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Texas’ rural communities urgently need more prosecutors and public defense providers. Many rural prosecutor’s offices cannot recruit and retain enough staff. Rural Texans charged with misdemeanors are four times less likely to have a lawyer than urban defendants. This policy brief outlines three solutions to recruit more criminal lawyers to serve rural Texans: Educational pipelines, financial incentives, and rural public defender offices. Rural Texans deserve the same constitutional protections as their urban and suburban counterparts. With strong recruitment strategies, targeted incentive programs, and new rural defender offices, Texas can green its criminal law deserts. 

Rural criminal justice matters, and rural criminal justice innovations must be studied and celebrated. The Deason Criminal Justice Reform Center is pleased to join Rulo Strategies, LLC, and the National Center for State Courts, in publishing a report that highlights innovations in rural criminal legal systems across the United States. For too long, funders, researchers, and justice innovators have focused on urban justice systems, largely ignoring the rural criminal justice experience. And when rural systems are studied, the attention usually falls on their deficits—not their strengths. But the smaller scale of rural justice systems means that they can be flexible and nimble justice innovators. As this report demonstrates, there are countless lessons to be learned from rural stakeholders in the criminal system.

The STAR Criminal Justice Bibliography is a rich resource for STAR practitioners, policymakers, and communities. The bibliography provides a helpful summary of scholarship that addresses STAR criminal legal systems. The bibliography emphasizes research that can be readily translated into actionable reform by STAR lawyers, communities, and justice-impacted individuals. Topics of special interest include public defense innovations, technological adaptations, and juvenile justice and reentry programs that are tailored to the unique characteristics of STAR systems.

The Rural Texas Sheriff reports on a focus group conducted in conjunction with the Center's 2019 Rural Criminal Justice Summit. The report places rural Texas sheriffs and their agencies in a national context. It also offers insight into the focus group's perceptions of rural law enforcement and jail management. With first-hand accounts of these sheriffs’ experiences, the report offers a compelling look at the personal and professional lives of Texas’ rural sheriffs.

Greening the Desert brings a criminal justice lens to the phenomenon of legal deserts in STAR communities—vast areas with few, if any, practicing attorneys. The report explores STAR criminal justice communities and describes strategies and initiatives to green these criminal law deserts. Using case studies, the report offers concrete examples of successful innovations. It also includes cautionary notes about risks that may arise with the implementation of strategies to recruit, train, and retain STAR practitioners. A companion explores the national landscape and chronicles how two STAR criminal lawyers found their way to rural practice.