The increase in immigration enforcement during the past two decades has led to a larger number of immigrants being detained in the U.S. criminal justice system. Using data from the 2006–2018 Annual Survey of Jails, the authors examine the impact of immigrants being held for Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) on the conditions in U.S. jails. They find that increases in the number of detainees held for ICE are related to higher non-citizen jailed populations that are not offset by reductions in their citizen counterparts, likely contributing to worse confinement conditions. This is reflected in the higher levels of overcrowding and understaffing, as well as in the longer stays in jail and more physical assaults associated with a larger number of ICE detainees. The results are driven by slightly over half of U.S. counties located either along the United States–Mexico border or in states with a large or fast-growing immigrant population. These findings prove robust to using data on two local interior immigration enforcement programs responsible for the growing number of immigrant detainees in local jails—287(g) agreements and Secure Communities —as instruments to address the endogeneity of the number of ICE detainees with respect to jail conditions. The 287(g) agreements, which were first regulated in 1996, allow state and local law enforcement agencies to establish a partnership with the federal government and be deputized to act as immigration officers within their jurisdictions. Secure Communities, introduced in 2008, is an information-sharing program used in the apprehension and deportation of unauthorized immigrants. Under the program, local law enforcement agencies can submit information from arrests, such as fingerprints, to an integrated database with ICE that allows for the identification of the immigration status and criminal activity of any individual. In the latter case, ICE may request that local authorities hold certain individuals for deportation. By 2013, every jurisdiction in the United States was part of the Secure Communities program.

This report presents data on defendants who were released or detained pretrial by federal district courts, including the type of release or detention and whether defendants were returned to custody for misconduct during their release. Records were included for the 747,468 pretrial cases whose cases were disposed by federal district courts during the 8-year aggregated period of fiscal years 2011 to 2018. The report found that 32% of these defendants whose cases were disposed in federal district court were released at their initial court appearance, while 10% were released at a later hearing, such as a detention or bond hearing. Seventy-six percent of defendants released were released without financial conditions, including release on personal recognizance or on an unsecured bond. Seventy-nine percent of defendants released pretrial had conditions on their release, such as travel restrictions, substance abuse treatment requirements, weapons restrictions, and employment requirements. Nineteen percent of released defendants were charged with at least one violation of their pretrial release conditions. Of defendants released pretrial, 17% were charged with a technical violation, 2% were rearrested for a new offense, and 1% failed to appear for a subsequent court hearing

This paper identifies the features of services needed for sex trafficking victims and the importance of training frontline workers in procedures for ensuring that sex trafficking victims with substance use disorders (SUDs) are identified and referred to appropriate SUDs treatment. The recommendations in this paper stem from a virtual workshop held to develop a prioritized list of needs for addressing the intersections between sex trafficking and substance use, focusing on the identification of and response to these circumstances. The workshop was attended by community members, victim service practitioners, law enforcement and first responders, and court practitioners. Through individual interviews and virtual group discussions, participants shared their experiences in responding to and serving victims of sex trafficking who also have co-occurring SUDs. The participants identified and prioritized 58 needs and combinations of potential solutions that address 26 key problems or challenges, such as relapse and re-trafficking and a lack of long-term stability for many trafficking victims. The current report focuses on the 21 needs participants considered to be the highest priority, which included the difficulty that the co-occurrence of sex trafficking and other types of victimization brings to identifying victims of trafficking, the lack of sufficient mental health services and housing for sex trafficking victims in many communities, which are critical for keeping victims off the streets, and the lack of stability trafficking victims often have which hinders their long-term participation in criminal justice cases. These challenges and corresponding potential solutions are outlined under the service categories of identification and screening, treatment and services, and criminal justice response.

The 2019 National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) High School Transcript Study collected and analyzed transcripts from a representative sample of America’s public and private high school graduates. The study examines the types of courses 2019 high school graduates took during high school, how many credits they earned, and the grades they received. The 2019 study also explores the relationships between high school course-taking patterns and graduates' achievement based on their performance on the NAEP Grade 12 mathematics and science assessments. Highlights from the study include that core indicators of student course-taking are increasing. For example, the number of Carnegie credits earned by high school graduates increased to 28.1 credits in 2019, compared to 27.2 credits in 2009. Because high schools award different amounts of credits per course, the study standardizes course credits using Carnegie credits so that all graduates can be compared equally. One Carnegie credit is defined as 120 hours of class instruction over the course of a secondary school year. The overall grade point average earned by high school graduates increased to 3.11 in 2019, compared to 3.00 in 2009. In addition, more high school graduates are completing Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) courses in 2019 than in 2009. The percentage of high school graduates earning credits in STEM courses increased within all three subject areas–STEM advanced mathematics, STEM advanced science and engineering, and STEM-related technical courses. Compared to 2009, the percentages of high school graduates earning STEM credits in 2019 increased from 3 percentage points (STEM-related technical) to 7 percentage points (STEM advanced mathematics). Finally, gains in high school graduates’ course-taking are not reflected in their NAEP Grade 12 mathematics and science assessment scores. When comparing 2019 to 2009, the average NAEP Grade 12 mathematics assessment score decreased at the higher curriculum levels. The average NAEP mathematics score earned by high school graduates attaining a rigorous curriculum in 2019 was 184, a four-point decrease compared to 2009. For graduates attaining a midlevel curriculum, the average NAEP mathematics score was 153 in 2019, a five-point decrease compared to 2009. The average NAEP Grade 12 science assessment scores did not significantly change at any curriculum level in 2019 compared to 2009.

Head Start programs promote the school readiness of infants, toddlers, and preschool-aged children from low-income families. Services are provided in a variety of settings including centers, family child care, and children's own home . One of Head Start’s hallmarks is its whole-family approach to the services it provides: improving children’s well-being by supporting families’ well-being. Children’s well-being includes their health, development, and school readiness, while families’ well-being includes their physical and mental health, housing, and financial stability. Head Start aims to do this over the long term by providing a comprehensive, integrated set of family support services that are tailored to meet the individual needs of parents and families as well as the needs and resources of local communities. However, beyond basic information about the family support services that Head Start programs offer, little is known about exactly how programs coordinate the provision of those services. This report describes how six Head Start sites participating in the Head Start Connects case studies adapted their coordination of family support services in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The six Head Start Connects case study sites reviewed in this brief responded to restrictions on in-person activities and revised how they coordinated family support services. They quickly pivoted from in-person interactions with families and community providers to virtual connections via phone, text, video conference, and email, tailoring the mode to individual situations and preferences. And they adjusted the few activities that continued to take place in-person to address new masking and social distancing guidelines – meeting parents at their cars or on their porches to check in and provide resources and support.

Suspensions remove students from the learning environment at high rates throughout the United States. Policy and theory highlight social groups that face disproportionately high suspension rates—racial-minoritized students, students with a prior suspension, and students with disabilities. The authors used an active placebo-controlled, longitudinal field experiment with 66 teachers and 5,822 students to test a scalable empathic-mindset intervention, a 45- to 70-min online exercise to refocus middle school teachers on understanding and valuing the perspectives of students and on sustaining positive relationships even when students misbehave. In preregistered analyses, this exercise reduced suspension rates especially for Black and Hispanic students, cutting the racial disparity over the school year from 10.6 to 5.9 percentage points, a 45% reduction. Significant reductions were also observed for other groups of concern. Moreover, reductions persisted through the next year when students interacted with different teachers, suggesting that empathic treatment with even one teacher in a critical period can improve students’ trajectories through school.

Although retirees contribute essentially the same per capita revenue to state and local governments in Florida as other adults (roughly $33 more per person, before adjusting revenues to equal expenditures), their per capita expenses are significantly lower. Retirees have slightly less income than the average adult Florida resident, and spend a slightly smaller portion of that income on taxable goods, but balance this out with more valuable homes. In terms of government revenue, this causes Florida’s retiree population to contribute less to sales and gross receipt tax revenue, more to property tax revenue, and slightly less to all other revenue sources. However, retirees rarely have children in the home and therefore cause little burden to the education budget, they rarely become incarcerated, and they tend to travel on the roads at less congested times. Although they do require more medical attention than the average Florida resident, this is more than offset by their using other services less.

Natural disasters have become more frequent and destructive. In 2020, the United States experienced the most billion-dollar disasters ever, with a total cost of $96.4 billion. Moreover, disaster damaged some communities — most notably, low-income and disadvantaged communities — more than others. Much of the disruption and damage caused by these disasters could have been reduced through mitigation — that is, pre-disaster actions known to reduce damage and ease recovery. The Building Resilient Infrastructure and Communities grant award program is intended to help communities undertake this mitigation. Authorized by Congress in 2018 and administered by the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the program includes equity considerations alongside risk reduction, which represents a significant break with past policy and practice and foreshadows a new approach to building community resilience. How to meet these goals is the focus of this report, in which the authors identify ways for the grant program to develop a multi-hazard, forward-looking, risk-based approach to mitigation that also incorporates issues of equity and community well-being in its application and evaluation processes. Key findings include that no single risk assessment tool is both quantitative and qualitative; has comprehensive and consistent data coverage in terms of hazards, geographic extent, and spatial scale; is transparent and accessible; and considers future and cascading risks, including to lifeline infrastructure. The majority of risk assessment tools are focused on asset damage as the key outcome metric. Current priorities do not reflect social systems or resources as essential parts of effective mitigation. Benefit–cost and risk analyses are currently biased toward wealthy communities, while underserved populations face challenges meeting the grant program criteria.

The North American Industry Classification System (NAICS) is the standard used by federal statistical agencies in classifying business establishments for the purpose of collecting, analyzing, and publishing statistical data related to the U.S. business economy . The Petroleum and Petroleum Products Merchant Wholesalers industry group, NAICS code 4247, comprises establishments primarily engaged in the merchant wholesale distribution of petroleum and petroleum products, including liquefied petroleum gas. Business-to-business electronic markets, agents, and brokers primarily engaged in wholesaling petroleum and petroleum products, generally on a commission or fee basis, are excluded. Merchant wholesalers are establishments that sell goods on their own account. Manufacturers’ sales branches and offices (MSBOs) fall under the merchant wholesalers category as well. MSBOs are establishments maintained by manufacturing, refining, or mining enterprises apart from their plants or mines for the purpose of marketing their products. On December 15, 2021, the 2020 Annual Wholesale Trade Survey released estimates about Petroleum and Petroleum Products Merchant Wholesalers in the United States. In 2020, Petroleum and Petroleum Products Merchant Wholesalers had estimated sales of $863.4 billion, a decrease of 33.1% from $1.29 billion in 2019, end-of-year inventories of $44.1 billion, a 15.3% decrease, and operating expenses of $29.5 billion, down from $32.4 billion in 2019.

Tackling climate change and facilitating global development are urgent imperatives that will be incredibly challenging for the world to reconcile. The vast majority of the world’s energy is currently based on hydrocarbons, and nowhere in the world has achieved victory over energy poverty without a mix of fuels, including fossil fuels. The energy transition in developing countries is looking likely to be a gradual one, balancing fossil fuels with investments in clean and renewable energy systems. While the continued use of fossil fuels for energy development may be the most realistic path forward, it means climate goals may not be met. The carbon budget is what it is, and climate change impacts are often harshest in developing countries. A significant challenge in building a cleaner energy future is how to move beyond coal or capture its emissions far more extensively and rapidly. The undertaking is daunting, especially since coal use is growing — not shrinking — around the world as global energy demand grows. Financial support for developing countries to transition off coal is only just starting to appear, and more is needed. The energy transition will create new geopolitical risks and concerns that must be anticipated and considered. Some oil and gas countries will increase their geopolitical influence during the transition, as more countries look to them for rescue amid greater market volatility. The notion that countries will exit from a strategic sector that generates so much revenue and is a source of core competitive advantage may be unrealistic, but some oil exporters in the Middle East are also investing in new technologies, including solar, wind, hydrogen, ammonia, and carbon capture. The United States and other countries will face geopolitical risks and damage to international relationships if they are not part of the solution on climate change, but tensions between the developed and the developing worlds are likely to increase during the transition due to developed countries providing inadequate climate finance, urging the developing world to leapfrog to cleaner sources, and moving in the direction of using more tools to compel others to decarbonize. At the same time, if nationalism continues to rise globally and if anti-green positions become a winning populist position, that may disrupt global supply chains and erode support for the international cooperation needed to address both energy poverty and climate change.

In 2019, the overall expectation of life at birth was 78.8 years, increasing from 78.7 in 2018. Between 2018 and 2019, life expectancy at birth increased by 0.1 year for males (76.2 to 76.3) and by 0.2 year for females (81.2 to 81.4). In 2019, life expectancy at birth was 85.6 years for the non-Hispanic Asian population, 81.9 years for the Hispanic population, 78.8 years for the non-Hispanic White population, 74.8 years for the non-Hispanic Black population, and 71.8 years for the non-Hispanic American Indian or Alaska Native population. Between 2018 and 2019, life expectancy increased 0.2 year for the non-Hispanic White population and by 0.1 year for the Hispanic and non-Hispanic Black populations.

In 2019, an estimated 151 million emergency department visits occurred in the United States and about 22% of adults aged 18 and over had visited the emergency department in the past 12 months. This report presents emergency department visit rates by selected characteristics, including metropolitan statistical area status, age, sex, race and ethnicity, and health insurance status. Data for this report are from the National Hospital Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, an annual nationally representative survey of nonfederal, general, and short-stay hospitals. Key findings include that the overall emergency department visit rate (47 visits per 100 people in 2019) and visit rates by metropolitan statistical area status did not change between 2009 and 2019. The emergency department visit rate was highest for infants under age 1 year (123 visits per 100 people) followed by adults aged 75 years and over (66 per 100). The emergency department visit rate for non-Hispanic Black people (87 visits per 100 people) was higher than the rate for people from all other racial and ethnic groups. The emergency department visit rate for patients with private insurance was lowest, while the rate for patients with Medicaid or Children’s Health Insurance Program/State Children’s Health Insurance Program was highest compared with all other primary expected sources of payment.