Ways of Thinking
My research interests link context, punishment, and concentrated disadvantage to community processes. My program of research challenges existing and develops new theoretical and conceptual models of context, punishment, and rural/urban processes in several ways. First, by tracing the emergence of the rural ghetto I establish a new conceptual model of rural communities. Next, I show the function of the ghetto in rural communities establishing a model of how disadvantage functions across rural and urban space. This model also reframes theories for understanding racial formation, system of punishment, and community processes by rethinking the function of traditional urban community structures like concentrated disadvantage/ghettos.
These research interests takes shape in two core projects. First, my dissertation research centered on how rural community context affects prison placement and how prison placement in turn impacts rural communities. I build on this by fleshing out the case study of a prison siting in a southern town in my book project Rise of the Rural Ghetto: Race, Disadvantage, and the Politics of Prison Proliferation. Second, I expand the discussion on the consequences of the prison boom by including national and longitudinal data of the 1700 plus U.S. prisons and the rural community context that spurred proliferation from 1970-2000 in the Prison Proliferation and Rural Disadvantage project.
Ways of Measuring
I use a multi-level, multi-method approach in this empirical investigation. Because prison placements are sparse I use a rare event logistic regression (Relogit) to measure the factors driving placement and subsequent impact on rural communities. I also use data from an ethnographic case study of a southern prison town including interviews, photos, and archival materials. Lastly, I use GIS mapping to demonstrate residential segregation, rural concentrated and economic disadvantage, and patterns of national prison placement and impact over time.
Building the Program
The most significant strategy to further my programmatic area of research is the Rise of the Rural Ghetto (see bookproject). This project paves the way for using models from urban neighborhood effects literature to understand rural disadvantage. I am using a two-stage process in producing the book manuscript. The first step involves producing peer-reviewed articles focusing on methodological and substantive contributions from my programmatic area of research. These pieces will inform the book project while adhering to the goals of the programmatic area of research. Although I plan to complete several papers to inform the book manuscript all pieces may not be included in the final book project.
I expect several papers from the Prison Proliferation and Rural Disadvantage data described below. This project further develops my interests in the relationship between the prison boom and disadvantaged communities. I have been awarded the American Sociological Associations Funds for the Advancement of the Discipline grant for the Prison Proliferation and Rural Disadvantage project. This project combines a unique blend of rural crime, prisoner reentry, housing, economic, political, and demographic data at the state, county, and U.S. Census place and block level from1970-2000 including all 1700 plus prisons facilities. Because community scholars have largely ignored rural areas and rural scholars use the county as the unit of analysis, prison building and rural (ghettos) racial and economic disadvantage can be simultaneously or independently examined. By incorporating national and longitudinal aspects to this next phase of my research agenda, I will first produce several papers testing the theory of the rural ghetto developed from the case study in my book project and tease out the generalizable effects of local political, economic, demographic, crime, and housing effects on prison building. Moreover, I will also look at the impact of prisons on disadvantaged rural communities over time.
Many studies portray the prison as a detriment to rural economies. I reframe this question by asking if the prison slow economic decline and investigate the political, social, and economic impact of a prison. Preliminary analysis show that prison do slow economic decline in the most disadvantaged rural communities. Additionally, I examine the demography or prison impact by testing if prisons distort residential segregation indexes. Initial analyses show that prisons inflate Black and Hispanic populations but region mediates White-Black and White-Hispanic segregation in rural communities. Moreover, I broaden the predictors of prison placement by investigating a host of variables over time including state political affiliation, rural crime (especially murder), and public housing construction. Exploratory analyses reveal that an increase in public housing and high murder rates increase the probability of prison siting.