rural jails vera report

The nation’s highest jail incarceration rates are in America’s rural counties, according to a report by the Vera Institute of Justice, supported by MacArthur's Safety and Justice Challenge. The report finds that rural counties have the nation’s highest rates of pretrial incarceration, are increasingly renting out jail beds to hold people for other government agencies, and have fewer resources than their urban counterparts—all of which are contributing to these counties’ outsized use of incarceration. The report asserts that what has been successful in driving down jail use in cities may not necessarily apply to rural places, and calls for development of policies that are uniquely tailored to rural jails.