November 18, 2022
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This report describes U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics’
efforts to determine whether it is possible to gather
reliable national data on misdemeanor charges filed in
state, county, and municipal courts—currently a
substantial gap in criminal justice statistics. The Bureau
of Justice Statistics undertook a feasibility study,
focused on large metropolitan areas, to assess the
availability and quality of case-level data on misdemeanor
charges filed in state, county, and municipal courts. The
study found that 25 of the 27 study cities, which included
Tampa and Miami, maintain case-level data at a single
source. However, data element availability varied widely,
and only four cities had any data on the defendant’s
pretrial experience, including the pretrial release
decision and date, pretrial detention days, pretrial
supervision indicator, and an indicator of pretrial
misconduct. Additionally, most defendant and case
characteristics varied widely across the cities submitting
data, with the notable exceptions of the defendant’s sex
and age at case filing. Significant differences in charges
filed, dispositions, and sentences are at least in part
the result of which minor offenses are and are not
jailable in a city. The Bureau of Justice Statistics will
use the findings of this study to help determine whether a
more extensive data collection would yield national
estimates.
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Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice
Statistics
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This report describes characteristics of juvenile justice
facilities related to youth-reported sexual victimization.
The report presents sexual victimization rates reported by
youth in juvenile facilities by topics such as facility
organizational structure, staff, and atmosphere. It also
provides facility-reported data on staff hiring in
juvenile facilities, staff training, and youth Prison Rape
Elimination Act (PREA) education. These tables supplement
the full U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics report Sexual
Victimization Reported by Youth in Juvenile Facilities,
2018, which provides national estimates of sexual
victimization in juvenile facilities and identifies 12
high-rate and 14 low-rate facilities. The report shows
that all juvenile facilities reported using criminal
record or history checks to screen potential new hires of
frontline staff (those responsible for supervision and
direct care of youth), while about three-quarters (76%)
conducted domestic violence or civil protective order
checks and two-thirds (68%) conducted drug use tests. At
facilities where a majority of youth reported the presence
of gang activity had youth reporting any sexual
victimization (8.5%) at about 17 times the rate of
facilities where no youth reported gang activity (0.5%).
Additionally, in facilities where half or fewer youth
reported having their own room, the percentage who
reported any sexual victimization (7.3%) was twice that
reported by youth in facilities where all youth reported
having their own room
(3.1%).
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Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics
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In March 2020, the National Institute of Justice convened
a virtual meeting of researchers and practitioners to
explore the possibilities that arise from rethinking our
view of jails. Participants discussed complementing
traditional mental models, deeply held internal images of
how the world works, by viewing jails as complex adaptive
systems through the lens of complexity science, in which
perception, cognition, and action continually interact and
affect processes and outcomes. This article briefly
introduces these concepts of complexity science relevant
to jails and suggests areas for further research, such as
studying jails in the context of the local community and
its institutions, to help address persistent challenges in
the field.
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Source: National Institute of Justice
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This operational audit of the Florida Board of Governors
(BOG) for the state university system focused on selected
BOG processes and administrative activities and included a
follow-up on findings noted in the Auditor General’s
previous report. State law requires each university that
retains a state operating fund carry forward balance in
excess of 7% of its state operating budget to submit an
Education and General (E&G) carryforward spending plan to
the BOG .The report found that BOG procedures did not
always provide for effective review, approval, and
amendment of these state university E&G carryforward
spending plans or effective monitoring of state university
use of E&G appropriation carryforward funds. Additionally,
state law authorizes universities to implement bonus
schemes based on awards for work performance or employee
recruitment and retention and requires bonus schemes,
including the evaluation criteria by which a bonus will be
awarded, to be submitted to and approved by the BOG before
its implementation. The report notes that BOG regulations
and guidance could be enhanced to ensure that state
universities and the BOG comply with the statutory
requirements governing the implementation and approval of
bonus schemes for state university system employees.
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Source: Florida Auditor General
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Federal accountability policy mandates that states
administer standardized tests beginning in third grade. In
turn, third-grade test scores are often viewed as a key
indicator in policy and practice. Yet literacy struggles
begin well before third grade, as do racial and
socioeconomic disparities in children’s literacy skills.
Kindergarten readiness assessments provide a unique
opportunity to better understand the emergence of literacy
disparities. The authors use unique kindergarten literacy
data from nearly every school division in Virginia to
document the relationship between children’s early
literacy skills and their later reading proficiency. When
comparing children with similar literacy skills at
kindergarten entry, the authors find significant racial
and socioeconomic differences in the likelihood that a
child will be proficient on their third-grade reading
assessment. Findings indicate that Black children,
Hispanic children classified as English learners, and
children from economically disadvantaged backgrounds are
substantially less likely to reach proficiency standards
on their third-grade reading assessment relative to their
White and more-advantaged peers who enter kindergarten
with similar literacy skills. Furthermore, children in
these subgroups who enter kindergarten with literacy
skills in the lowest quintile are roughly 20 percentage
points less likely to reach reading proficiency in third
grade than are White children and more economically
advantaged children who enter kindergarten with skills in
the same quintile.
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Source: Educational Researcher
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This brief explores both the promise and challenges of
trauma-informed education as conceptualized and
implemented to date. It suggests that trauma-informed
education may be best designed as a system wide
commitment, rather than an intervention, and that the
concept of equity-centered trauma-informed education may
offer a productive path to addressing the conceptual and
implementation challenges critics have noted.
Specifically, equity-centered trauma-informed education is
rooted in social justice concerns, highlighting the
systemic roots of trauma as well as the need for
equitable, systemic solutions. To support effective
integration of such an approach and address identified
weaknesses of trauma-informed education to date, the brief
offers specific recommendations for district and school
leaders including developing school-community partnerships
to expand the capacity of schools to meet student needs
such as mental health services and ensuring there is
adequate time, space, budget, and personnel for essential
relationship-building, regulation, and restorative
responses. Additionally, in the interest of not only
responding to trauma but of working to prevent it, the
brief also includes recommendations for state and local
policymakers to promote broader social and education
policy changes through specific funding strategies such as
funding staffing for school-based mental health providers,
including counselors and social workers at recommended
ratios of one per 250 students.
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Source: National Education Policy Center
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The U.S. Department of Labor’s, Office of Disability
Employment Policy contracted with Mathematica to
understand better the educational and employment
challenges and opportunities faced by the growing number
of young adults on the autism spectrum. Building on a
prior literature, this review explores which programs,
models and strategies improve employment outcomes for
young adults on the autism spectrum, drawing from a
selected list of publications that met criteria for
rigorous research design and effectiveness. The authors
identified 48 studies that used a rigorous impact
evaluation design that could credibly estimate causal
impacts on employment outcomes for young adults with
development disabilities. This review found that there is
a significant gap between the quantity of employment
approaches used to help young adults with developmental
disabilities and the efforts to build evidence on their
effectiveness. The authors were only able to identify
three programs that had rigorous evidence on their
effectiveness in improving employment outcomes for this
population. Of these three programs, one focused on
vocational rehabilitation services and two focused on a
virtual interview training program. The authors note a
need for more evidence on the effectiveness of programs
that show promise for improving employment-related
outcomes in community settings for youth with
developmental disabilities.
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Source: Mathematica
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Despite the strong representation of Black Americans in
military service, there is little research on the impact
of military service on Black people — that is, whether
Black veterans have better life outcomes, in terms of
health, economic status, and social relationships —
compared with their Black civilian counterparts and White
veterans and civilians. This report analyzes data from
nationally representative surveys to examine four types of
outcomes: physical health, behavioral health, economic
stability, and interpersonal relationships. The report
finds that a majority of Black veterans experience
improved economic stability compared with Black Americans
who have never served, as measured by higher income,
improved ability to cover costs of medical and dental
care, higher rates of homeownership, and decreased
reliance on food assistance programs. Additionally, Black
veterans are more likely to be married, and at younger
ages, than Black civilians, which has been shown to be
associated with positive economic and mental and physical
health outcomes. However, military service was also
associated with some negative outcomes. For example, Black
veterans have higher odds than Black civilians of
experiencing chronic pain, high-impact pain, hypertension,
high cholesterol, Type 2 diabetes, prostate cancer, and
work-related limitations.
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Source: RAND Corporation
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Despite their impressive support for struggling small
businesses throughout the COVID-19 crisis, community
development financial institutions (CDFIs) still face
several capacity limitations, including the adoption of
effective and appropriate technology tools. This brief
explores the ways CDFIs can best leverage technology to
scale their operations and increase their capacity to
better serve small businesses. Drawing from interviews
with various stakeholders – including technology
providers, philanthropic representatives, and CDFIs
lending to small businesses – the authors find that while
technology systems and tools matter for CDFIs’
profitability, scalability, efficiency, and mission, CDFIs
experience several barriers to investing in technology
including a lack of financial and human resources for
maintaining technological systems beyond implementation, a
lack of awareness and understanding of available
technological solutions, and difficulty obtaining and
integrating technologies in a manner that overcomes issues
surrounding digital literacy and cross-system
connectivity. Additionally, the authors offer
recommendations for investing in technology systems such
as automating tasks and integrating functions with
technology to reduce the variable costs of lending and
position CDFIs to scale their operations.
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Source: Urban Institute
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Established in 1979, Healthy People is an initiative of
the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services that
provides science-based, 10-year national objectives with
numerical targets for improving the health of all
Americans. For every decade since Healthy People 2000
(launched in 1990), the Healthy People initiative has also
included an overarching goal related to health disparities
and equity. Healthy People 2020 (HP2020) included an
overarching goal related to health disparities. This
report examines changes in health disparities over time by
race and ethnicity for HP2020 objectives using three
measures of disparity. Data were analyzed for 506
objectives such as new cases of hepatitis C, HIV infection
deaths, and motor vehicle crash deaths, from 68 data
sources from 2001 to 2018. Analyses were restricted to
HP2020 objectives with data by race and ethnicity at the
baseline and final time points for a minimum set of
population groups. The analyses indicated there was little
or no change detected in disparities for most of the
objectives, regardless of the measure used. The findings
in this report underscore the fact that disparities
persist and that, because there is no gold standard in
health disparities measurement, using multiple measures to
evaluate disparities can provide different approaches to
assess progress toward the elimination of health
disparities and achievement of health equity. As Healthy
People 2030 continues to highlight the importance of
measuring and tracking disparities and inequity in public
health outcomes along with its overarching goal to
eliminate health disparities and achieve health equity,
the findings here and the lessons learned from HP2020 will
inform further research and analytic and methodological
development.
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Source: National Center for Health Statistics
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Approximately 70% of adults in the United States report
drinking alcohol in the past year, as do 30 of youth under
the age of 21. Alcohol misuse is associated with a variety
of harms that include multiple health conditions, like
high blood pressure, cancer, and other diseases; mental
health disparities; violence and crime; fatal and
non-fatal motor vehicle crashes; and others, even death.
As rates of alcohol use and related harms continue to
remain high, it is important for communities to know the
most effective options to prevent and reduce alcohol
misuse. This guide provides an overview of effective
prevention policies that can be implemented at the local,
state, tribal, and/or territorial levels. It lays out key
considerations and strategies for these policies,
including the most equitable ways to implement and enforce
them. The guide illustrates how Miami Gardens, Florida,
Baltimore, Maryland, and the state of Oregon have
implemented policies and regulations to prevent alcohol
misuse. Finally, the guide concludes with guidance on
conducting policy evaluations and overviews of four basic
types of evaluations including formative evaluations,
process evaluations, outcome evaluations, and impact
evaluations.
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Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,
Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration
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In this study, the authors examine characteristics of
beneficiaries, physicians, and their practice sites
associated with greater use of low-value services, which
are services that are medically unnecessary and provide no
health benefits to patients, using low-value service
measures that reflect current care practices. The authors
examine beneficiary-level total counts of low-value
services based on the existing 31 claims-based measures
updated by excluding three services provided with
diminishing frequency to Medicare beneficiaries and by
replacing these with more recently identified low-value
services. The authors estimated hierarchical linear models
with an extensive list of beneficiary, physician, and
practice site characteristics to examine the contribution
of characteristics at each level in predicting greater use
of low-value services. The authors also examined the
proportion of variation in low-value services use
attributable to the set of characteristics at each level.
The findings indicate that patients with disabilities,
end-stage renal disease, and those in regions with higher
poverty rates receive 10, 80, and 10 (respectively) more
low-value services per 1,000 beneficiaries across all 31
measures combined than patients without such attributes.
Additionally, greater physician comprehensiveness and an
increase in the number of primary care practitioners at a
practice were associated with 40 and 20 fewer low-value
services per 1,000 beneficiaries, respectively.
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Source: Mathematica
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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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