ISSRC Blog
This blog provides an opportunity for pithy observations or reflections on topical rural crime news and developments, a summary of research, promotion of publications, advertisements for upcoming events… and more! If you would like to contribute, email a submission of no more than 500 words to admin@issrc.net
The gendered impacts of boomtowns
A new article exploring the gendered impacts of boomtowns has been published in Volume 7, Issue 3 of the International Journal of Rural Criminology.
Here is a synposis of the article, prepared by the lead author – Madison Charman of the University of Ontario Institute of Technology.
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The conversation around the impacts of the oil and gas industry on communities often drifts to economic or environmental themes. Although valid areas of discussion, the social impacts on community cohesion are often forgotten.
In this article, we discuss how the oil and gas industry can dramatically impact social order and disorder within communities, and how these impacts disproportionally impact women and women of colour.
This research was inspired by Viceland’s ‘RISE’ documentary, which explored the Standing Rock Indian Reservation’s experience and resistance to the Dakota Access Pipeline. Within this documentary, women and young girls discussed feeling unsafe and unprotected with an influx of workers, as well as increases in substance use and partying behaviour within the area surrounding their community.
After listening to this, I asked myself: why is no one talking about this? I began to dig deeper into the existing literature as well as additional documentaries and literature from community advocacy groups and noticed gaps in the understanding of the female experience in boomtowns, specifically in the Canadian context.
Through interviews with social service providers in boomtown communities across Canada and the US, this research outlines the gendered impacts of Boomtowns. It explores the challenges that women face in such hegemonically masculine environments, such as challenges regarding their financial independence, employment, safety and well-being, and family life and relationships.
Communities experiencing booms should anticipate increases in various challenges and the victimization of women and should put proactive safeguards in place, such as investments in emergency services, and financial and social programming for women.
Madison Charman
Image from pexels.com – https://www.pexels.com/photo/industrial-machine-during-golden-hour-162568/
Intravenous drug use within the rural prison population
This is the fifth post in a series of short topic snapshots, prepared by Joseph Loades, a research student with the Centre for Rural Criminology at the University of New England.
Drug and alcohol use and misuse is an issue within rural areas which is related to the rising rate of drug crime, violence, and property crimes seen in rural and remote areas. Many prisoners from rural and remote areas enter the prison system with an issue of drug-use through the means of intravenous injection.
Despite drugs and drug paraphernalia being illegal within prisons, there continues to be an issue concerning prisoners injecting drugs whilst incarcerated, and contracting blood borne diseases throughout their period of confinement.
Donnermayer et al. (2002) explain the complex link between social and economic adversities, and the use of drug and alcohol within many rural and remote communities in Australia. The results of Donnermayer et al. study showed a clear relationship between peer association, drug use, and drug related crimes, which in many cases resulted in the incarceration of drug users. Unfortunately, when these offenders reach the prison system, in many cases, their drug abuse escalates.
When people incarcerated for drug related crimes enter the prison system, they have the capability of continuing their drug habits. Cunningham et al. (2018) explain that although the number of drug users decline once they are incarcerated, many are initiated into intravenous drug use, and many continue their habits.
Most concerning, of those that inject drugs within prison, the rate of needle sharing increases from what is seen within rural communities, particularly amongst the younger generation of prisoners, who are at risk of contracting HIV and Hepatitis C Virus (HCV), which affects a great deal of the prison population within Australia (almost half people who inject within prison being HCV antibody positive). Despite this alarming statistic, needle syringe programs (NSP) and opioid substitution therapies (OST) are not available within prisons.
Australia is moving toward the World Health Organization (WHO) goal of eliminating the prevalence of HCV within prisons by 2030, with the implementation of DAA, current OST trials, and discussions on the introduction of NSP (Bretana et al., 2020).
In March, 2016, the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme listed direct-acting antiviral (DAA) therapies for HCV infection, allowing those infected, including prisoners, with HCV to access DAA treatment regardless of how they acquired their illness (Papaluca et al., 2019).
Bretana et al. (2020) explain that DAA treatment has showed remarkable results, although the trials only accounted for 20% of all prisoners with HCV. To efficiently reduce HCV, DAA trials would need to be increased significantly.
The trial of OST’s has not shown improvements in the rate of HCV. Reasons for this include insufficient dosing, and the delay in treatment when prisoners are first incarcerated. Although NSP’s have shown modest results on the international stage, Australia has been reluctant to trial this method.
It is apparent that, to meet the WHO goal of successfully reducing HCV by 2030, to improve the health of rural prisoners whilst incarcerated, and to improve the wellbeing of this cohort, the continued and increased use of DAA, the continued and improved trials of OST’s, and the introduction of NSP’s, are needed within Australian correctional facilities within the future.
(Images sourced through pixels.com)
References
Bretaña, N. A., Gray, R. R., Cunningham, E. B., Betz‐Stablein, B., Ribeiro, R., Graw, F., Luciani, F. & Lloyd, A. R. (2020). Combined treatment and prevention strategies for hepatitis C virus elimination in the prisons in New South Wales: a modelling study. Addiction, 115(5), 901-913. https://stopc.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Bretana-et-al_2020.pdf
Cunningham, E. B., Hajarizadeh, B., Amin, J., Bretana, N., Dore, G. J., Degenhardt, L., Larney, s., Luciani, F., Lloyd, A. R., Grebely, J. & HITS-p Investigators. (2018). Longitudinal injecting risk behaviours among people with a history of injecting drug use in an Australian prison setting: the HITS-p study. International Journal of Drug Policy, 54, 18-25. https://stopc.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Cunningham-2018_Longitudianal.pdf
Donnermeyer, J. F., Barclay, E. M. & Jobes, P. C. (2002). Drug-related offenses and the structure of communities in rural Australia. Substance use & misuse, 37(5-7), 631-661. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1081/JA-120004277
Papaluca, T., Hellard, M. E., Thompson, A. J. & Lloyd, A. R. (2019). Scale‐up of hepatitis C treatment in prisons is key to national elimination. Medical Journal of Australia, 210(9), 391-393. https://www.mja.com.au/system/files/issues/210_09/mja250140.pdf
Digital components of rural prisoner re-entry
This is the fourth post in a series of short topic snapshots, prepared by Joseph Loades, a research student with the Centre for Rural Criminology at the University of New England.
Individual intervention and social support are a crucial components of prisoner reentry. Prisoners within urban areas face many of the same issues that are faced within rural areas. However, the support services and agencies that are common in urban areas are generally not as plentiful in rural and remote settings. Therefore, case management for reentry into country areas should be tailored on individual needs, not support agencies.
White and Graham (2014) state that:
Reentry is a crucial point of intervention and support on the part of practitioners and agencies, but it is an even more fundamental transition for the offender and the communities they return to … Rehabilitation needs to focus on the whole person … In other words, the centre of attention should not be on this or that program or service, but on the individual who requires our assistance. (pp. 270-271)
Many prisoners returning to rural and remote settings have drug and alcohol disorders and addiction. In urban areas there are a variety of programs and interventions to guide prisoners through the reentry phase. However, rural areas have certain barriers that include a lack of drug and alcohol services and treatment facilities, staff with less experience and qualifications, spatial inequalities, poor infrastructure, and a lack of transport.
These social and economic boundaries can prevent ex-prisoners from addressing addiction and drug abuse, however, digital technology and telehealth services can now be used to alleviate this problem (Thomas et al., 2020).
Due to the geographical distances ex-prisoners need to travel to attend services, find employment, and create social bonds – which may help in their recovery process – the skills needed to use digital technology are necessary.
Digital technology serves more than one purpose concerning successful prisoner reentry. In a world that is increasingly digital, prisoners can be left behind with regard to finding work, finding accommodation, and a social network of friends (Zivanai, and Mahlangu, 2020). These examples are particularly true in the rural sense, due to spatial inequalities.
However, many prisoners have been left behind in this digital age, lacking the skills and the means to access digital software, and put them to use. It has been found that prisoners re-entering society generally rely on younger family members when using the internet, due to a ‘Rip-Van-Winkle like experience’ after a period of incarceration, and the lack of digital technology within prisons (Ogbonnaya-Ogburu et al., 2019).
Furthermore, most prisons do not run the programs that prepare inmates for their release into an increasingly digital world.
Ogbonnaya-Ogburu et al. (2019) study concluded that there is a desire by inmates to acquire the skills to use digital technology, and a need for research into the role that digital literacy plays within the process of successful reintegration.
Lack of technological skills are a major challenge of employability and social networking upon reintegration, and the lack of efforts to design and pilot prison-run programs that give prisoners the skills needed to use digital technology can affect successful reintegration into the rural setting.
(Images sourced from pixels.com)
References
Ogbonnaya-Ogburu, I. F., Toyama, K. & Dillahunt, T. R. (2019, May). Towards an effective digital literacy intervention to assist returning citizens with job search. In Proceedings of the 2019 CHI conference on Human factors in computing systems (pp. 1-12). https://par.nsf.gov/servlets/purl/10283436
Thomas, N., Van de Ven, K. & Mulrooney, K. J. (2020). The impact of rurality on opioid-related harms: A systematic review of qualitative research. International Journal of Drug Policy, 85, 102607. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0955395919303147
White, R. & Graham, H. (2014). Working with offenders: A guide to the concepts and practices. Routledge. https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9780203810330/working-offenders-rob-white-hannah-graham
Zivanai, E. & Mahlangu, G. (2022). Digital prison rehabilitation and successful re-entry into a digital society: A systematic literature review on the new reality on prison rehabilitation. Cogent Social Sciences, 8(1), 2116809. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/23311886.2022.2116809
