A total of 4,234 persons died in state and federal prisons in 2019, a 6.6% decrease from the 4,515 deaths in 2018 reported to the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics’ Mortality in Correctional Institutions data collection. In 2019, the mortality rate in state prisons was 330 per 100,000 state prisoners, while federal prisoners in facilities operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons died at a rate of 259 per 100,000. In 2019, a total of 3,853 prisoners died in state prisons or private prison facilities under a state contract, a decrease of 284 deaths from 2018. The number of federal prisoners who died in the custody of a facility operated by the Federal Bureau of Prisons increased from 378 in 2018 to 381 in 2019. Almost 87% of the 65,027 state prisoners and 89% of the 7,125 federal prisoners who died in custody from 2001 to 2019 died of illness. The number of deaths in state prisons due to drug or alcohol intoxication increased from 35 in 2001 to 253 in 2019. In 2019, adult U.S. residents were more than twice as likely as state prisoners to die from alcohol or drug intoxication, while state prisoners were almost three times as likely as U.S. residents to die by homicide.

A total of 1,200 persons died in local jails in 2019, a more than 5% increase from 2018 (1,138 deaths) and a 33% increase from 2000 (903), when the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics began its Mortality in Correctional data collection. The demographic and criminal justice profile of jail decedents in 2019 was similar to previous years. The 2019 mortality rate was higher for pre-trial inmates (192 deaths per 100,000 jail inmates) than those who had already been convicted (112 per 100,000). In 2019, a total of 636 jail jurisdictions reported at least one death, with 222 reporting two or more deaths. In 2019, there were 1,200 deaths in local jails, a more than 5% increase from 2018 (1,138 deaths). The local jail mortality rate in 2019 was 167 deaths per 100,000 inmates, up 11% from 2000 (151 per 100,000). At 49 deaths per 100,000 inmates, suicide was the leading single cause of death for jail inmates in 2019. The 184 deaths in local jails due to drug or alcohol intoxication in 2019 was the highest recorded in the 20 years that Bureau of Justice Statistics has collected mortality data, up slightly from 180 in 2018. When the U.S. resident population was adjusted to resemble the sex, race or ethnicity, and age distribution of local jail inmates, inmates were more than twice as likely as U.S. residents to die by suicide in 2019. Almost 77% of the 1,200 persons who died in local jails in 2019 were not convicted of a crime at the time of their death (908). Almost 40% of inmates who died in local jails in 2019 had been held for 1 week or less. Jails with an average daily population of 49 or fewer inmates had the highest mortality rates each year from 2000 to 2019.

Before the implementation of the Juvenile Justice Reinvestment Act in December 2019, North Carolina was the last state that still automatically charged 16-to-17-year-olds as adults in its justice system. In March 2014, a group of stakeholders from Durham County started the Misdemeanor Diversion Program (MDP) to prevent 16-to-17-year-olds from entering the justice system. The program has since expanded to include adults up to 26 years old. The first program of its kind in North Carolina, the MDP gives law enforcement officers in Durham County the discretion to redirect people accused of committing their first misdemeanor offense(s) to community-based services (such as life skills courses, restorative justice efforts, and behavioral health treatment) in lieu of citation or arrest. The purpose was to diminish unnecessary arrests and time in jail and the collateral consequences of being charged with and potentially convicted of a crime. What is particularly unique about this program is that it occurs pre-arrest and pre-charge, meaning someone law enforcement officers believe may have committed a crime will not be arrested or charged and will not formally enter the justice system in any way. This impact evaluation, the first conducted for the MDP, found that from March 2014 to February 2020, law enforcement officers in Durham County referred fewer than one-quarter of all people eligible for diversion to the MDP, though when they did, the program had positive impacts. Of those who did participate in the program, there was a very high completion rate of 95%. Program participants had significantly lower rates of rearrests, convictions, or jail admissions than comparison groups within six months, one year, and two years. Participation in the MDP significantly reduced disparities in new arrests within two years and in new convictions and jail admissions within six months between 16-to-17-year-old Black people and non-Black people, making the differences in the levels of new arrests between these groups much more equivalent than between Black and non-Black people who did not participate in the MDP.

A large proportion of high schools across the country have adopted education and career planning requirements intended to help students prepare for postsecondary education and to facilitate successful transitions to the labor market. Despite the widespread adoption of such requirements nationwide, there has been little research on how students who participate in planning fare when it comes to preparing for and transitioning to postsecondary education. This study seeks to provide policymakers with national evidence about the education and career planning elements associated with students’ college-going behaviors. This study used student and counselor survey responses from a nationally representative longitudinal dataset (the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009) to examine the relationships between students’ participation in three core elements of education and career planning during high school and their application, coursetaking, and enrollment behaviors associated with the transition to college. Students who developed an education or career plan (also known as an individualized learning plan) upon first entering high school in grade 9 were no more or less likely to submit the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA), complete a college preparatory curriculum, apply to college, or enroll in college than students who did not participate in such planning. However, for students who received support from a teacher or a parent to develop their education or career plan and for students who met with an adult in school to review their education or career plan at least once a year, developing an education or career plan was significantly and positively associated with several college-going behaviors.

Schools and school districts are being asked to provide more and more services to students while being given few additional resources. This report discusses how school districts can use partnerships with outside organizations and agencies to help provide those additional services. Partner organizations can help schools and districts build and strengthen healthy learning environments by bringing in additional programs and services and providing additional opportunities for schools to connect with families and other local community members. This report first describes what school-community partnerships are and the evidence on whether partnerships can promote students’ social and emotional well-being and their academic success. It further reflects on how districts and schools can expand these partnerships to assist school transformation at three levels—the program level, the staff level, and the structural and policy level—while weaving in practical advice from district leaders with successful district-wide partnership systems. School-community partnerships are a popular evidence-based tool for bringing additional resources and services into schools. It is not easy to implement them well. But if a district uses partnerships in a way that supports schools at the program, staff, and policy levels, it can help schools transform into healthy learning environments where all students experience the conditions they need to learn and grow to their greatest potential.

The purpose of the study is to establish prospective relationships among school mean levels of substance use, developmental risk and resilience factors, and school discipline. The authors linked 2003–2014 data from the California Healthy Kids Survey and the Civil Rights Data Collection, from more than 4,800 schools and 4,950,000 students. School mean substance use and risk/resilience factors predicted subsequent prevalence of discipline. For example, a one–standard deviation higher school mean level of smoking, binge drinking, and cannabis use was associated, respectively, with 16%, 18%, and 21% higher subsequent prevalence of total discipline. A one–standard deviation higher mean level of community support and feeling safe in school was associated, respectively, with 21% and 9% lower total discipline. Higher violence/harassment was associated with 5% higher total discipline. Peer and home support, student resilience, and neighborhood safety were not associated with total discipline. Nearly all associations remained, attenuated, when the authors restricted to out-of-school and police-involved discipline. Schools with students who, on average, have higher substance use, less school and community support, and feel less safe in schools have a higher prevalence of school discipline and police contact.

As of March 2020, non-federal pay (e.g., for state and local government and private sector workers) was on average 23% higher than federal pay for similar jobs, despite pay equity efforts. One such effort was to increase federal pay in specific areas of the U.S. where non-federal workers make at least 5% more. The heads of the U.S. Department of Labor and the Offices of Management and Budget and Personnel Management use pay disparity data to make recommendations to the President on locality pay increases. While locality increases have been given annually in most years since 1994, they have not met the goal of reducing reported pay disparities. This report describes (1) the process for administering the federal General Schedule locality pay program, including establishing or modifying existing geographical boundaries for locality pay areas and the amount of time required for such changes; (2) the status of incorporating the Offices of Management and Budget's statistical area definitions to determine the boundaries for locality pay areas; and (3) the Federal Salary Council’s five potential alternatives for administering and implementing the locality pay program.

U.S. transit agencies face fiscal challenges and rely heavily on local, state, and federal funding to operate rail and bus systems. Transit-oriented development projects could help transit agencies increase ridership and revenues, and Congress has sought ways to support these projects. A 2012 statute established a pilot program for the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) to provide grants to communities to plan for transit-oriented development, and a 2015 statute expanded eligibility under the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act program and the Railroad Rehabilitation Improvement and Financing program to include transit-oriented development projects. The Government Accountability Office (GAO) was asked to review the U.S. Department of Transportation's transit-oriented development efforts. This report, among other things, examines: (1) the status of the U.S. Department of Transportation's Build America Bureau’s reviews of transit-oriented development projects since 2016 and the extent to which it documented decisions, and (2) how FTA has evaluated the pilot program for transit-oriented development planning. While the bureau has provided information on transit-oriented development programs to many potential project sponsors, it has not approved financing for any transit-oriented development projects since 2016 or clearly documented all project eligibility decisions. While FTA has invested almost $80 million through this pilot program since FTA made its first awards in 2015, it has not documented a plan to evaluate the pilot or identify lessons learned in line with leading practices. Without such an evaluation, FTA will not be able to understand whether the pilot program is fulfilling its goals to help communities develop strategies to facilitate transit-oriented development. Further, FTA will lack information to inform congressional decisions about the pilot program's future.

In September, Freddie Mac released a groundbreaking analysis of the U.S. home appraisal industry. Consistent with concerns raised by critics, Freddie Mac found that homes in Black and Latino or Hispanic neighborhoods are much more likely than homes in White neighborhoods to be valued below what a buyer has offered to pay. This research paper examines these findings in the context of other studies on the devaluation of housing in Black neighborhoods and the wider literature. Homes in Black and Latino or Hispanic neighborhoods are likely depressed twice over: The market price is held down because of bias against the neighborhood, and values can be depressed still further through discrimination in lending markets and appraisals. A holistic approach to understanding racial inequity in housing must consider that both the market price and the final transaction price may fall below the true value of the home. To summarize the existing literature, discrimination by individual sellers, landlords, and real estate agents appears to have declined and is now relatively rare, though still detectable in audit studies. Discrimination on the part of lenders appears to persist and appears to be largely explained by lender-specific policies and practices, suggesting that organizational leadership can go a long way to stamping out discriminatory behaviors.

This report presents estimates of health insurance coverage for the civilian non-institutionalized U.S. population based on data from the January through June 2021 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS). These estimates are being published before final editing and final weighting to provide access to the most recent information from NHIS. From January through June 2021, 31.1 million people of all ages (9.6%) were uninsured at the time of interview. This was not significantly different from 2020, when 31.6 million people of all ages (9.7%) were uninsured. From January through June 2021, among adults aged 18–64, 14.0% were uninsured at the time of interview, 21.6% had public coverage, and 66.3% had private health insurance coverage. Among children aged 0–17 years, 4.4% were uninsured, 44.7% had public coverage, and 53.1% had private health insurance coverage. Among adults aged 18–64, Hispanic adults (31.4%) were more likely than non-Hispanic Black (14.7%), non-Hispanic White (9.0%), and non-Hispanic Asian (6.1%) adults to be uninsured. The percentage of people under age 65 with exchange-based coverage increased from 3.7% in 2019 to 4.3% in the first 6 months of 2021.

There are concerns regarding post-acute sequelae of COVID-19, but it is unclear whether COVID-19 poses a significant downstream mortality risk. The objective was to determine the relationship between COVID-19 infection and 12-month mortality after recovery from the initial episode of COVID-19 in adult patients. An analysis of electronic health records was performed for a cohort of 13,638 patients, including COVID-19 positive and a comparison group of COVID-19 negative patients, who were followed for 12 months post COVID-19 episode at one health system. Both COVID-19 positive patients and COVID-19 negative patients were Polymerase Chain Reaction (PCR) test validated. COVID-19 positive patients were classified as severe if they were hospitalized within the first 30 days of the date of their initial positive test. Patients with a COVID-19 hospitalization were at significantly increased risk for future mortality. In a time when nearly all COVID-19 hospitalizations are preventable this study points to an important and under-investigated sequela of COVID-19 and the corresponding need for prevention.

High prescription drug costs can contribute to out-of-pocket spending burdens for consumers and can lead patients to delay or forgo needed medications they cannot afford. Recent congressional negotiations have focused on policies to expand health insurance coverage and lower drug costs, including authorizing the negotiation of drug prices for people with Medicare and private health insurance, requiring rebates for price increases that outpace inflation, and capping out-of-pocket costs in Medicare. In this brief, the authors explore prescription drug affordability challenges using pooled 2018 and 2019 data from the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey. The authors focus on the extent to which elderly adults ages 65 and older with Medicare and non-elderly adults ages 19 to 64 with year-round private insurance delay or forgo needed prescription drugs because of the cost and their out-of-pocket spending burdens. The authors find that Nearly 13 million adults delayed or did not get needed prescription drugs in the past year because of the cost, including 2.3 million elderly Medicare beneficiaries. Additionally, about 1 in 10 adults who were uninsured all year (9.5%) or part of the year (11.6%) reported unmet prescription drug needs, compared with 4.9% of Medicare beneficiaries, 3% of privately insured adults, and 5.6% of adults with Medicaid. For both Medicare beneficiaries and privately insured adults, unmet prescription drug needs were most common among women, people with low incomes, and people with multiple chronic health conditions. Nearly all Medicare beneficiaries and more than 8 in 10 privately insured adults with unmet needs have been diagnosed with a chronic condition such as high blood pressure, high cholesterol, stroke, diabetes, arthritis, and respiratory illnesses.