Rural incarcerations are on the rise in Washington state
Incarceration rates in Washington state’s urban and suburban areas are on a downtrend, but in rural areas, police are booking more people into jail, often for minor offenses.
As a professor of sociology at Washington State University, Jennifer Schwartz started to notice a pattern in her research. While urban area incarcerations in Washington are going down, the number of people imprisoned in rural areas is going up.
“It wasn't the serious transgressions, or the serious criminals that are a danger to the community that kept coming back in," Schwartz said. "It was these sort of minor transgressions that kept the revolving door spinning.”
RELATED: Suicide and staffing issues at King County Jail, ‘a radioactive subject’
Those minor offenses include things like driving with a suspended license or not showing up in court. Schwartz and her colleague Jennifer Sherman received a three-year grant to continue researching rural incarceration. They hope to find potential solutions for policymakers.
Sherman notes that having fewer services in rural areas can contribute to people ending up in jail, such as lack of access to health care.
“Mental health is a huge concern," Sherman said. "And for a lot of people, if that could have been stabilized, if they could have gotten services a lot earlier in their lives, they may never have ended up in the situations that they ended up in and that caused them to end up in jail.”
RELATED: Powwows return to Washington's prisons
Connecting recently released people with social services, assisting people with finding housing, and helping people access medication might help curb these arrests, Sherman said. She also said greater access to health care for rural areas overall would benefit the community as a whole.
