Today, @RepDavidTrone and @RepArmstrongND introduced The Community First Pretrial Reform and Jail Decarceration Act, a bill to reverse decades of federal policymaking that made rural America a driver of #massincarceration. https://www.vera.org/newsroom/bipartisan-legislation-introduced-to-support-local-efforts-to-reduce-and-address-racial-inequities-in-incarceration-rates-in-americas-smallest-communities">https://www.vera.org/newsroom/...

For decades, the federal government has fueled a quiet jail boom in rural counties & smaller cities—renting jail beds in local jails and incentivizing economically disadvantaged communities to rely on jails for revenue. https://www.vera.org/in-our-backyards-stories/if-you-build-it">https://www.vera.org/in-our-ba...

As rural counties build bigger jails, they usually lock up more and more poor people from their communities. Most people in jail are awaiting trial and simply can& #39;t afford to pay bail; they are disproportionately Black, brown, and poor. https://www.vera.org/publications/for-the-record-justice-denied-pretrial-detention">https://www.vera.org/publicati...

Some of the biggest #COVID19 clusters in the US are in jails & prisons. As rural America quietly grapples w/ the nation’s highest incarceration rates, thousands of lives—esp. Black and brown lives—are at risk.

See how county jails are responding #COVID19: https://www.vera.org/projects/covid-19-criminal-justice-responses/covid-19-data">https://www.vera.org/projects/...

In any given week in the US, roughly 200K people are booked into crowded jails & roughly the same amount are released every week. These conditions put incarcerated people at risk of #COVID19 exposure & make jails major vectors of the virus. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/31/upshot/coronavirus-jails-prisons.html">https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/3...

We applaud this bill from @RepDavidTrone & @RepArmstrongND.

As #COVID19 continues to endanger lives in jails & prisons, time is of the essence. We need the federal government to help shrink the footprint of jails and reinvest in communities. https://www.vera.org/blog/target-2020/time-for-a-new-federal-commitment-on-rural-jail-incarceration">https://www.vera.org/blog/targ...