. Department of Agriculture Community Facilities funds to support jail construction, expansion, equipment purchasing, staffing, and operations.

Explore our rural jails related resources below.

Publication

People in Jail in 2019

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Publication

Broken Ground

Why America Keeps Building More Jails and What It Can Do Instead

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Publication

Out of Sight

The Growth of Jails in Rural America

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Special Report

Federal Farm Aid for the Big House

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Since 2013, the jail population has grown

27%

in rural counties and

7%

in smaller cities.^[]Jacob Kang-Brown, Oliver Hinds, Eital Schattner-Elmaleh, and James Wallace-Lee. People in Jail in 2019. New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2019.
67%

of Americans agree, “building more jails and prisons to keep more people in jail does not reduce crime,” including

61%

of rural Americans.^[]Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research. The Evolving Landscape of Crime and Incarceration. Washington, D.C.: GQRR, 2018.
Pretrial incarceration rates in rural counties
↑ 436%
between 1970 and 2013.^[]Jacob Kang-Brown and Ram Subramanian. Out of Sight: The Growth of Jails in Rural America. New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2017, 7.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture has given more than
$360M
in grants and low-interest loans to jail construction projects since 1996.^[]Jack Norton and Jacob Kang-Brown. Federal Farm Aid for the Big House. New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2018.
Jail capacity in rural and suburban areas and midsized cities have seen an
11% ↑
from 2005 to 2013.^[]Chris Mai, Mikelina Belaineh, Ram Subramanian, and Jacob Kang-Brown. Broken Ground: Why America Keeps Building More Jails and What It Can Do Instead. New York: Vera Institute of Justice, 2019, 1.

From The Blog

Time for a New Federal Commitment on Rural Jail Incarceration

Decades of disinvestment from health, education, and other services have coincided with higher incarceration rates, resulting in additional public resources devoted to law enforcement and incarceration. This has created a vicious cycle, with the increased need to fund carceral systems seemingly self-evident. Then, when local jails fill their beds, ...

News

Micah Haskell-Hoehl

December 16, 2019

News

The Arrest-Jail Admission Gap

Jail admission rates surpass arrest rates in small and rural counties

News

Abdul Rad
Frankie Wunschel

January 10, 2020

News

COVID-19 Imperils People in Rural Jails

It appears to be just a matter of time until things get much worse, especially when one considers the lack of rural health care resources: 128 hospitals have closed in rural counties since 2010. People in jails and prisons are among the people most at risk for contracting COVID-19—and rural America is home to a large number of state and federal pri ...

News