This report provides statistics on whether prisoners were required to have a work assignment, the types of work they performed while incarcerated, and reasons they chose to have a work assignment if one was not required. Findings are based on data collected in the most recent Survey of Prison Inmates, which was conducted in 2016 through face-to-face interviews with a national sample of federal and state prisoners. This report found that about 61% of all U.S. prisoners in 2016 reported that they had a current work assignment. Most federal (83%) and state (71%) prisoners who had a work assignment reported that they were required to have one. Among U.S. prisoners in 2016 who had a work assignment that was not a requirement, 7 in 10 (70%) reported that learning new job skills was a very important reason in their decision to work while in prison. Federal and state prisoners who chose to have a work assignment reported similar reasons for their decision. Learning new job skills (71% of federal and 70% of state prisoners) and earning spending money (63% of federal and 54% of state prisoners) were commonly reported as a very important factor in their decision to work.

This resource guide provides a variety of outreach tools and sample materials to help people develop and implement a National Crime Victims’ Rights Week campaign, along with other public awareness campaigns throughout the year. This web-based resource guide provides six tabs encompassing a variety of tools and sample materials for implementing the National Crime Victims’ Rights Week (NCVRW) campaign, including sample materials for traditional and social media, a history of the crime victims’ rights movement, and original artwork to unite the national effort. The NCVRW campaign aims to engage survivors, inform policy and practice, and effect change. Introductory materials include a Resource Guide Overview and a Frequently Asked Questions document; an events page lists relevant community awareness events, resource fairs, vigils and other events hosted across the U.S. by local service providers and allied professionals. Other pages include: Developing Your Campaign, which includes documents with presentation tips, sample PowerPoint templates, ideas for special events and how to expand outreach through partnerships; Communicating Your Message, which provides sample press releases and social media posts in English and Spanish, tips on crafting a media plan, and how to work with reporters; Landmarks, which provides a historical overview outlining the progress of the crime victims’ rights movement from 1965 through present day; Artwork, which provides themed posters and images for social media or other web-based efforts; Theme Videos, which provides YouTube videos for public awareness use and training events; and Additional Resources, which features sources for current information and training on crime victim issues.

This publication summarizes some of the findings and recommendations included in Crime and Justice Institute’s 2022 report, Improving Outcomes and Safely Reducing Revocations from Community Supervision in Florida. For the report, the Crime and Justice Institute partnered with the Florida Department of Corrections (FDC) in 2019 to examine the factors driving revocations of community supervision – including probation and community control – and identify opportunities to safely reduce revocations and enhance public safety. In examining Florida’s community supervision system, the report found that nearly one-half of people on community supervision are revoked. Furthermore, 57% of all revoked from community supervision are revoked due to technical violations (as opposed to new offenses); 31% of people revoked from community supervision received prison time and another 33% received jail time. Based on these findings, the report also provides fourteen opportunities to strengthen supervision practices and reduce recidivism, which are organized into three key areas: (1) Removing barriers to success, including individualizing conditions to better align with the factors driving that person’s risk to reoffend; (2) Focusing resources on the highest-risk individuals; and (3) Ensuring long-term sustainability of evidence-based practices by taking steps such as ensuring staff and stakeholders are aligned with FDC’s commitment to using evidence-based practices to improve outcomes.

Youth involved in the juvenile justice system routinely face a variety of repercussions beyond detention. Although some of these may be directly related to the violation that occurred, there are many other secondary effects that can result from their system involvement. These secondary repercussions, or collateral consequences, can negatively impact youth and their families upon even the lowest level of engagement with the juvenile justice system. Such side effects can restrict a youth’s ability to recover and develop into a productive and self-sustaining adult citizen. This publication documents the high-level discussions that occurred in the fall of 2022 as part of a series of learning calls and a virtual roundtable and highlights key policy strategies for Governors’ offices to consider addressing this issue. The authors found that justice-involved youth face a diverse range of collateral consequences that can have both immediate and long-term impacts on their well-being. Developing a non-punitive, community-based trauma-informed approach that is supported by key stakeholders is key to reducing collateral consequences for justice-involved youth. Governor’s office can mitigate the challenges faced by policy makers seeking to address this problem by bringing attention to the issue, encouraging collaboration, building consensus among key stakeholders, and proposing legislation addressing specific collateral consequences through targeted policies or comprehensive reform.

This report describes the rationale, goals, and activities of the Strengthening Michigan Humanities project, an effort led by the Michigan Community College Association. The project is designed to strengthen community college transfer pathways in four humanities fields— communication, English, history, and theater—by identifying and using promising strategies to connect community college students to programs of study in these areas and by increasing coordination and curricular alignment between two- and four-year institutions. The authors analyze state administrative data collected by the Michigan Education Data Center to describe statistics and trends in community college student course enrollments, transfer, and bachelor’s degree completion in a wide array of humanities fields, including the four humanity disciplines, and the liberal arts. The authors also summarize findings from interviews with faculty, staff, and students to highlight promising approaches to strengthening humanities transfer outcomes. The study finds that clearly defined pathways that lead to junior-level standing in a major can invite students to consider study in the humanities. Colleges can complement these pathways with resources to warm students up to study in the humanities, including program-specific advising and in-class and out-of-class applied learning and career exploration experiences. Recommendations for colleges and universities include (1) create coherence for students within the general studies/liberal arts degree program through pre-majors, concentrations, or other structures that create smaller and more specific academic communities; (2) ask every student about their interests, strengths, and aspirations and connect students interested in the humanities with major-specific mentoring, program-specific advising, and opportunities for career exploration; (3) create applied learning opportunities inside and outside of class so that students see relevant and real-world benefits of studying the humanities; and (4) invest in humanities departments through faculty hiring and other supports such that faculty have the necessary resources to carry out these recommendations.

At four-year public and private institutions, the total cost of attendance almost tripled between 1979-80 and 2020-21, accounting for inflation. Only students from higher-income families pay that full cost, or sticker price featured in headlines. Most students pay less because they receive financial aid in the form of grants (sometimes called scholarships). This means they pay a net price that is less—often much less—than the sticker price. Determining the net price for individual students is difficult, and tracking changes over time is even harder. To understand changes in college affordability, one must track not only the highly visible sticker prices but also financial aid and net prices. The results show the cost of attendance fell 5%-10% across all types of institutions, with the largest decline among public flagship research universities. Net prices fell even more. In all institution types, aside from other public institutions, net prices declined by about 10%-15%. Net prices at other public institutions also declined but somewhat less, by about 5%-10%. Ironically, recent inflation has lowered net prices for college for all students. At highly selective institutions, that decline appears to have started earlier for all but higher-income students. It remains to be seen whether these trends continue, not just for sticker prices but for the net prices that lower- and moderate-income students face. Without finding better ways to track college costs for students with different family financial circumstances, it will be difficult to know if that happened. Students and their families will continue to make one of the most important financial decisions of their lives half in the dark.

Housing affordability is a significant policy challenge facing the greater Washington, DC, region, where nearly half of renter households struggle with unaffordable rents. Few federal programs and resources are targeted to reach households with very low incomes of 30% to 50% of the area median income—the federal affordable housing doughnut hole. But local jurisdictions can help increase production of more affordable units using policy levers to reduce project costs, increase project revenue, and adjust land use. By making more explicit public commitments to deepen affordability, jurisdictions can challenge the market to produce more affordable units. To fill the doughnut hole, local governments need to support these commitments by increasing investment, leveraging public assets for affordable housing, updating zoning to reflect current housing needs, and collaborating more frequently with state government and external partners.

This collection of two online videos (each about 15 minutes) shows how collaborative community engagement can contribute to environmental justice for residents who have been affected by neighborhood disinvestment in the communities within Elizabeth, New Jersey, and San Diego, California. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) defines environment justice as the fair treatment and meaningful involvement of all people regardless of race, color, national origin, or income with respect to the development, implementation and enforcement of environmental laws, regulations and policies. A long history of policies dating back to the 1930s that graded predominantly Black and immigrant neighborhoods as high risk for home lending, a practice known as redlining, has contributed to neighborhood disadvantage, and caused them to struggle with environmental inequity. These communities tend to be hotter, exist in food deserts, have worse health outcomes, and are exposed to poorer air quality. Organizations like Groundwork USA, a network of local organizations devoted to transforming the natural and built environment of low-resource communities, help address and plan for future conditions, policies, and developments that may have an adverse environmental impact on these communities. These videos show how this has worked in communities in New Jersey and California.

For 2019–2020, an average of 3.8 million emergency department visits for motor vehicle crash injuries occurred annually. Most injuries from motor vehicle crashes (90.4%) are unintentional and occur among vehicle occupants, and these types of injuries are a leading cause of all injury in the United States. This report presents emergency department visit rates for injuries related to all types of motor vehicle crashes by age, race and ethnicity, health insurance status, and region. Key findings include that in 2019–2020, the annual average emergency department visit rate for motor vehicle crash injuries was 11.6 visits per 1,000 people per year. The emergency department visit rate was highest among patients aged 15–24 (19.1 visits per 1,000 people per year) and then declined with age. The emergency department visit rate for non-Hispanic Black patients (28.1) was higher than for non-Hispanic White (10.2) and Hispanic (8.7) patients. Emergency department visit rates for patients whose primary expected source of payment was Medicaid, Children’s Health Insurance Program, other state-based program, or no insurance were higher than those for patients who had private insurance or Medicare. The emergency department visit rate for motor vehicle crash injuries at hospitals in the South (15.0) was the highest among U.S. regions (the next highest was the Midwest with a rate of 9.7).

This report uses 2021 National Health Interview Survey (NHIS) data to examine differences in serious psychological distress in the past 30 days by work conditions, including shift work, monthly earnings variation, perceived job insecurity, and work schedule flexibility, for working adults aged 18-64 in the United States. This report found that in 2021, working adults aged 18-64 who usually worked the evening or night shift (4.8%) or a rotating shift (3.9%) were more likely to experience serious psychological distress compared with day shift workers (2.3%). Additionally, serious psychological distress was higher among workers who reported difficulty changing their work schedule (4.2%) compared with those who reported it was easy or somewhat easy to change their work schedule (2.2%). The percentage of workers experiencing serious psychological distress increased as monthly variation in earnings increased.

This report explores selected sociodemographic characteristics of adults aged 18 and over living in families experiencing food insecurity. The report finds that in 2021, 5.9% of adults aged 18 and over lived in families experiencing food insecurity in the past 30 days, and family food insecurity was higher among women (6.5%) than men (5.2%). Differences in family food insecurity by demographic and family characteristics of adults were noted in the results. Adults with disabilities (15%) were three times more likely to live in families experiencing food insecurity than adults without disabilities (5%). Family food insecurity was highest among unmarried adults living with children under age 18 (9.8%), and lowest among married adults not living with children under age 18 (3.4%). Additionally, the percentage of adults experiencing family food insecurity varied by urbanization level. Adults living in large fringe metropolitan areas experienced the lowest rates of family food insecurity (4.2%), and family food insecurity increased with decreasing urbanization to 5.8% for those living in small and medium metropolitan areas and 7.7% for those living in nonmetropolitan areas.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) provides financial assistance to low-income individuals and families to buy food. The program helps reduce food insecurity and may also improve health and well-being and lower health care costs among older adults. Although many older adults are eligible for SNAP, a variety of barriers, such as a burdensome application process, keep many from participating. Policy solutions are available that could help enroll more eligible older adults in SNAP, which would improve food security as well as health and financial security for many older people living on limited incomes. This paper proposes four federal policy options that build on documented successful efforts to improve SNAP access and participation among eligible older adults. The list is not meant to be exhaustive; moreover, efforts to improve SNAP access for older adults will be most successful when combined with a variety of policy and programmatic efforts at all levels of government. The recommendations include (1) Streamlining SNAP enrollment for recipients of Supplemental Security Income; (2) Medicaid–SNAP data sharing for outreach and enrollment; (3) Extended certification periods; and (4) Telephonic signatures without audio recording. The federal policy options presented in this report, some of which have already shown success through demonstration projects, can improve SNAP access and participation among eligible older adults. These options could also help reduce administrative burden on both SNAP staff and older adult applicants and participants. At the same time, additional efforts will be needed at all levels of government to address SNAP access barriers among older adults and help ensure that everyone who is eligible for these benefits can receive them.