IFE Outline

Natalie Cavanaugh

Ms. DeLay

ENC 2135

02 February 2026

Investigative Field Essay Draft One Outline

Introduction:

• The Southern part of the United States has the largest gap between rural and urban populations with the average for nonmetro areas being 19.7% in 2015-2019 (Farrigan).
• Establish the basic connection between poverty and high incarceration rates overall in America and then in the deep south.
• Connect that to the fact that legal deserts are frequent in most rural places in the United States because rural communities often have very few lawyers per capita (Legal Services Corporation).
• End with Thesis: The connection between poverty, legal deserts, and high incarceration rates in the rural Deep South are also linked to racial injustice and wrongful imprisonment.

Body Paragraph One: Poverty Focused

• Talk about the issue of poverty as a whole plaguing the United States
• Explain the gap between rural and metro area poverty levels as the entire U.S.
  • Recent estimates show a clear gap between the two areas with rural poverty being around 15.4% and metro poverty being around 11.9%
• Explain how the south is the largest gap between rural and metro areas (circle back to prior statistic)
• Go into detail about the connection between poverty and racial inequality
  • Farrigan estimates that nonmetro poverty is around 30.7% for Black/African American families and 29.6% for Native American/Alaska Native residents
• Wrap up this paragraph analyzing the connection between poverty and legal deserts to transition to the next paragraph

Body Paragraph Two

• Introduce the term legal desert
  • the rural legal access crisis happening where Americans are lacking meaningful access to legal help in the rural areas that they reside in (Legal Services Corporation)
• Explain the reasons why legal deserts occur
  • “While about 20% of our nation’s population lives in rural America, only 2% of our nation’s small law practices are located there.” Pruitt, Lisa R., et al. “Legal Deserts: A Multi-State Perspective on Rural Access to Justice.” Missouri Law Review, vol. 86, no. 2, 2021, pp. 389–456, scholarship.law.missouri.edu/mlr/vol86/iss2/6/.
  • “The need for lawyers in rural communities is stark, but it is in tension with economic realities, current systems, and misperceptions that influence where lawyers live and practice.” Pruitt, Lisa R. “Legal Deserts: Race & Rural America.” Michigan Journal of Race & Law, vol. 26, no. 2, 2021, pp. 373–431, https://mjrl.org/2021/03/22/legal-deserts-race-rural-america/.
• What does this mean for rural communities?
  • The research conducted by the LSC shows that more than three quarters of rural households encounter at least one civil legal problem a year yet 86% do not receive inadequate help. It later goes on to show how this puts these families at risk of eviction and debt.
• Investigate the link between legal deserts and ethnicity?
  • Although rural counties are majority white nationwide, rural communities of color … are frequently more vulnerable to poverty and have less access to public services than their metro counterparts.” (Pruitt)
  • Explain this quote: Even those most rural areas are white overall, the people of color who live in rural areas tend to be more worse off
  • This also could be inferred that racial status still matters a lot within rural America

Body Paragraph Three:

• Transition with statistic about incarceration rate in America
  • It talks about the growth of the prison system, that it surged after the early 1970s and peaked around1009 and then declined for a bit in 2010 until 2022, which marked the first increase in more than a decade.
• Explain the connection between incarceration rates and race
  • Nellis’s report emphasized the persistent racial and ethnic disparities within the legal system including that people of color make up nearly 7 in 10 incarcerated people.
• Explain the racial inequalities that people of color in the prison system and legal system faces
  • “Racial biases are so deeply embedded in the criminal legal system that disparities based on race exist at each decision point, impacting subsequent decision points and resulting in negative outcomes for Black people and other people of color.” Nembhard, Susan, and Lily Robin. Racial and Ethnic Disparities Throughout the Criminal Legal System: A Result of Racist Policies and Discretionary Practices. Urban Institute, Aug. 18, 2021, https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/104687/racial-and-ethnic-disparities-throughout-the-criminal-legal-system.pdf
• Introduce the two court cases that show racial injustice in the court system that led to wrongful incarceration
  • Levon Brooks v. State of Mississippi. Supreme Court of Mississippi
  • Flowers v. Mississippi
  • Mystal, Elie. “The Epidemic of Wrongful Convictions in America.”
• Establish final connection between incarceration rate, race, and wrongful incarceration

Conclusion:

• Restate thesis
• Establish the final connections between poverty, legal deserts, incarceration rates, and wrongful incarceration
• Explain how these connections cause a cycle. Ask and answer the question of where do we go from here?