These statistical tables are based on data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Law Enforcement Officers Killed and Assaulted, 2019 and present information concerning line-of-duty deaths or assaults of law enforcement officers in the United States. The information presented includes race, ethnicity, and sex of victim officer, circumstance encountered by victim officer upon arrival at scene of incident and status of known offender at time of incident. In 2019, there were 48 victim officers feloniously killed. The vast majority of officers feloniously killed in 2019 were male (N=48) and/or white (N=40). Fifteen of the officers killed were killed during an investigative/enforcement circumstance. Twenty-six of the offenders were under the influence of alcohol/controlled substance unknown.

The Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 requires the Bureau of Justice Statistics to carry out, for each calendar year, a comprehensive statistical review and analysis of the incidence and effects of prison rape. The Act further specifies: “The review and analysis…shall be based on a random sample, or other scientifically appropriate sample, of not less than 10% of all Federal, State, and county prisons, and a representative sample of municipal prisons.” In 2019, more than 7,600 prisons, jails, community-based facilities, and juvenile correctional facilities nationwide were covered by the Act. To implement requirements under the Act, the Bureau of Justice Statistics developed a data-collection strategy involving multiple measures and modes. Part of the report is the National Survey of Youth in Custody, whose results have shown a decrease over time in the percentage of youth reporting sexual victimization in the survey. The overall prevalence of sexual victimization was 12.1% of youth in the first survey (2008-09), 9.5% in the second survey (2012), and 7.1% in the third survey (2018). The data show that youth in juvenile detention facilities experience higher rates of sexual victimization (9.5% of youths were victimized in 2012) than adults in prisons (4.0% during 2011-12) or jails (3.2% during 2011-12).

California is a national leader in providing higher education to justice-involved people. A key driver of this movement has been the Renewing Communities initiative, a joint project of the Opportunity Institute and the Stanford Criminal Justice Center that sought to expand access to higher education among justice-involved people in California, both during and after incarceration. In 2016, the initiative announced a three-year partnership with seven pilot projects that provide postsecondary education and student support services in 14 public colleges and universities, housed in prisons, jails, and colleges across the state. The authors conducted an evaluation of the Renewing Communities initiative between 2016 and 2019. The findings, summarized here, draw on program data from, and student surveys administered at all 14 sites. In-depth qualitative research was conducted at five of the community-based programs, housed at different colleges and universities across California. Results indicate that the Renewing Communities initiative has been highly successful. More students have enrolled in the programs, and many of them have become high academic achievers. Notably, students greatly valued the staff members’ passion and dedication. Educational opportunities had vivid positive impacts on students’ identities, lives, and hopes for a brighter future.

Deciding whether to invest time and money in higher education is among the most important decisions that a young adult can make. The evidence is clear that workers who went to college earn higher incomes, on average, than those without a post-secondary degree. But considering the variations in different geographic areas, do workers in some parts of the country do about as well with two-year degrees as those with bachelor’s degrees? The study yields five key findings. Among them is that, nationally, bachelor’s holders strongly out-earn workers with less education. Yet there’s significant variation across the country, with college earnings premiums that are substantially greater in large cities and urbanized areas, and smallest in rural America. On average, Floridians with bachelor’s degrees earn 52.6% more than those with associate degrees ($84,033 versus $55,085) and 83.5% more than those with high school diplomas. In the largest metropolitan statistical area (Southeastern Florida), on average, workers with bachelor’s degrees earn 55.4% more than those with associate degrees ($93,054 versus $59,885) and 99.5% more than those with high school diplomas.

Schools and districts across the United States have invested heavily in data management systems to facilitate educators' access to data that can inform their work. School principals, in particular, make countless decisions that could benefit from access to data in these systems. Principals also help create cultures of data use within their schools, providing guidance and supporting the conditions that enable other school staff to use data effectively and appropriately. Using results from a nationally representative survey of principals, the authors examine middle and high school principals' access to several types of data about their students' outcomes and experiences, along with the ways in which principals report using those data. The authors also explore principals' reports regarding collaborations with leaders of other schools around data use because this type of collaboration can provide useful professional learning opportunities. Key findings include: (1) most principals were able to use electronic systems to obtain academic data on their students, but many lacked access to these data in disaggregated form; (2) access to data, both aggregated and disaggregated, was reported as lowest for social and emotional competency data and postsecondary outcome data; (3) principals' use of data sources to support instructional leadership was common, but not universal; (4) principals were most likely to use data to select curricula, programs, and practices; and (5) fewer than half of principals reported reviewing data with leaders from other schools.

The purpose of this report is to explore what constitutes good water governance through the lenses of water affordability and equity. Access to running water is a public health necessity, as clearly illustrated by the pandemic. Yet the economic implications of the pandemic have made it more challenging for consumers to afford water and wastewater services, as many have lost sources of income and financial stability. Many utilities have put in place shutoff moratoria and restored water and wastewater to those households that were shutoff prior to the crisis. Utilities are serving their customers and meeting critical public health needs, but many are losing revenue as a result of these lifesaving efforts. There is a real danger that water could become politicized as a result of the pandemic. It is important for utilities to be invited to the table and to participate in conversations with state governments. Water is local and what may work in one community might not work in another. There should be a diversity in the utilities talking with state officials to ensure that any legislation passed would be flexible enough to allow each community to implement strategies that work best for their circumstances and consumers.

State approaches to reducing child poverty vary considerably. This report evaluates information on the state-level variation to estimate what could be achieved in terms of child poverty if all states adopted the most generous or inclusive states’ policies. Specifically, the authors simulate the child poverty reductions that would occur if every state applied the same approach in four key policy areas: Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), state Earned Income Tax Credits (EITC), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), and state Child Tax Credits (CTC). The report finds that adopting the most generous or inclusive state EITC policy would have the largest impact on child poverty, reducing it by 1.2 percentage points, followed by SNAP, TANF, and lastly state CTC. Overall, if every state applied the same generous or inclusive methodology in all four policies, the child poverty rate would decrease by 2.5 percentage points, and 5.5 million children would be lifted out of poverty.

The COVID-19 episode will likely lead to a large, lasting baby bust. The pandemic has thrust the country into an economic recession. Economic reasoning and past evidence suggest that this will lead people to have fewer children. The decline in births could be on the order of 300,000 to 500,000 fewer births next year (2021). This estimate is based on lessons drawn from economic studies of fertility behavior, along with data presented here from the Great Recession of 2007-2009 and the 1918 Spanish Flu. On top of the economic impact, there will likely be a further decline in births as a direct result of the public health crisis and the uncertainty and anxiety it creates, and perhaps to some extent, social distancing. Our analysis of the Spanish Flu indicated a 15% decline in annual births in a pandemic that was not accompanied by a major recession. And this occurred during a period in which no modern contraception existed to easily regulate fertility. With the combined pandemic and economic recession, the U.S. could see a drop of 300,000 to 500,000 births. Additional reductions in births may be seen if the labor market remains weak beyond 2020. These circumstances are likely to be long-lasting and will lead to a permanent loss of income for many people. Many of these births will not just be delayed, they will never happen. There will be a COVID-19 baby bust and that will be yet another cost of this pandemic.

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, one in three adults have experienced domestic violence, also known as intimate partner violence. Research has found brain injuries to be common among victims of intimate partner violence, and that such injuries are under-diagnosed and under-treated. The Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) and the Department of Justice (DOJ) provide grants to state and local entities that work with victims. The authors identified 12 non-federal initiatives that provide education, screen for, or treat brain injuries resulting from intimate partner violence. All 12 developed and distributed education and training materials to domestic violence shelter staff, victims, health care providers, and others. Six of the 12 initiatives used screening tools to identify potential brain injuries among intimate partner violence victims, and two included a treatment component. Additionally, eight of the 12 initiatives received HHS or DOJ grant funding, although agency officials told us the funding had no specific requirements to address brain injuries resulting from intimate partner violence. The authors recommend that HHS should develop and implement a plan to improve data collected on the prevalence of brain injuries resulting from intimate partner violence and use these data to inform its allocation of resources to address the issue.

Federal agencies are required to provide equal opportunity to qualified individuals with disabilities in all aspects of federal employment. Approximately 143,600 persons with disabilities were hired during 2011 through 2015—plus an additional 79,600 hires in 2016 and 2017—across the 24 Chief Financial Officers Act agencies, exceeding the stated goal of 100,000 by 2015. About 39% of individuals with disabilities hired during 2011 through 2017 stayed less than 1 year and approximately 60% stayed less than 2 years. Of the total individuals without disabilities hired during that same time period, approximately 43% stayed less than 1 year and approximately 60% stayed less than 2 years. Although targeted data tracking and analyses could help pinpoint root causes contributing to departure rates, the Office of Personnel Management (OPM) does not track or report retention data on disabled employees. The authors recommend, OPM track and report retention data and that the Department of Justice, Small Business Administration, and Social Security Administration obtain employee feedback regarding reasonable accommodations and assess training impacts of trainings on Schedule A-a commonly used hiring authority to employ individuals with disabilities.

It is often said that it takes 17 years to move medical research from bench to bedside. In a coronavirus disease (COVID-19) world, such time-lags feel intolerable. In these extraordinary circumstances could years be made into months? If so, could those lessons be used to accelerate medical research when the crisis eases? Collectively, the vast global mobilization is beginning to adopt several approaches noted as potential ways to reduce time-lags. This is already being undertaken in the early overlapping tracks in the conceptual matrix, that is, through the discovery (or basic) research and into the trial phases of human research. Additionally, there are already indications of how the approaches would be taken into the further overlapping tracks of human research and on to rapid decisions by regulatory and reimbursement bodies and, finally, into mainstream clinical practice. Reducing the time taken from the start of the research to its translation from the previous noted average of 17 years to anything like 17 months would be an astonishing achievement but not without costs. Provided, however, that all the speed results in one or more safe and efficacious vaccines, there is a growing opinion that the pandemic might make medical science more nimble after the crisis has passed and result in greater preparedness in the future.