Over the past decade, administrators and staff have witnessed an exponential increase in the number of people with mental illnesses and substance use disorders cycling through local jails, but less attention has been given to people experiencing both simultaneously. Indeed, while recent studies show as low as 24% to 34% of women and 12% to 15% of men in the criminal justice system have both mental illness and substance use disorders —also known as co-occurring disorders—, others indicate that as high as 60% to 87% of people with severe mental illnesses have a co-occurring disorder as well. Despite this prevalence, in many cases, people are only identified and treated for either one or the other. This can be detrimental to their recovery. The fact is people with co-occurring disorders have complex needs that require integrated responses across jails and behavioral health systems. However, staff often do not know how many people with co-occurring disorders reside in the jail or do not know how to respond when they recognize the symptoms. This makes it difficult to determine the appropriate services and treatment, referrals to diversion opportunities, and reentry plans to help people with co-occurring disorders succeed as they reenter the community. Building on strong collaboration with correctional health and community-based behavioral health providers, this brief outlines how jail administrators and staff can improve their responses to this population. With universal and standard screening at intake, jails can quickly identify people with co-occurring disorders, develop appropriate plans to coordinate care, and ultimately link people to appropriate services, both in and out of jail. And by continually measuring performance, jails can assess the effectiveness of these practices and identify where improvements can be made to increase access to services for this population. Done together, these practices help local jails more effectively address the needs of people with co-occurring disorders.

Researchers collected data on the number of people who were incarcerated in state and federal prisons as of December 31, 2019, to provide timely information on how prison incarceration is changing in the United States. This report fills a gap until the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) releases its next annual report—likely in early 2021—which will include additional data, such as population breakdowns by race and sex. In response to the novel coronavirus pandemic, researchers collected updated data on people in prison at the end of the first quarter of 2020 to reflect any changes that had occurred as a result of the outbreak. At the end of 2019, there were an estimated 1,435,500 people in state and federal prisons, down 33,000 from year-end 2018 (2.2% decline). There were 1,260,400 people under state prison jurisdiction, 28,200 fewer than in 2018 (2.2% decline); and 175,100 in the federal prison system, 4,800 fewer than in 2018 (2.7% decline). The prison incarceration rate in the United States was 437 people in prison per 100,000 residents, a 2.6% drop from 449 per 100,000 in the previous year. This represents a 17.5% decline in the rate of prison incarceration since its peak in 2007. Florida’s prison incarceration rate declined by 2.6% between 2018 and 2019 and has dropped 19.8% between 2009 and 2019.

The three central sections of the criminal justice system (law enforcement, the courts, and corrections agencies) work together toward the common goal of addressing the challenge of criminal behavior. Because of the wide variety of issues and incidents to which the criminal justice system responds, the system faces many challenges. Such challenges include new types of technological crime facing the police; new demands complicating court operations; and, in the corrections context, such practical challenges as managing aging offender populations and dealing with drones used to smuggle contraband over prison walls. Moreover, as society changes, the challenges facing the criminal justice system can be expected to continue to shift. In this report, the authors focus on common needs that apply to all three sections of the justice system. Starting with the deep pool of feedback and input collected from the practitioner community across the five-year Priority Criminal Justice Needs Initiative project, the report provides insights about innovation needs for the justice system as a whole. Key findings include that new digital crimes present problems for agencies that were designed to operate in the physical rather than the digital world. And that, in many cases, the justice system has become the default mental health and substance abuse response system in the country. Also, the perceived fairness of the justice system—that is, whether the system is procedurally just and whether individuals of different races or from different socioeconomic strata are treated fairly—is an important issue.

This report is a congressionally mandated annual report that contains key indicators on the condition of education in the United States at all levels, from prekindergarten through postsecondary, as well as labor force outcomes and international comparisons. The indicators summarize important developments and trends using the latest statistics, which are updated throughout the year as new data become available. In fall 2017, some 50.7 million students were enrolled in public elementary and secondary schools (pre-K through grade 12). Total public school enrollment in pre-K through grade 12 is projected to increase to 51.1 million students (a 1% increase) by 2029, with changes across states ranging from an increase of 16% in North Dakota to a decrease of 12% in New Mexico. Florida was one ten states where the increase in total enrollment for public elementary and secondary schools increased by 15% or more from fall of 2000 to the fall of 2017. The other states were Delaware, North Carolina, Georgia, Idaho, Colorado, Arizona, Texas, Utah, and Nevada.

Using data from Kantar Media’s “Ad$pender,”a database of advertising expenditures, the authors estimate how much different types of postsecondary institutions spend on advertising in the United States and compare these amounts to other characteristics of the institutions. Advertising spending by U.S. higher education institutions has been volatile in the past decade, roughly matching the growth and decline of enrollment in for-profit colleges. In 2017, U.S. colleges spent over $700 million on commercial advertising, down from a peak of $1.2 billion in 2013. For-profit colleges account for a disproportionate share of this spending: They account for 40% of ad spending while educating 6% of students. They outspend nonprofits 4 to 1 and publics 20 to 1 on a per-student basis. These stark differences by sector remain even when controlling for other institutional characteristics that may drive advertising spending, such as size, level, chain status, and the percentage of online students.

This report uses data from the American Housing Survey and provides the estimates of housing units in the country that had aging-accessible features, such as handrails or grab bars in the bathroom, a step-free entryway, or a wheelchair-accessible kitchen, as well as geographic differences in the prevalence of homes with these features. The report also examines difficulties using certain elements of the home, such as how many households had older adults who had trouble climbing stairs or using the shower or bath tub. Finally, the report studies older adults’ unmet needs in housing, where they had difficulty in performing a specific task in the home but their home lacked a feature that would help. The demographic and economic characteristics of households where older adults reported difficulty using home features are compared with households where older adults reported no such difficulty. The South Atlantic area (which includes Florida) has 26.8% of households with adults 65 and older who have difficulty with one or more housing features (such as stairs or bathrooms without accessibility features). This is slightly less than the national average of 28.2%.

After two-and-a-half years of intensive research, public hearings, and conversations with Americans across the country, this report contains 164 recommendations for promoting and empowering Americans to serve their country. Recommendations include increasing funding for civic education and service learning, increased opportunities for youth to explore service opportunities, improved pathways for entering military service, increase the opportunities available to senior citizens for national service, and improving the readiness of the national mobilization system.

Inclusionary zoning policies are an increasingly popular tool for addressing affordable housing challenges, with many cities and counties adopting such policies since 2000. But the structure and features of these policies vary. Research suggests that the features of inclusionary zoning matter and need to be tailored to local market conditions. Inclusionary zoning encourages or requires developers who are creating market-rate housing to set aside a percentage of the housing to be sold or rented at below-market rates. One common feature of inclusionary zoning policies is “in-lieu fees,” which developers can pay as an alternative to building on-site affordable units. (In-lieu fees are the most common name for this method of alternative compliance, but some jurisdictions might refer to this option as “buy-outs,” “opt-outs,” or “cash contributions.”) In-lieu fees are among the most hotly debated parts of inclusionary zoning, in part because little research exists on the variations in their structure and their advantages and disadvantages. This report has two goals. The first is to help local decision makers determine whether to include an in-lieu fee option in their inclusionary zoning ordinances. The second is to help local decision makers understand what variations of in-lieu fees exist and how to structure in-lieu fees. Based on a literature review and interviews with local government staff members, developers, nonprofit practitioners, and advocates, this report provides an overview of the goals of inclusionary zoning and the ways that in-lieu fees can advance or undermine those goals. It also discusses the methods that jurisdictions use to set in-lieu fees and details considerations for jurisdictions when they are setting in-lieu fees.

As cities and states prepare to re-open, restaurants and hotels face a new challenge: ensuring safe working and dining environments for employees and customers. This report will help them do that. These recommended guidelines address common questions about the virus and offer practical steps that chefs, managers and supervisors can begin taking as they prepare to re-open their kitchens. The guidelines draw from the expertise of medical experts, public health officials, chefs and restaurant operators with decades of experience in their fields. Recommendations include designating a COVID-19 coordinator, screening workers upon arrival to the workplace each day for fever and other symptoms of COVID-19, frequently cleaning commonly touched surfaces, reinforcing policies and procedures with signage and work-shift briefings, using “no contact” transfers for all supply deliveries.

In America’s densely populated cities, in suburbs, and elsewhere, the number of cases and deaths among Blacks far outstrips their share of the population overall. One of those cities is Detroit. The authors use new mobile device tracking data to examine social distancing and how it impacts infection rates in that city, to better understand the virus’s disproportionate impact on Black America. After controlling for structural features such as socioeconomic vulnerability, race, and the proportion of essential workers living in a community, the authors find evidence that neighborhoods with higher shares of Blacks, low-income individuals, and certain essential workers such as law enforcement and personal care workers had higher rates of confirmed cases. Combining neighborhood-level rates of social distancing with race and income reveals an important pattern: low-income neighborhoods with higher rates of social distancing were associated with lower COVID case counts, even after controlling for the presence of essential workers in a community. Importantly, these results illustrate the effects of social distancing as a protective measure. While social distancing is important, as a standalone policy, it is not enough to disrupt the statistical correlation between COVID-19 and the poor. Nevertheless, social distancing offers substantial protective benefits that can greatly reduce community spread and minimize loss of life.

Before the COVID-19 pandemic, coronaviruses caused two noteworthy outbreaks: severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), starting in 2002, and Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), starting in 2012. The authors aimed to assess the psychiatric and neuropsychiatric presentations of SARS, MERS, and COVID-19. The authors reviewed 72 publications. The number of coronavirus cases of the included studies was 3,559, ranging from 1 to 997, and the mean age of participants in studies ranged from 12.2 years to 68 years. When data for patients with COVID-19 were examined, there was evidence for delirium (confusion in 26 [65%] of 40 intensive care unit patients and agitation in 40 [69%] of 58 intensive care unit patients in one study, and altered consciousness in 17 [21%] of 82 patients who subsequently died in another study). At discharge, 15 (33%) of 45 patients with COVID-19 who were assessed had a dysexecutive syndrome in one study. At the time of writing, there were two reports of hypoxic encephalopathy and one report of encephalitis. Most, 68 (94%) of the 72, studies were of either low or medium quality. Findings indicate that if infection with SARS-CoV-2 follows a similar course to that with SARS-CoV or MERS-CoV, most patients should recover without experiencing mental illness. SARS-CoV-2 might cause delirium in a significant proportion of patients in the acute stage. Clinicians should be aware of the possibility of depression, anxiety, fatigue, post-traumatic stress disorder, and rarer neuropsychiatric syndromes in the longer term.