This report fulfills a congressional mandate in the federal Fair Chance to Compete for Jobs Act, part of the 2019 Defense Reauthorization Act. Congress tasked the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics and the U.S. Census Bureau with reporting on post-prison employment of persons released from federal prison. The records of persons released from federal prison in 2010 were linked with employment and earnings data from the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics program (collected by the Census Bureau) to estimate the percentage of persons who were employed in the 4 years after their release, as well as their earnings and employment sector. The report presents statistics on both pre-prison and post-prison employment and median earnings, differentiated by age, sex, race and ethnicity, most serious offense, and amount of time served. The report also discusses the industry sectors that employed persons before and after imprisonment. Highlights from the report include that of the 73,500 persons released from federal prison in 2010, a total of 51,500 (70%) received a Protected Identification Key that allowed for linkage to employment records from 2010 to 2014. A third (33%) of persons in the study population did not find employment at any point during the 16 quarters after their release from prison from 2010 to 2014. Persons in the study population convicted of drug offenses had higher post-prison employment rates than persons convicted of other offenses. A higher percentage of females were employed than males in each of the 16 quarters following their release in 2010; however, females who were employed were paid a median of $800 to $1,800 less per quarter than employed males.

Each year, thousands of immigrant children are placed into court proceedings in which government prosecutors seek to deport them unless those children can prove they have a right to stay in the United States. Many face these immigration proceedings alone. Many children have legal options that establish their ability to remain in the United States, but these options are nearly impossible to access without the assistance of trained attorneys. Unfortunately, although the right to be represented by legal counsel is recognized in immigration proceedings, the right to appointed counsel is not. Children who are unable to find free counsel or afford private counsel must navigate the immigration system alone. This report outlines why universal, publicly funded representation for children in immigration proceedings is urgently needed. What is extremely challenging for an adult is nearly impossible for a child. Several legal options available to children involve processes outside of immigration court, making their cases more complex. Only 64% of unaccompanied children in proceedings from Fiscal Year 2005–2017 obtained counsel at some point during their cases.

This report provides an overview of recent pending and enacted legislative proposals to limit or end the use of solitary confinement. Legislative activity seeking to limit or abolish the use of solitary confinement (often termed restrictive housing) has increased in recent years. From 2018 to 2021, legislation aiming to limit or end the use of isolation in prison was introduced in more than half of the states and in the U.S. Congress. As of the summer of 2021, legislators had proposed statutes in 32 states and in the U.S. Congress, and both states and the federal system have enacted a variety of provisions. These statutes vary in scope. For example, 15 states, including Florida, enacted statutes that limit or prohibit the use of restrictive housing for youth, pregnant prisoners, or those with serious mental illness. Other statutes impose limits on the reasons that prison authorities can use to put individuals into isolation, the duration of such confinement, and/or the extent to which the conditions of isolation can depart from those in general population.

This provisional set of web tables presents data findings from the Integrated Postsecondary Education Data System, spring 2021 data collection. The spring 2021 collection includes four survey components: (1) enrollment for fall 2020; (2) finance for fiscal year 2020; (3) data on employees in postsecondary education for fall 2020; and (4) data for Academic Libraries for fiscal year 2020. Enrollment for the fall 2020 for all institutions was 19,355,811 students with 16,215,756 undergraduates and 3,140,055 graduate students. This was a decrease from fall 2019 when there were 20,006,901 students (16,934,323 undergraduates and 3,072,578 graduate students). Total library collections for all institutions increased by 6.07% from 2,963,110,553 in Fiscal Year 2019 to 3,143,040,634 in Fiscal Year 2020. Average 9-month salaries for full-time instructional staff increased by 1.37% from $86,188 to $87,366.

This three-part series explores the elements of an equity framework that can aid policymakers in identifying barriers that impede success for underserved students and that can assist them in working with constituents to advance educational outcomes for those students. Part 1 proposes three core principles: 1) using data intentionally; 2) understanding the institutional environment; and 3) implementing differentiated supports for underserved students. Part 2 examines how data disaggregation by student subgroups can help policymakers ensure that their efforts address the needs of students who have been traditionally underserved in educational settings. In this report, part 2 highlights Florida’s annual Fact Book which reports on the state’s college system and publishes data on subgroups of disabled students, including students with visual, hearing, physical and speech disabilities, students with brain injuries and autistic students. Part 3 provides a list of promising practices used by states (including Arizona, California, Illinois, Massachusetts, Washington, and Wyoming) to establish policies and tools to monitor the impact of reform efforts to address inequities.

Classification and Regression Tree (CART) analysis is a statistical modeling approach that uses quantitative data to predict future outcomes by generating decision trees. Classification and Regression Tree analysis can be useful for educators to inform their decisionmaking. For example, educators can use a decision tree from a CART analysis to identify students who are most likely to benefit from additional support early—in the months and years before problems fully materialize. This guide introduces CART analysis as an approach that allows data analysts to generate actionable analytic results that can inform educators’ decisions about the allocation of extra supports for students. Data analysts with intermediate statistical software programming experience can use the guide to learn how to conduct a CART analysis and support research directors in local and state education agencies and other educators in applying the results. Research directors can use the guide to learn how results of CART analyses can inform education decisions.

America’s population size is standing still, according to new data from the U.S. Census Bureau. Population growth over the 12-month period from July 1, 2020 through July 1, 2021 stood at unprecedented low of just 0.12%. This is the lowest annual growth since the Census Bureau began collecting such statistics in 1900, and reflects how all components of population change—deaths, births, and immigration levels—were impacted during a period when the COVID-19 pandemic became most prevalent. The national growth slowdown exerted a broad impact across the nation’s states. Among the nation’s 50 states and Washington, D.C., 31 showed lower growth (or greater losses) in 2020-21 than in 2019-20. The states that led in growth rates were mostly in the Mountain West, including Idaho, Utah, Montana, and Arizona, which had annual rates exceeding 1.4%. In terms of numeric growth, the biggest gainers in 2020-21 were Texas (310,000 people), Florida (211,000), Arizona (98,000), and North Carolina (93,000). Still, these gains were smaller than what these states saw in 2019-20 or 2018-19. Even before the onset of the pandemic, Census Bureau projections foresaw the onset of slower growth, increased aging, and continued stagnation of our labor force. Among the many ways that are needed to recover from the pandemic, a focus on reactivating the nation’s population growth should be given high priority.

Personal wealth—the savings and assets a family owns, minus their debts—is a central component of household financial security. It is a requirement for the well-being of families with lower incomes just as it is for those with higher incomes. One’s own financial resources protect against short-term financial shocks and afford an individual the freedom to not simply dream about the future, but also to take the necessary steps to seize it. Wealth provides people with resilience, investment opportunities, intergenerational support, improved quality of life, and control over assets and institutions. This report makes two recommendations related to empowering people to amass investable sums: 1) boost household cash flows; and 2) reduce harmful debt. There are also three recommendations related to expanding access to affordable assets including: 1) improve opportunities for home ownership; 2) pair access to retirement accounts with automatic enrollment and increased incentives to participate in retirement savings; and 3) reduce the costs associated with postsecondary education. Finally, the report makes the following recommendation to protect wealth: expand consumer financial protections and various forms of insurance to protect those with less to fall back on if they lose that wealth.

Head Start is our nation’s largest two-generation program that provides early education services to children and a variety of family support services that may promote economic wellbeing. Yet, no prior research has documented or described the effects of Head Start on parental earnings. The authors explore whether the program promotes parental earnings on average, investigate for whom these effects are greatest, evaluate the extent to which earnings impacts vary across Head Start sites, and identify which characteristics of centers associate with cross-site variation. The authors find that Head Start does not improve earnings overall, but does indicate modest impacts for specific types of families. For example, Head Start does increase earnings by about $200 per month for up to three years after enrollment among parents whose children entered the program at age 3. These effects are larger for single parents and those who are initially employed or in school. Earnings effects are typically homogenous across sites, although the authors find increasing variation over time that reaches statistical significance four years after random assignment.

Mental health disorders, which include mental illnesses and substance use disorders, are a group of conditions characterized by alterations in thinking, emotions, or behavior. In 2019, 61.2 million adults aged 18 and over in the United States had a mental health disorder in the past year. This report presents data on emergency department visits by adults with mental health disorders. Key findings include that in 2017–2019, the emergency department visit rate for adults with mental health disorders was 52.9 per 1,000 adults and decreased with age. The percentage of emergency department visits lasting 4 hours or more was higher among visits by adults with mental health disorders than visits by adults without mental health disorders. The percentage of emergency department visits that resulted in a hospital admission increased with age among those both with and without mental health disorders. Among all adults, 41.9% of emergency department visits by adults with mental health disorders had Medicaid as their primary expected payment source compared with 29.5% of visits by adults without mental health disorders.

Does a digital health intervention that uses the internet to support patient self-management and self-monitoring and is implemented in primary care clinics reduce hospitalizations among patients with multiple chronic diseases? In a randomized clinical trial of 230 participants with multiple chronic diseases, the authors found no significant difference in all-cause hospitalizations among participants who received the digital health intervention compared with usual care was found after 2 years; fewer participants in the intervention group were admitted to the hospital or experienced the composite outcome of all-cause hospitalization or death. Results indicate that, in this study, an internet-based self-management program did not result in a significant reduction in hospitalization. However, fewer participants in the intervention group were admitted to the hospital or experienced the composite outcome of all-cause hospitalization or death. Overall, these findings suggest that a digital health intervention supporting patient self-management and self-monitoring has the potential to augment primary care among patients with multiple chronic diseases.

Healthcare providers are under increasing stress and work-related burnout has become common. Mindfulness-based interventions have a potential role in decreasing stress and burnout. The purpose of this study was to determine if a continuing education course based on mindfulness-based stress reduction could decrease burnout and improve mental well-being among healthcare providers, from different professions. This was a pre-post observational study conducted in a university medical center. A total of 93 healthcare providers, including physicians from multiple specialties, nurses, psychologists, and social workers who practiced in both university and community settings, participated. The intervention was a continuing education course based on mindfulness-based stress reduction that met 2.5 hours a week for 8 weeks plus a 7-hour retreat. The classes included training in four types of formal mindfulness practices, including the body scan, mindful movement, walking meditation, and sitting meditation, as well as discussion focusing on the application of mindfulness at work. The course was offered 11 times over 6 years. The main outcome measures were work-related burnout as measured by the Maslach Burnout Inventory and self-perceived mental and physical well-being as measured by the SF-12v2. Maslach Burnout Inventory scores improved significantly from before to after the course for both physicians and other healthcare providers for the Emotional Exhaustion, Depersonalization, and Personal Accomplishment scales. Mental well-being measured by the SF12v2 also improved significantly. There were no significant changes in the SF12v2 physical health scores.