Small Town America is fueling mass incarceration.
'Scranton, Pennsylvania’s jail incarceration rate has grown by nearly 1,500%. It’s not alone – we’re seeing a nationwide trend. While incarceration rates in metro areas like New York City have fallen, small county rates continue to grow.
Pennsylvania’s Lackawanna Valley has been a key site of struggle for national electoral politics for many years. Joe Biden was born in Scranton, a fact made famous in the 2012 Vice Presidential debate. Hillary Clinton’s father, Hugh Rodham, was born and raised in Scranton, a biographical detail that was emphasized by the Clinton campaign both in the 2008 primary and in the 2016 general election. Donald Trump campaigned intensively in Scranton, and it was one of the last places he visited before Election Day. The valley, and its history, helps to illustrate the sort of majority-white, deindustrialized, blue-collar counties that are often overlooked when considering not only politics at large but criminal justice reform in particular.
Once a booming center of iron and steel production, the city of Scranton, Pennsylvania has tried to reinvent itself as a tourist destination, and has struggled to keep from falling into municipal bankruptcy in the face of de-industrialization. With its brick downtown buildings set against the long, low ridges of the Pocono Mountains, Scranton—“the Electric City”—is the main population center of Lackawanna County, a former coal county, and sits in the northeastern corner of the state. Like most other small, blue-collar cities in the Rust Belt, Scranton has experienced continued economic ups and downs—and skyrocketing incarceration rates.
In fact, Lackawanna County has one of the highest jail incarceration rates in Pennsylvania, higher than any county in the state besides Philadelphia, and higher than any county in New York, New Jersey, or anywhere in New England.'>>>
https://www.vera.org/the-human-toll-of-jail/why-are-there-so-many-people-in-jail-in-scranton-pa
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