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May 12, 2023
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The authors of this document report on phase one of the
Formation Evaluation of the Law Enforcement-Based Victim
(LEV) Services Program, which was developed by the federal
Office for Victims of Crime in response to the need to
expand and enhance law enforcement responses to crime
victims. The authors lay out the reasons and approach to
the formative evaluation; LEV program inventory, aimed at
helping agencies implement law enforcement-based victim
services programs; typology of LEV programs, noting three
key programmatic characteristics of agency size, program
type, and supervisor type; and next steps. The authors also
provide data tables that give a comprehensive overview of
the evaluation survey results and will inform phase two of
the evaluation. These tables provide information such as
community characteristics where LEV programs are located;
characteristics of the LEV programs, such as agency size,
incorporation of LEV personnel within specialized units,
locations where LEV personnel provide services to victims,
and the agency’s progress toward implementing the intended
components/activities of their LEV program;; types of
training provided to LEV personnel; and LEV documentation
practices.
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Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice
Programs
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The Council of State Governments Justice Center analyzed
data provided by Departments of Corrections from 41 states
to estimate the cost of incarcerating people for
supervision violations and revocations in 2021. Data
included fixed and variable expenses, such as maintenance,
staffing, food, supplies, and health care services. Over $8
billion was spent across 41 states to incarcerate 193,000
people for supervision violations and revocations. Florida
spent an estimated $313,267,794. Adjusting for the size of
each state’s population, the cost of recidivism exceeded
$40 per resident in 10 states, with Wisconsin spending the
most at $72 per resident.
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Source: The Council of State Governments Justice Center
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This research agenda is a starting point for building a
foundational knowledge base that moves past decades-old
prison research grounded in traditional notions of
confinement within a security-and control paradigm.
Instead, it underscores the importance of leveraging
research and data to promote transparency and
accountability in carceral systems, and to do so through a
racial equity lens. The goal of this agenda is to encourage
researchers to pursue groundbreaking inquiry that will
ultimately transform prisons into safer, more humane,
rehabilitative, and more equitable environments. It begins
by setting forth guiding principles and then presents
concrete strategies for advancing transformative change in
U.S. prisons, reducing racial inequity, improving metrics
of well-being, advancing transparency and accountability,
and more broadly promoting human dignity in carceral
settings.
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Source: Urban Institute
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In 2022, the average civics score at eighth grade decreased
by 2 points compared to 2018. The average score in 2022 was
not significantly different from 1998, the first year the
assessment was given. The average score is reported on the
National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) civics
scale, which ranges from 0 to 300. In 2022, the percentage
of students who performed below the NAEP Basic level
increased by 3 percentage points. Eighth-grade students
performing at the NAEP Basic level should be able to define
government, constitution, the rule of law, and politics.
There was no significant change in the percentages of
students who performed at NAEP Basic, NAEP Proficient, and
NAEP Advanced compared to 1998. NAEP Proficient students
should be able to discuss ways that citizens can use the
political process to influence government and NAEP Advanced
students should be able to recognize the impact of American
democracy on other countries, as well as other countries'
impact on American politics and society. Forty-nine percent
of eighth-grade students report taking a class mainly
focused on civics in grade 8. Twenty-nine percent of
eighth-grade students have teachers whose primary
responsibility is teaching civics. More higher-performing
students see themselves able to make a difference in their
community and believe their civics schoolwork helps them
understand what is happening in the world. And
higher-performing students are more confident in their
ability to explain why it is important to pay attention to
and participate in the political process.
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Source: U.S. Department of Education, National Center for
Education Statistics
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For adults with low incomes and potential first-generation
college-goers, enrolling in college can be challenging. The
U.S. Department of Education-funded Educational Opportunity
Centers (EOCs) provide supports to help navigate some of
the barriers to enrollment, including assistance with
completing college and financial aid application processes,
academic advising, and personal counseling. This study
tested a text messaging program provided as a supplement to
EOCs' typical services. The program included a set of
personalized, automated text messages focused on how to
secure financial aid, complete key college enrollment
steps, and navigate other potential barriers to college
entry. Clients from 18 EOCs were randomly assigned to
receive the text messages in addition to typical EOC
services or to receive typical EOC services only. The study
compared the Free Application for Federal Student Aid
(FAFSA) completion and college enrollment rates of these
two groups to determine the effectiveness of the messaging
program. This study found that although many clients
completed important college-going tasks such as applying to
college and submitting the FAFSA, 4 out of every 10 clients
did not enroll in college. These clients may face complex
barriers to enrollment that cannot be addressed by
low-touch text outreach alone, suggesting the need for
further inquiry into the challenges to college enrollment
faced by the EOC client population.
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Source: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of
Education Sciences
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In this report, principals in public schools point to a
lack of substitute teachers and qualified applicants as
barriers to sufficient classroom staffing coverage during
the 2022 omicron variant spike. Hiring struggles reportedly
worsened for most principals year over year, driven by a
lack of qualified applicants. When hiring, principals said
they valued teachers whose mindsets aligned to their school
culture over other qualifications. Policymakers, educators,
and media should exercise caution when discussing teacher
shortages, because the situation is not monolithic.
Challenges in filling teaching positions are not universal
and differ by geography and school characteristics.
Districts should carefully inspect how substitute teachers
are allocated across schools and revisit efforts to attract
and retain substitute teachers. Substitute teachers are not
a postscript in current discussions of teacher shortages.
Principals see a lack of substitute teachers as a key
driver of their staffing struggles. Districts should
consider what they can do to recruit, hire, and retain
teachers of color. Some suggested avenues for improving
diversity across schools include increased pay and loan
forgiveness opportunities, organizational changes in hiring
practices, and preservice and in-service training for
principals. States should revisit teacher qualification
requirements. As many states have been reducing the
qualifications required to teach, one reason surveyed
principals struggled to hire teachers is because they did
not think the available applicants were qualified to be in
their classrooms.
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Source: RAND Corporation
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The Constitutional basis for conducting the decennial
census of population is to reapportion the U.S. House of
Representatives. Apportionment is the process of
distributing the 435 memberships, or seats, in the U.S.
House of Representatives among the 50 states. With the
exception of the 1920 Census, an apportionment has been
made by the Congress on the basis of each decennial census
from 1790 to 2020. The apportionment population for 2020
consists of the resident population of the 50 states plus
overseas federal employees (military and civilian) and
their dependents living with them, who were included in
their home states. The resident population counts for the
District of Columbia, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Island
Areas are not included in apportionment calculations
because they do not have any voting seats in the U.S. House
of Representatives. The 2020 Census apportionment
population was 331,108,434. This was a 21,924,971 (7.1%)
increase since the 2010 Census. The resident population of
the 50 states was 330,759,736, a 22,615,921 (7.3%) increase
since 2010; the overseas population was 348,698. The four
most populous states (California, Texas, Florida, and New
York, respectively) each had a 2020 Census apportionment
population over 20 million, and each was allocated more
than 25 House seats. Together, these four states received
about one-third of all House seats since the 1990 Census.
Meanwhile, according to the 2020 Census, the six least
populous states (Wyoming, Vermont, Alaska, North Dakota,
South Dakota, Delaware, respectively) each had an
apportionment population under 1 million and were allocated
only one seat each.
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Source: U.S. Department of Commerce, Census Bureau
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This paper uses near-population establishment micro data
from the Economic Census from 1992 through 2017 to examine
trends in local concentration in the United States and
compare these trends to their national-level counterparts.
National industrial concentration in the U.S. has risen
sharply since the early 1980s, but there remains dispute
over whether local geographic concentration has followed a
similar trend. This paper documents that the
Herfindahl-Hirschman index (HHI), a measure of market
concentration, for local employment concentration, measured
at the county-by-NAICS(North American Industry
Classification System), six-digit industry-cell level, fell
between 1992 and 2017 even as local sales concentration
rose. The divergence between national and local employment
concentration trends is attributable to the structural
transformation of U.S. economic activity: both sales and
employment concentration rose within industry-by-county
cells; but reallocation of sales and employment from
relatively concentrated manufacturing industries (e.g.,
steel mills) towards relatively un-concentrated service
industries (e.g. hair salons) reduced local concentration.
A stronger between-sector shift in employment relative to
sales drove the net fall in local employment concentration.
Holding industry employment shares at their 1992 level,
average local employment concentration would have risen by
about 9% by 2017. Instead, it fell by 5%. The authors note
that falling local employment concentration may intensify
competition for recent market entrants. Simultaneously,
rising within industry-by-geography concentration may
weaken competition for incumbent workers who have limited
sectoral mobility.
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Source: Blueprint Labs
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This brief describes the current landscape of
apprenticeship standards and Urban Institute’s work with
the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) to produce National
Occupational Frameworks in a variety of growing occupations
and sectors, which will become the foundation for a
gold-standard occupational standards development system
through the Registered Apprenticeship Occupations and
Standards Center of Excellence. Registered apprenticeship
offers an opportunity for employers to hire, train, and
retain a skilled workforce, and workers to earn income
while they learn. But the complexities of the American
apprenticeship system deter many potential sponsors from
creating or registering programs. While many other
countries use a centralized system for creating
apprenticeship standards, the U.S. allows individual
employers or groups of employers to create their own
standards to gain approval as a registered program. Because
every employer has to start from scratch and use valuable
resources to develop an apprenticeship program, this
process creates barriers and prevents apprenticeship
programs from scaling nationally. To address this, the DOL
and Urban Institute are creating 80 National Occupational
Frameworks over four years that will be widely available
and free to any organization looking to register an
apprenticeship program in that occupation. To date, 43
frameworks have been created for apprenticeable occupations
across a variety of sectors, including advanced
manufacturing, business services, education, energy,
finance and insurance, health care, hospitality,
information technology, and transportation. These
frameworks include a work schedule as well as background
information about the occupation, information on how to use
the work process schedule, and an outline of the courses
and certificates that can be used to develop the
apprenticeship program’s required related technical
instruction.
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Source: Urban Institute
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Using literal text from the National Vital Statistics
System, this report provides national drug overdose death
rates involving fentanyl, methamphetamine, cocaine, heroin,
and oxycodone by sex, age, race and Hispanic origin, and
public health region. This report found that from 2016
through 2021, age-adjusted drug overdose death rates
involving fentanyl, methamphetamine, and cocaine increased,
while drug overdose death rates involving oxycodone
decreased. In 2021, the age-adjusted death rates for males
were higher than the rates for females for all drugs
analyzed. Among those aged 25-64, the highest rate of drug
overdose deaths involved fentanyl; although a similar
pattern was observed among those aged 0-24 years and 65 and
over, no significant differences were observed between the
rates. Fentanyl was also the most frequent opioid or
stimulant drug involved in drug overdose deaths for the
race and Hispanic-origin groups analyzed.
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Source: National Center for Health Statistics
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This report presents estimates for selected health
conditions and health care use among American Indian and
Alaska Native adults by tribal land residential status. In
2019–2021, the percentage of American Indian and Alaska
Native adults who ever had diagnosed diabetes was
significantly higher for those living on tribal lands
(18.9%) compared with those living off tribal lands
(11.5%). While American Indian and Alaska Native adults
living on tribal lands were more likely to have a usual
place of care, they also were more likely to have an
emergency room visit in the past 12 months compared with
those living off tribal lands. The percentage of American
Indian and Alaska Native adults who received an influenza
vaccination in the past 12 months was higher among those
living on tribal lands (49.6%) compared with those living
off (39.2%). American Indian and Alaska Native adults
living on tribal lands were less likely to delay or not
receive mental health treatment due to cost in the past 12
months compared with American Indian and Alaska Native
adults living off tribal lands (2.2% compared with 8.3%,
respectively). Each of these associations remained after
adjusting for differences in education level between the
two groups.
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Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
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The United States has seen increasing shifts toward home-
and community-based services (HCBS) in place of
institutional care for long-term services and supports.
This paper identifies HCBS access barriers and
facilitators, and discusses how barriers contribute to
disparities for persons with dementia living in rural areas
and exacerbate disparities for minoritized populations.
Barriers to HCBS access for persons with dementia range
from community and infrastructure barriers (e.g.,
clinicians and cultural differences), to interpersonal and
individual-level barriers (e.g., caregivers, awareness, and
attitudes). These barriers affect the health and quality of
life for persons with dementia and may affect whether
individuals can remain in their home or community.
Facilitators included a range of more comprehensive and
dementia-attuned practices and services in health care,
technology, recognition and support for family caregivers,
and culturally competent and linguistically accessible
education and services. System refinements, such as
incentivizing cognitive screening, can improve detection
and increase access to HCBS. Disparities in HCBS access
experienced by minoritized persons with dementia may be
addressed through culturally competent awareness campaigns
and policies that recognize the necessity of familial
caregivers in supporting persons with dementia. These
findings can inform efforts to ensure more equitable access
to HCBS, improve dementia competence, and reduce
disparities.
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Source: RAND Corporation
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