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.

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%).

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.