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“Harmony in the Hills”: Peaks and Valleys in the Berea, KY, Rural BCJI Program

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Innovations in Community-Based Crime Prevention
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Abstract

The Berea, KY, Byrne Criminal Justice Innovation (BCJI) program, funded in FY 2015, was one of BCJI’s few completely rural sites. The program was intended to empower and mobilize local communities to develop evidence-informed approaches to reducing youth crime in three counties in Appalachian Kentucky. The program was grounded in criminological theories of crime and place, as well as extensive qualitative cultural research and storytelling with local communities to uncover their perceptions of crime and safety, youth development, and ideas for change. However, despite substantial community buy-in and a robust planning phase, implementation could not be completed due to a “course correction” in the goals of the BCJI program, which was at odds with the strategies our communities proposed. Nonetheless, we learned a number of valuable lessons throughout the process about how to apply community-led, data-driven, place-based crime prevention strategies in rural settings, which have been largely neglected in traditional criminological research. In this chapter we describe the unique challenges of applying BCJI principles to a rural community and the successes and pitfalls of our program. We conclude with recommendations for rural community- and place-based research and practice.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    The authors of this chapter were, respectively, the project coordinator and research partner for the Berea BCJI program.

  2. 2.

    http://www.kypromisezone.com (accessed May 29, 2020).

  3. 3.

    https://kentuckystatepolice.org/crime-traffic-data/ (accessed May 29, 2020).

  4. 4.

    For example, The Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Kids Count Data Center information for Kentucky (https://datacenter.kidscount.org/data#KY/S/0/char/0, accessed May 29, 2020); Kentucky Department of Education’s annual school report cards (https://applications.education.ky.gov/SRC/, accessed May 29, 2020).

  5. 5.

    Population and other demographic data in this section were obtained from the American FactFinder website (https://factfinder.census.gov/faces/nav/jsf/pages/community_facts.xhtml, accessed April 12, 2019; now data.census.gov). Estimates are taken from the 2017 ACS 5-Year Population Estimate. We note that in most cases the estimates of population and household income have decreased in these counties, and the proportion of the population living in poverty has increased, since the 2015 estimates we used in our BCJI planning phase.

  6. 6.

    Also referred to locally as “strip jobs,” these are remote areas where mountaintop removal coal mining has occurred. The mining leaves large flat open spaces on mountain tops, which are not easily accessible but can be reached by dirt bikes, and were highlighted by community members as potential locations for drug use and other crime or risky behaviors.

  7. 7.

    We use the term “offender” to describe people who were suspected of or arrested for a crime; however, it is important to note that we do not have information about whether these individuals were convicted.

  8. 8.

    https://www.samhsa.gov/sites/default/files/20190620-samhsa-strategic-prevention-framework-guide.pdf (accessed May 29, 2020).

  9. 9.

    https://www.aecf.org/blog/results-count-a-leadership-development-approach-for-large-scale-social-chan/ (accessed May 29, 2020).

  10. 10.

    https://www.claycountykentucky.org (accessed May 29, 2020).

  11. 11.

    https://www.storybridge.space (accessed May 29, 2020).

  12. 12.

    https://www.storybridge.space/harmony-in-the-hills (accessed May 29, 2020).

  13. 13.

    See https://create.piktochart.com/output/23486058-harmony-in-the-hills-2017 (accessed May 29, 2020).

  14. 14.

    https://hasandavis.com (accessed May 29, 2020).

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Acknowledgments

This research was funded by the Bureau of Justice Assistance, Grant # 2015-AJ-BX-0007. The opinions, findings, and conclusions expressed in this chapter are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect those of the funders.

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Correspondence to Charlotte Gill .

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Meglen, J., Gill, C. (2020). “Harmony in the Hills”: Peaks and Valleys in the Berea, KY, Rural BCJI Program. In: Stokes, R., Gill, C. (eds) Innovations in Community-Based Crime Prevention. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43635-3_8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-43635-3_8

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