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IN THIS ISSUE:

CRIMINAL JUSTICE

Immigration Detention: U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement Efforts to Address COVID-19 in Detention Facilities

What Corrections Officials Need to Know to Partner with Colleges to Implement College Programs in Prisons

California Urban Crime Declined In 2020 Amid Social And Economic Upheaval


EDUCATION

Florida Workforce Needs Study

Teacher Requirements to Help Students Outside Regular School Hours in 2017–18

Disparities in Learning Mode Access Among K–12 Students During the COVID-19 Pandemic, by Race/Ethnicity, Geography, and Grade Level — United States, September 2020–April 2021

Setting Wages in Your Registered Apprenticeship Program


GOVERNMENT OPERATIONS

Assessing the Health Impacts of Transportation Projects – a Synthesis

Promoting Equity and Inclusion and Connection to Good Fit Jobs for Young Adults

COVID-19 and Youth Unemployment by Gender and Age


HEALTH AND
HUMAN SERVICES

Small Area Health Insurance Estimates: 2019

The Role of Childcare Challenges in the U.S. Jobs Market Recovery During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Filling the Gap in States That Have Not Expanded Medicaid Eligibility

Direct Primary Care: Update and Road Map for Patient-Centered Reforms



July 9, 2021

Criminal_Justice
CRIMINAL JUSTICE

Detention facilities can present a challenging environment to manage the risk of transmission of infectious diseases, including COVID-19. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has a number of detention facilities around the country. As of March 2021, ICE had confirmed over 10,000 cases of COVID-19 among detainees within its detention facilities, and recorded 8 deaths. The authors reviewed how ICE has responded to COVID-19 in its detention facilities. To guide immigration detention facilities' response to COVID-19, ICE developed the COVID-19 Pandemic Response Requirements. These protocols address facility intake processing, screening and testing, and social distancing, among other requirements. According to officials from six selected facilities, these requirements were routinely implemented. However, some reported that quarantine of detainees was difficult at times due to infrastructure limitations, and detainee compliance with mask wearing was an ongoing challenge. As of March 2021, individual facilities were generally responsible for working directly with state and local health authorities to administer COVID-19 vaccines to detainees.

Source: U.S. Government Accountability Office

Each year, more than 700,000 adults leave U.S. prisons and return to local communities. While these individuals are serving their time, prison facilities are responsible for both incarcerating them and providing them with rehabilitative programs so that when they return to their communities, they are better equipped than they were when they left. Education services can not only improve the lives and conditions of those in prison but also help these individuals compete for jobs in those communities when they are released. In today’s economy, having a college education is critical if one wants to compete in the job market. Two-thirds of job postings require some level of college education. Recently, there has been a resurgence of interest at the federal and state levels in expanding higher education in prisons, particularly expansions that offer a path to degrees or industry-recognized credentials. This tool aims to provide guidance on key questions about in-prison college programs and help corrections officials in assessing such opportunities and partnering with colleges to implement an in-prison college program. This guide is intended to be a starting point for corrections officials who are considering partnering with a college to implement an in-prison college program within their prison facilities or who currently have such a program and would like additional information to help ensure the success of that program. The guide is relevant for two-year and four-year college programs.

Source: RAND Corporation

In 2020, a year defined by the COVID-19 pandemic, the crime rate in California’s 72 largest cities declined by an average of 7%, falling to a historic low level. From 2019 to 2020, 48 cities showed declines in violent and property felonies, while 24 showed increases. The 2020 urban crime decline follows a decade of generally falling property and violent crime rates. These declines coincided with criminal justice reforms that have lessened penalties for low-level offenses and reduced prison and jail populations. Though urban crime declined overall in 2020, some specific crime types increased while others fell. As in much of the country, California’s urban areas experienced a significant increase in homicide (+34%). They also saw a rise in aggravated assault (+10%) and motor vehicle theft (+10 %) along with declines in robbery (-15%) and theft (-16%). Preliminary 2021 data point to a continued decline in overall crime, with increases continuing in homicide, assault, and motor vehicle theft. An examination of national crime data, local economic indicators, local COVID-19 infection rates, and select murder and domestic violence statistics suggests that the pandemic likely influenced crime.

Source: Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice

Education
EDUCATION

This report focuses on the workforce talent supply and demand gaps across Florida as a whole. In addition, separate metro skill reports mirror the analysis of in-demand career areas, competencies, and skills within nine Florida metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs). With a population of nearly 22 million, Florida is the 3rd most populous state in the nation. Florida’s population grew by 1.6 million residents (8%) over the previous five years, the fastest growth rate among the 10 most populous states. Florida’s total employment was measured at more than 9 million non-farm jobs in early 2020. In addition, Florida created more than one out of every 11 U.S. jobs between 2015 and 2020. Key findings include that four career areas showing promise of advanced wages and long-term resiliency-healthcare, Information Technology (IT)/Math, Business/Finance, and Architecture/Engineering. In addition, the report finds that jobs in Florida are built around employment in several career areas which have the state’s largest oversupply of skills. These areas include hospitality, sales/customer services, and office/administrative services. Undersupplied career areas, such as healthcare, business/finance, IT/Math, and Architecture/Engineering, offer many of the highest average wage rates to Florida’s workers and the volume of undersupply gaps between employer demand and workforce supply are large enough to have dramatic effect on Florida employment.

Source: Florida Chamber Foundation

This report examines whether teachers were required to help students with their academic or social and emotional needs outside regular school hours in public and private schools in the United States in school year 2017-18, by selected school classification. In 2017–18, one-fifth of principals (20%) said that teachers in their school were required to help students with their academic needs outside regular school hours. This was more often required of teachers in private schools (28%) than in public schools (17%). The difference between private and public schools was largely due to traditional public schools. There, 16% of teachers were required to give such support. Public charter schools (32%) were much more similar to private schools (28%) when it came to requiring teachers to help this way. Ten percent of principals said that teachers in their school were required to help students with their social and emotional needs outside regular school hours. As with academic support, this was more often required of teachers in private (20%) than public schools (8%).

Source: National Center for Educational Statistics, U.S. Department of Education

Reduced access to in-person learning is associated with poorer learning outcomes and adverse mental health and behavioral effects in children. Although access to in-person, hybrid, and virtual learning modes varied throughout the school year, during January–April 2021, access to full-time in-person learning for non-Hispanic White students increased by 36.6 percentage points, 31.1 percentage points for non-Hispanic Black students, 22.0 percentage points for Hispanic students, and 26.6 percentage points for students of other race/ethnicities. To increase equitable access to full-time in-person learning for the 2021–22 school year, school leaders should focus on providing safety-optimized in-person learning options across grade levels in all geographic areas. Vaccination and other efforts to reduce levels of community transmission should be intensified.

Source: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

Determining apprentice compensation is a key part of every apprenticeship program. Wage schedules set an apprentice’s compensation as they progress and gain skills through the apprenticeship. This fact sheet provides guidance for apprenticeship program sponsors and employers by reviewing important elements of wage schedules, sharing examples, and offering tips. By setting an appropriate wage progression, programs can reward apprentices for gaining skills, motivate them to gain competencies, and prepare them for all parts of an occupation.

Source: Urban Institute

Government Operations
GOVERNMENT OPERATIONS

To identify the best approach to applying Health Impact Assessment for complete street projects in Florida, this report provides a comprehensive literature review and case studies. Health Impact Assessments are s systematic framework developed by public health researchers as a method for considering how transportation and land use decisions effect public health. After examining, existing Health Impact Assessment tools in the U.S. and elsewhere in the world, the report found that the Integrated Transportation and Health Impacts Model tool is the best choice for implementation in Florida, because it has had successful implementations in the United States, including multiple Metropolitan Planning Organizations in California and in Nashville, Tennessee. The model includes three transportation impacts that are important in Florida: physical activity, air pollution, and traffic injuries with pedestrians and cyclists. Case studies of important model implementations in the United States were then examined in greater detail (including greater Nashville, five major California metropolitan areas, and the county including Sacramento, California). From these case studies, useful perspectives and modeling techniques that can be replicated for a potential model application in Florida were identified. The Nashville case demonstrated that model implementation can be coupled with other regional planning initiatives to increase public support for active transportation investments. The Sacramento county case showcased a disaggregate approach that can highlight underlying health disparities in neighborhoods with diverse socioeconomic and racial and ethnic backgrounds. Model implementations for multiple California metropolitan areas provided a modern software architecture that can be replicated in Florida. Combining the results of the literature review and case studies, a modeling framework was developed to integrate transportation and health impact assessment for metropolitan area transportation planning in the U.S. A regional travel demand model may be combined with the model and integrated into the standard regional transportation planning process.

Source: Florida Department of Transportation

America’s youngest workers, especially young workers of color, have taken a hard hit from COVID-19. In addition to education and career plans upended by the pandemic, huge numbers of the jobs young workers held pre-pandemic disappeared overnight. Although unemployment overall is starting to ease as the economy begins to recover, millions of young people remain unattached to either school or the labor market. Strategies to connect young adults to jobs that set them up for success now and into the future are urgently needed, and employers play a critical role. Strategies may include: (1) Orientation sessions to support the process for onboarding new employees; (2) Tools to guide performance feedback conversations; and (3) Trainings related to youth development practices, such as trauma-informed management and managing with empathy. Another way to provide technical assistance is to present a business case for supportive supervisory practices. Supervisors often dictate what frontline workers experience at work, including whether workers feel safe, supported, and included. Not having appropriate supports in place can contribute to employee turnover and issues with workplace culture. Workforce practitioners have a keen understanding of ways to effectively support and communicate with young adults and can leverage this experience in their work with employers. Technical assistance could include providing training to supervisors in areas related to communication and supporting teamwork and problem-solving skills.

Source: Aspen Institute

Over the last 12 months, unemployment rates have steadily declined from historic highs reached after the start of the pandemic. However, recovery toward pre-pandemic levels of unemployment has been less steady for youth than adults. In the winter, youth—especially female youth ages 16 to 19—experienced an uptick in unemployment rates after which unemployment rates continued to trend downward into the spring. Consistent with the unsteady path to recovery, male youth ages 20 to 24 and female youth ages 16 to 19 experienced a slight increase in unemployment rates in the spring. Overall, between June 2020 and May 2021, unemployment rates among youth ages 16 to 24 fell from 19.9% to 10.7% among males and fell from 21.0% to 9.1% among females.

Source: Mathematica

Health and Human Services
HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES

This report provides a summary of the 2019 release of the U.S. Census Bureau’s Small Area Health Insurance Estimates program. This program is the only source of data for single-year estimates of health insurance coverage status for all counties in the United States. The report describes demographic and economic differences in health insurance status across states and counties, as well as trends in health insurance coverage. Highlights from the report include that from 2018 to 2019, for the population under the age of 65, 90.7% of (or 2,850) counties did not have a statistically significant change in their uninsured rate. Among counties that experienced changes in their uninsured rates, more saw an increase (237 counties) than a decrease (54 counties). Among the population under the age of 65, the estimated county uninsured rate in 2019 ranged from 2.4% to 35.8%. The median county uninsured rate was 11.0%. In 2019, 33.6% of (or 1,054) counties had an estimated uninsured rate below 10.0% for the population under the age of 65.

Source: U.S. Census Bureau

The authors examine how much of the overall decline in employment between the beginning of 2020 and 2021 can be explained by excess job loss among parents of young children, and mothers specifically. Using data from the federal Current Population Survey, the authors confirm that, in general, mothers with young children have experienced a larger decline in employment, as compared (unconditionally) with other adults, including fathers. This excess job loss is driven by mothers without a four-year college (bachelor’s) degree. The main point of the paper is to build off this observation and examine how much of the aggregate employment deficit in early 2021 can be explained by parent-specific issues, such as childcare struggles. The analysis yields robust evidence that differential job loss among mothers of young children accounts for a negligible share of the ongoing aggregate employment deficit. The practical implication of these findings is that nearly all of the aggregate ongoing employment deficit is explained by factors that affect workers more broadly, as opposed to challenges specific to working parents.

Source: National Bureau of Economic Research

In this paper the authors examine alternative policies that would expand eligibility for marketplace tax credits to people below 100% of the federal poverty level. The authors use three different subsidy schedules: the Affordable Care Act subsidy schedule, enhanced premium subsidies, and finally enhanced premium as well as cost sharing subsidies. The results show that between 3 and 5 million people would gain coverage. The least generous subsidy option would cost $181 billion over 10 years while the most generous option would cost $335 billion over 10 years. Increasing the federal matching rate for Medicaid expansion enrollees to 100% to preserve equity among states would add $145 billion over 10 years.

Source: Urban Institute

Direct primary care is an innovative health care delivery model in which doctors contract directly with patients for their care on a subscription basis—regardless of how or where the care is provided. The direct primary care model is improving patient access, driving higher quality and lower cost, as well as strengthening the doctor–patient relationship. However, there remain legislative and regulatory obstacles at the state and federal levels that continue to slow broader uptake of the direct primary care model. This report provides an overview of the direct primary care model and select case studies of direct primary care in practice as well as recommendations for next steps.

Source: Heritage Foundation


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