Project One Revision

Natalie Cavanaugh

Ms. DeLay

ENC 2135

02 February 2026

Poverty, Legal Deserts, and Wrongful Imprisonment in the Rural Deep South

 “The opposite of poverty is not wealth; the opposite of poverty is justice” was said by Bryan Stevenson, the founder of the Equal Justice Initiative and the author Just Mercy, in his 2012 TED Talk. This quote reshapes poverty to be more than simply lacking money, instead it’s a result of systemic injustice. Poverty is often described to be a cycle, which is continued by unequal access to education, employment, and even appropriate legal representation. After reading Just Mercy, I had sparked an interest in how poverty and imprisonment are connected in the rural Deep South. Across many different parts of America, poverty and incarceration have been closely linked with places which experience higher rates of poverty and a scarce or even nonexistent amount of legal representation in those areas. In this essay, I will be investigating the connection between high poverty rates and the increased existence of legal deserts in the rural Deep South and how it connects to wrongful imprisonment.

Poverty has been a sickness plaguing both rural and metropolitan areas in the United States. However, the gap between nonmetro and metro poverty levels has been gradually lowering over time. This changed in 2019 when there was an increase in metro-nonmetro poverty rate gap by 3.5 percentage points which enlarged the gap for rural poverty being around 15.4% and metro poverty being around 11.9% (Farrigan).  These statistics show that poverty is a large issue in the United States and the disparities between rural and metro areas show how much harder life is for people who live in rural areas. They suffer from lack of economic opportunities which can cause people to fall into poverty easier than people in metro areas, which have those opportunities.

Poverty also shifts when looked at geographically. Farrigan claims that “the nonmetro/metro poverty rate gap for the South has historically been the largest” and then continues to say that in 2015-2019, the South had a poverty rate of “19.7 percent—nearly 6 percentage points higher than in the region’s metro areas.” Also, in Southern rural areas, especially with “concentrations in Mississippi, Georgia, Kentucky, and Texas” is “where child poverty rates have been persistently high, particularly among the Black or African American population” (Farrigan). This data shows the overwhelming evidence that both adults and children in rural Southern areas suffer from poverty. The link between race and poverty in rural America is undoubtable, as Farrigan estimates that nonmetro poverty is around 30.7% for Black/African American families and 29.6% for Native American/Alaska Native residents.This is important as it shows that when poverty is concentrated, it can lead to poor housing and less educational and work opportunities. With all these things combined, it makes poverty a cycle that is nearly impossible for people living in rural communities to escape from. With the poor conditions that these rural towns have due to poverty, it makes others not inclined to migrate to these areas, which can cause other issues such as legal deserts.

Legal deserts are defined as 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). Even though around 20% of the nation’s population lives in rural areas, only 2% have small law practices located in those areas (Pruitt 21).  There is a reason that lawyers tend to stray away from residing in rural places, especially the deep South. This is in part to the same reasons that people do not want to reside in places with high poverty rates, where the living conditions tend to be poor and there is often economic hardship. The demand for lawyers in these rural communities is high, but it is “in tension with economic realities, current systems, and misperceptions that influence where lawyers live and practice” (Newton).  Not only would lawyers struggle to find billable work, but their clients might not be able to afford the work provided. 

The lack of lawyers in these rural communities does not mean that the people who reside there do not experience legal trouble, “more than three quarters of rural households encounter at least one civil legal problem a year yet 86% do not receive inadequate help” (Legal Services Corporation). Because of this, it puts families at risk of eviction and debt.  It also puts people at an increased risk of wrongful convictions or other legal implications, “A lack of criminal defense attorneys or court-appointed public defenders may limit rural people’s right to due process, or put people at risk of wrongful conviction or longer sentences” (Peters et al. 256)

It is researched that legal deserts are an issue in over one quarter of counties in Georgia and that emerging legal deserts tend to be clustered in Southern states (Peters et al. 267).  While 65% of Georgia resides outside the 5-county metropolitan Atlanta area, only 30% of its attorneys are there (Pruitt 120). This shows the severe attorney shortage that is happening in Georgia and more broadly, the Deep South. Continuing to investigate the state of Georgia, there is a large connection between poverty and legal deserts: “Almost three-quarters of Georgia residents living below the federal poverty line reside outside of the five counties that constitute metropolitan Atlanta” (Pruitt 64). The same places that are having a severe legal crisis in Georgia are the same counties that are living below the federal poverty line. This can also be connected back to the racial inequality that poverty brings with it since “high proportion of Georgia’s rural population is disproportionately African American… 25.8% of Georgia’s rural and small-town population is African American” (Pruitt 64). This shows the connection between race, poverty, and legal deserts. As stated earlier, there is an overlap with legal deserts and imprisonment in rural areas of the United States. The lack of representation for residents of the rural areas of the United States could limit people’s right to due process which is ensuring that people are given fair and just trials.

The United States prison system has persistent racial and ethnic disparities within itself. Dr. Nellis’s report emphasized that people of color make up nearly 7 in 10 incarcerated people. This is connected to the racial biases that take place within the legal system, “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 and Robin). These negative outcomes which are being discussed are some of the same results that the people who live in rural areas of the United States face, especially those in the Deep South. This can be linked back to race because these rural towns in the Deep South have primarily black populations, as stated when discussing the state of Georgia.

Looking further into the connection between racial biases and how it can result in negative outcomes, one of these outcomes is usually wrongful imprisonment which is when a person is convicted of a crime in which they did not commit. Bryan Stevenenson argues in his book, Just Mercy, that wrongful imprisonment is not accidental but instead being the result of systemic injustice, which is rooted in racism and poverty. There have been several instances where this has happened in the rural Deep South, such as the case of Levon Brooks.

In the case of Levon Brooks v. State of Mississippi, Brooks was convicted of capital murder after a three-year-old girl named Courtney Smith was abducted and found dead in 1990. The prosecution relied on the evidence of an eyewitness identification from the girl’s 5-year-old sister who identified Brook as the man who murdered her sister when he was presented in a lineup, the testimony from the medical examiners about the exact cause of death, and the expert testimony which linked the bite marks on Courtney’s arm to Brooks. Brooks appealed his life sentence by arguing that the procedures to his identification were suggestive, meaning that the sister could have been influenced to identify Brooks in the lineup, and that the bite-mark evidence was improperly admitted which should be able to allow him to have a retrial. The Supreme Court of Mississippi, however, upheld his conviction saying that the identification was reliable, and the forensic evidence was properly admitted. This case is still controversial due to the reliability of bite-mark analysis which is a widely criticized practice now. This begs the question about if Brooks had a better lawyer, which he was prevented by from an attorney shortage due to the small, rural town of Mississippi he was in, and if there were any other factors, such as race, fueling the decision.

This case exposes the structural concerns that the Deep South’s legal system due to the rural location he was first prosecuted in and the legal crisis that was and is happening in the rural Deep South. The cycle between poverty, legal deserts, and wrongful imprisonment is one that is closely connected. This realization of how all these factors affect people of rural communities in the Deep South, especially minorities, is an important one to have. It shows how we as a nation need to be more aware of the lengths that poverty can go to affecting people and how we need to act now to implement change. The thought of poverty being a part, small or large, being a factor as to why someone could possibly be put in prison for a crime they did not commit should be enough to want to enact change in our communities.

A major theme of Bryan’s book, Just Mercy, is that wrongful imprisonment is so deeply tied back to the history of slavery. He goes on to explain that the legal system evolved in ways that continued to put minorities at a disadvantage when it comes to the law. He goes on to explain that in the South, black defendants are often seen as guilty before they are even proven innocent. Because of this assumption, the odds for black defendants being put away for a crime they didn’t even commit is high. This connection between poverty, lack of legal representation, wrongful imprisonment, and race show how our legal system is broken and needs fixing, it still holds the same biases from the history of slaving and lynching.

A few ways to solve this issue that the cycle of poverty, legal deserts, and wrongful imprisonment could be giving incentive for business owners to expand into rural communities to create more job opportunities for the residents. Since rural areas have such a high dropout rate, if there were incentives to stay in school, that could also help lower the poverty rates in these areas. By fixing the issue of poverty in our country, we can begin helping prevent further disasters that are caused by this “disease”, such as wrongful imprisonment. By improving access to legal representation in rural areas of the Deep South, we could solve the problem of legal deserts and help prevent cases of wrongful imprisonment. Once we can see the problem of how poverty and legal deserts affect rural areas in the Deep South, we can begin implementing solutions to prevent the detrimental effects that it has on these communities, such as wrongful imprisonment. Breaking this cycle requires a commitment to justice. As Bryan Stevenson suggests, the opposite of poverty is justice. So, until justice is accessible to all, wrongful imprisonment will continue to remain a devastative reality.

Works Cited

Farrigan, Tracey. “Rural Poverty & Well-Being.” Economic Research Service, U.S. Department of Agriculture, 14 Jan. 2025, www.ers.usda.gov/topics/rural-economy-population/rural-poverty-well-being.

Legal Services Corporation. “New Report Exposes Rural Legal Access Crisis, Highlights Community Solutions.” LSC – Legal Services Corporation: America’s Partner for Equal Justice, 2025, www.lsc.gov/press-release/new-report-exposes-rural-legal-access-crisis-highlights-community-solutions.‌

Levon Brooks v. State of Mississippi. Supreme Court of Mississippi, 7 Oct. 1999. Justia Law, law.justia.com/cases/mississippi/supreme-court/1999/conv8168.html.

Nellis, Ashley. “Mass Incarceration Trends.” The Sentencing Project, 21 May 2024, www.sentencingproject.org/reports/mass-incarceration-trends/.

Newton, Zachery. “Legal Deserts: Race & Rural America.” Michigan Journal of Race & Law, 22 Mar. 2021, https://mjrl.org/2021/03/22/legal-deserts-race-rural-america/.

Peters, David J., Emma Bartling, and Emily Meyer. “Understanding Rural Legal Deserts to Inform Public Policy: Identifying and Describing Lawyer Gaps in Non-Metropolitan Counties.” x Dakota Law Review, vol. 70, no. 2, 2025, pp. 253–294.

Pruitt, Lisa R., et al. “Legal Deserts: A Multi-State Perspective on Rural Access to Justice.” Harvard Law & Policy Review, vol. 13, 2018, pp. 15–156.

Stevenson, Bryan. Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and Redemption. Spiegel & Grau, 2014.

Stevenson, Bryan. “We Need to Talk About an Injustice.” TED, Mar. 2012, www.ted.com/talks/bryan_stevenson_we_need_to_talk_about_an_injustice