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October 1, 2021
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This paper focuses on what social scientists and policy
analysts have learned about how child support, criminal
justice, and reentry are related: How do child support
obligations affect reintegration? How does incarceration
affect child support repayment and debt? What policies
exacerbate the debt-recidivism link? Which policies show
promise in ameliorating it? From this body of research,
several broad findings have emerged: (1) The reentry
goals of parents with child support debt are similar to
those of other reentering groups: stable employment,
familial reintegration, and desistance from crime. (2)
One of the biggest obstacles to reentry is the size of a
parent’s child support debt, which averages $20,000 to
$36,000, depending on the state and the data used. (3)
There are several institutional barriers that complicate
parents’ economic security and familial wellbeing —
challenges to formal sector employment, familial
conflict, and cycles of recidivism. Child support debt
also acts as its own barrier, particularly if support and
arrears payments are set too high for parents to manage.
(4) Several state and federal policies exacerbate the
reentry challenges of parents with child support debt.
(5) Some state and federal policies have been shown to
alleviate the reentry challenges of parents with support
debt. To the extent that policies provide coordinated
assistance with support modification, reduce government
owed debt, and tailor arrears to fit the economic
realities of parents’ lives, they support reentry and
family reintegration.
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Source: National Institute of Justice
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This report is the second in a series that examines
deaths that occur during federal arrest, detention, and
incarceration in the United States. It describes
decedent, incident, and facility characteristics of
deaths in federal custody and during arrest by federal
law enforcement agencies during Fiscal Years 2018 and
2019. Federal law enforcement agencies reported 53
arrest-related deaths and 448 deaths in custody in Fiscal
Year 2018 and 68 arrest-related deaths and 449 deaths in
custody in Fiscal Year 2019. During Fiscal Year
2018-2019, homicides accounted for more than half (56%)
of arrest-related deaths, and suicides made up about
one-fifth (22%). About 93% of arrest-related decedents
were male, 75% were white, and 78% were ages 25 to 54. In
about half of arrest-related deaths during Fiscal Year
2018-19, decedents attempted to injure law enforcement
officers (50%) or discharged a firearm (45%). Almost all
persons who died in custody were male (97%), about
two-thirds were white (65%), and more than one-quarter
were black (28%) or age 65 or older (30%). The most
serious offenses most commonly reported for persons who
died in custody during Fiscal Year 2018-19 were drug
violations (34%), followed by sex offenses (18%).
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Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics
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This report addresses whether, and how, state and local
governments maintained their requirement that individuals
convicted of sex offenses meet with authorities in person
to confirm and update their registry information.
Focusing in particular on the first months of 2020, the
report highlights the distinctiveness of registration:
while many governmental operations were suspended, or
went online, in-person registration very often
persisted. Registration requires that sex offenders
provide government authorities personal background and
identifying information, verify it at regular intervals,
possibly four times a year, and provide updates in the
event of any change (e.g., growing a beard or changing
work or school location). Most often, verifications and
updates must take place in-person at a designated place
such as a police station, with failure to comply usually
resulting in a felony conviction. Governments provide the
information to community members in the hope that they
will take steps to protect themselves and their loved
ones from possible sexual victimization by registrants.
As states and localities undertook aggressive measures to
stem the spread of COVID-19, in-person registration
continued in most states. A few states—Pennsylvania,
Oregon, and Hawaii—temporarily suspended in-person
registration, using instead registration by telephonic or
electronic means. Virginia suspended in-person
registration and allowed for use of the internet. The
report explores the reasons accounting for this
distinctiveness and provides some thoughts on how and why
in-person registration persisted in the early stages of
the pandemic when so many other governmental operations
were suspended or significantly modified.
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Source: Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law
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The National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) has
released a new, updated version of DataLab, a platform of
web-based tools that provide the public with access to
data collected through NCES studies. DataLab is designed
for researchers, reporters, policy makers, school
administrators, students, or anyone interested in
education in the United States. The Tables Library
application is an online repository of over 8,000 data
tables published by NCES that users can search to answer
critical questions about education across the nation. The
data includes information on pre-college experiences,
cost of higher education attendance, student financial
aid and employment, and student characteristics and
experiences. The PowerStats application provides access
to over 100 NCES datasets and, through an interactive
online interface, empowers users to generate custom
statistical analyses and data visualizations.
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Source: National Center for Education Statistics, U.S.
Department of Education
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This report provides selected findings from the 2019–20
Private School Universe Survey regarding private schools
that were in operation during the 2019-20 school year.
The data include information on school size, school
level, religious orientation, association membership,
geographic region, community type, and program emphasis.
The survey collects non-fiscal data biennially from the
universe of private schools in the United States with
grades kindergarten through twelve. In the fall of 2019,
there were 30,492 private elementary and secondary
schools with 4,652,904 students and 481,200
full-time-equivalent teachers in the United States.
Sixty-six percent of private schools, enrolling 76% of
private school students and employing 68% of private
school teachers in 2019–20, had a religious orientation
or purpose. The largest number of private school students
in 2019–20 were enrolled in schools located in cities
(2,057,808), followed by those in suburban schools
(1,819,082), rural areas (506,957), and then by those in
towns (269,057). Forty-one percent of all private schools
in 2019–20 enrolled less than 50 students. In 2019–20,
there were 350,000 or more students enrolled in private
schools in California, Florida, and New York.
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Source: National Center for Education Statistics, U.S.
Department of Education
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State policymakers recognize the economic imperative to
ensure that education and training are connected to good
jobs. Employers are seeking — and are often struggling —
to hire appropriately skilled workers. For job seekers,
the path to a good job with education beyond a high
school diploma is certainly clearer than one without
postsecondary education or training; however, with
continually advancing technologies and employer
expectations, individuals also need periodic access to
additional training to upskill and reskill throughout
their careers. As a result, there is both need and demand
for on- and off-ramps to postsecondary education and
training. This more fluid interplay requires a cultural
shift so that leaders think differently about the design
of education and training programs and craft policies
that support more seamless transitions for individuals
moving through and between education and work. This paper
develops and refines four principles of policy design for
connecting education to work including (1) design policy
to support the diverse needs of people engaging or
re-engaging with work-relevant education; (2) formalize
collaboration at the state, local and regional levels to
align postsecondary credential outcomes with labor market
needs; (3) develop data infrastructure and capacity to
produce timely, transparent and actionable data analysis
for education and workforce stakeholders; and (4)
leverage existing funding streams to support shared
policy goals.
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Source: Education Commission of the States
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During the last decade, the Federal Highway
Administration (FHWA) undertook targeted efforts to
encourage states to enhance the climate resilience of
federally funded roads, such as by developing agency
policy, providing technical assistance, and funding
resilience research. The authors identified projects in
four states (Arizona, Delaware, Maryland, and Washington)
that planned or made resilience enhancements using FHWA's
resources. For example, Maryland used FHWA resources to
raise a bridge by about 2 feet to account for projected
sea level rise. Such efforts show the potential to
enhance the climate resilience of federally funded roads
on a wider scale. The authors identified 10 options to
further enhance the climate resilience of federally
funded roads through a comprehensive literature search
and interviews with knowledgeable stakeholders. Options
include to update design standards and building codes to
account for climate resistance and to expand the
availability of discretionary funding for climate
resilience improvements. Each option has strengths and
limitations. For example, adding climate resilience
requirements to formula grant programs could compel
action but complicate states' efforts to use federal funds.
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Source: U.S. Government Accountability Office
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The data collected by the decennial census are used to
allocate more than $675 billion in federal funds to
states, counties, and local communities. Those funds are
spent on schools, hospitals, roads, public works, and
many other vital programs. The purpose of the 2020 Census
was to conduct a census of population and housing and
disseminate the results to the president, the states, and
the American people. The goal of the 2020 Census was to
count every person living in the United States once, only
once, and in the right place, regardless of citizenship
status. This brochure explains where census numbers come
from, and the role those numbers play in the way states
and communities redraw boundaries of their congressional
and legislative districts.
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Source: U.S. Census Bureau
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Recent natural disasters have underscored the
vulnerability of Air Force installations to natural
hazards. In 2018, Tyndall Air Force Base (AFB)
experienced a direct hit from Hurricane Michael, causing
$4 billion worth of damage. Flooding at Offutt AFB in
2019 damaged buildings, runways, and other assets. A
wildfire near Vandenburg AFB delayed a scheduled rocket
launch and endangered two space launch pads. These
incidents have prompted the Department of the Air Force
(DAF) to examine how to improve AFB resilience to natural
hazards. To reduce the exposure of these installations to
the threat of disasters, the DAF asked RAND's Project AIR
FORCE to assess base-level exposure to flooding,
wildfires, and high winds and identify potential
mitigation options. The analysis combined geospatial and
other asset-level information with national hazard data
for each base. The approach demonstrates how an
enterprise-wide view of installation exposure to natural
hazards can inform a variety of policy decisions.
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Source: RAND Corporation
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In 2012, the U.S. Food and Nutrition Service sponsored a
study by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to examine the
feasibility of establishing an objective, evidence-based
means of defining the adequacy of the Supplemental
Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefit. The SNAP
benefit provides monthly benefits on an Electronic
Benefit Transfer card to eligible, low-income households,
which they can redeem for eligible foods. The IOM and
National Research Council committee report (2013)
concluded that the adequacy of SNAP allotments can be
objectively defined and recommended that Food and
Nutrition Service assess the individual, household, and
the environmental factors that limit the adequacy of the
SNAP allotment. This study builds on the past research
and the work of the IOM (IOM is now known as the Health
and Medicine Division), to bear on the critical question
of the adequacy of the SNAP benefit. It includes both
in-depth interviews with 121 SNAP participants drawn from
12 States and a nationally representative survey of SNAP
participants. This report presents the findings from the
in-depth interviews with SNAP participants and
ethnographies of participants’ kitchens. Building on
previous literature, this study finds that SNAP
households encounter five main individual/household
barriers: lack of knowledge about healthy eating, lack of
cooking skills, lack of kitchen equipment and facilities,
lack of time for cooking, and lack of time to acquire
foods for a healthy diet. None of the
individual/household barriers were found in a large
proportion of the sample, with lack of time for cooking
found as the most common individual barrier at 15% of the
sample (n= 18), followed by lack of knowledge about
healthy eating (12% of the sample, n= 14, lack of kitchen
equipment (11%, n= 13), time to acquire foods for a
healthy diet (7%, n= 9), and lack of cooking skills (7%,
n= 8). Among environmental barriers, defined as those
outside an individual’s direct control, almost a third of
the sample faced a lack of affordable foods that are part
of a healthy diet.
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Source: U.S. Department of Agriculture
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In this data quality report, the authors investigate the
capacity of the 2018 Transformed Medicaid Statistical
Information System Analytic Files (TAF) to measure
medical services among people dually enrolled in Medicare
and Medicaid. The authors examine services for which
Medicaid is the primary payer among dual enrollees:
long-term services and supports, including personal care,
nonemergency transportation, and other home- and
community-based services (HCBS); behavioral health care;
and nursing home care. Overall, the findings suggest the
data fields necessary to identify services commonly used
by dual enrollees and paid for by Medicaid are of good
quality. However, the report identifies several states
with likely data quality problems based on individual
data elements with missing or invalid values or
implausibly low levels of implied utilization for
specific services. Among these data quality problems, the
authors identify five states, Florida, Nebraska,
Missouri, Massachusetts, and Hawaii, that have relatively
high rates of missing or invalid type-of-service codes
among Long Term Care file claim lines, ranging from 21%
to 98.6%. This raises concerns regarding the TAF’s
ability to accurately measure nursing home services in
these states.
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Source: Urban Institute
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In 2019, California enacted Senate Bill (SB) 542, which
created a rebuttable presumption that post-traumatic
stress disorder (PTSD) in firefighters and peace officers
is a work-related injury and thus compensable under
workers' compensation. California has long used
presumptions to facilitate workers' compensation claims
for many other occupational health conditions in first
responders, including cancer, heart trouble, and hernia.
SB 542 is intended to encourage care-seeking among first
responders and reduce the stigma associated with filing a
workers' compensation claim for a mental health
condition. The presumption is in effect for injuries
occurring between January 1, 2020, and December 31, 2024.
The authors of this report evaluate the prevalence of
mental health conditions and illnesses among firefighters
and peace officers and discuss the implications that this
evidence has for policy regarding presumptions
established by SB 542. Using a mixed-methods approach,
the authors also investigate the frequency of workers'
compensation claims involving PTSD, how often these
claims are denied, and how first responders experiencing
PTSD access mental health care. First responders' mental
health and experiences in the workers' compensation
system are compared with those of workers in other
trauma-exposed occupations. Claims involving PTSD are
compared with claims involving other health conditions —
such as cancer, heart trouble, and hernias — that are
also presumed to be work-related in first responders
under California law. The report also contains estimates
of the costs to state and local government that might
result from presumptive coverage of PTSD in the workers'
compensation system, and the authors also discuss
stakeholder perspectives on SB 542. Findings include that
mental distress and suicidality are not more prevalent
among California's first responders than among workers in
other occupations who are exposed to trauma on the job.
Firefighters and peace officers also face barriers to
care-seeking — primarily, mental health stigma, fear of
professional consequences, and lack of access to
culturally competent mental health providers who
understand the realities and exceptional demands of their
work.
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Source: RAND Corporation
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Government Program Summaries (GPS) is a free resource for legislators and the public
that provides descriptive information on over 200 state government programs. To provide
fiscal data, GPS links to Transparency Florida, the Legislature's website that includes
continually updated information on the state's operating budget and daily expenditures
by state agencies.
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A publication of the Florida Legislature's Office of Program Policy Analysis & Government Accountability
PolicyNotes, published every Friday, features reports, articles, and websites with timely information of interest to policymakers and researchers. Any opinions, findings, conclusions, or recommendations
expressed by third parties as reported in this publication are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect OPPAGA's views.
Permission is granted to make and distribute verbatim copies of
PolicyNotes provided that this section is preserved on all copies.
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