Crime, Violence, and Criminal Justice in Rural America: Toward a Rural Neighborhood Effect

We review the current scholarship on rural policing, punishment, crime, and reentry. We shift the focus from the “square of crime” to an expansive understanding of crime and punishment in rural communities that uses neighborhood effects to study inequality across places. A central focus of the article is an investigation of the prison boom or the tripling of prison facilities in the United States. Ultimately, the prison boom is largely a rural phenomenon. As such, we examine how prison building is a product of carceral capacity tied to rurality and race. By focusing on the neighborhood effect, we can theorize what contributes to, and mitigates, crime and punishment across rural communities. In building toward a theory of a rural neighborhood effect, we investigate context through understanding the role of spatial and racial stratification in shaping inequality across rural places.