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September 8, 2023
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review summarizes trends in the involvement of girls
in the juvenile justice system, how their contact with the
system has changed over time, their unique risk factors
and needs, theoretical frameworks explaining girls'
involvement in delinquency and the juvenile justice
system, and interventions that may lead to positive
outcomes for girls. Historically, girls have been less
likely than boys to become involved in the juvenile
justice system. Increases in the proportion of cases
involving girls during the 1990s led to increased
attention on the needs of girls in the system and on how
their needs may differ from boys’. Although girls are
still underrepresented in most stages of the juvenile
justice system, their representation is larger today than
in the past. The review found that there was a large
decline in both male and female delinquency cases between
2005 and 2020. Involvement of boys exceeded that of girls
across all age groups and all offense categories (e.g.,
person, property, drug, and public order offenses). After
being referred to court for delinquency cases, girls are
less likely than boys to be petitioned (46% of the time,
compared with 57%) and, alternatively, more likely to be
informally handled (54% of the time for girls, compared
with 43% of the time for boys). Additionally, the review
notes that most analyses of state, local, and programmatic
sources find that girls are less likely to recidivate then
boys after involvement in the juvenile justice system.
However, there is some evidence to suggest that within
different racial and ethnic groups, there are differences
in disparities by gender. Specifically, American Indian
girls are more likely to be involved in the juvenile
justice system than girls of other races and ethnicities.
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Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Juvenile
Justice and Delinquency Prevention
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The ability to prosecute a sexual assault case often
relies on the availability of DNA evidence. In fact, it
has been reported that 72% of jurors anticipate seeing DNA
in a sexual assault trial and that juries are 33 times
more likely to convict when presented with DNA evidence.
This presents a problem in the quest for justice because
the process of manually extracting DNA from sexual assault
kits can be time consuming and labor intensive. The
consequence is a nationwide backlog of unprocessed kits.
With funding from the National Institute of Justice,
researchers sought to increase the efficiency of
processing sexual assault kit samples to help reduce the
backlog. Specifically, they automated a key step in the
process that separates sperm cells from other cells —
known as the DNAse I procedure — by using the Biomek® NXP
robotic platform. A robotic platform that automates the
processing of mixed samples from sexual assault kits could
be a critical tool in the fight against sexual crimes by
increasing efficiency and speed, improving accuracy and
reliability, minimizing the risk of contamination or
degradation of samples, and standardizing the procedure,
both within and between labs.
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Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice
Programs
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White-collar crime is an amorphous term that has yet to be
conclusively defined since its first use in 1939. This
category of criminal activity results in what can be
characterized as either economic harm or an impediment to
the government’s ability to run successfully while
minimizing conflicts of interest. Sentencing of
white-collar crimes came into question in the late
twentieth century due to a perception that white-collar
offenders were receiving much lower sentences than
offenders committing more traditional crimes.
Additionally, the relationship between sentencing outcomes
and status characteristics like race, age, citizen status,
and gender were cause for concern. Different outcomes
based on demographic differences were a significant part
of the impetus for sentencing reform. To address these
disparities, the United States Sentencing Commission
(USSC) promulgated the United States Sentencing
Guidelines in 1987 to minimize nationwide sentencing
disparities. Although called guidelines, these
pre-determined sentencing ranges were mandatory until
2005, when the Supreme Court deemed them merely advisory
in United States v. Booker. The resumption of judicial
discretion has potentially opened the door to new trends
in sentencing disparities. This article focuses on
analyzing the data provided by the USSC to determine if
there has been a gender-based disparity in sentencing
since 2005, and, if so, why. For white-collar crimes,
women tend to face less severe sentences than men.
Qualitative gender differences for white-collar offenders
suggest that there is more than just difference in access
to offending opportunities, as some had theorized. This
disparity can be explained by looking at legal factors
other than gender in combination with the impact of social
stereotyping on women’s criminality and sentencing. Legal
factors other than gender considered by the courts include
women usually having less serious criminal records,
committing less serious crimes, and playing smaller roles
in offenses involving other defendants than men.
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Source: Sentencing Law and Policy
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This report is a congressionally mandated annual report
from the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES).
Using the most recent data available (at the time this
report was written) from NCES and other sources, the
report contains key indicators on the condition of
education in the United States at all levels, from
prekindergarten through postsecondary, as well as labor
force outcomes and international comparisons. This report
found that about 50% of 3- to 4-year-olds were enrolled in
school in October 2021, an increase of 10 percentage
points compared with October 2020 (the first year of the
pandemic) but still lower than in October 2019 (54%,
before the pandemic). The percentage of 5-year-olds
enrolled in school was also lower in October 2021 than in
October 2019 (86% vs. 91%). Between fall 2010 and fall
2019, total public elementary and secondary school
enrollment increased by 3%, from 49.5 million to 50.8
million students. Total enrollment then dropped by 3% to
49.4 million students in fall 2020 and remained at a
similar level (49.4 million students) in fall 2021.
Between fall 2010 and fall 2021, total undergraduate
enrollment in degree-granting institutions decreased by
15% (from 18.1 million to 15.4 million students). Drops in
undergraduate enrollment during the coronavirus pandemic
(a decline of 1.1 million students between fall 2019 and
fall 2021) accounted for 42% of the total decline during
the period between fall 2010 and fall 2021. Additionally,
the report found that public schools implemented a variety
of strategies during the 2021–22 school year to support
their students’ pandemic-related learning recovery,
including identifying individual needs with diagnostic and
formative assessment data, summer 2021 enrichment
programs, and mental health and trauma support.
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Source: National Center for Education Statistics
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The federal Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF)
program provides states and territories with flexibility
in operating programs designed to help low-income families
with children achieve economic self-sufficiency. Only
about 10% of TANF parents have completed any education
beyond high school. States can and should use the
flexibility and financial resources they have to support
parents receiving income support from the TANF program and
allow them to participate in two- and four-year college
programs. Helping families access college opens new
possibilities for participation in state and local
economies by reducing barriers to meaningful, long-term
employment that many parents experiencing financial crises
face. It also can disrupt the occupational segregation
that occurs from TANF’s emphasis on work first, which
results in parents being placed quickly into the same
unstable, low-paying jobs that often led them to TANF in
the first place. States can support participation in two-
and four-year colleges in two ways. First, they can
eliminate barriers to participation by allowing
post-secondary education to count as a work activity, even
when it does not count toward meeting the state’s federal
work participation rate requirement. Second, they can
create comprehensive programs to provide robust personal,
financial, and academic supports to help parents enroll in
college and successfully complete a two- or four-year degree.
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Source: Center on Budget and Policy Priorities
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This report presents results from a school-level
randomized controlled trial to test the effects of two
years of training and technical assistance for elementary
schools implementing a widely used approach called
multi-tiered systems of support for student behavior
(MTSS-B). The MTSS-B is a tiered approach in which schools
adopt practices to promote positive behaviors among all
students and provide additional support for those students
who need it. The study, which occurred before the pandemic
and was conducted in nearly 90 schools across the country,
evaluated impacts of MTSS-B training and technical
assistance on school climate, classroom management and
functioning, and students’ behavior and academic
achievement. For this study, an MTSS-B training provider,
Center for Social Behavior Supports, provided two years of
technical assistance and more than 60 hours of training
for district coaches and school-based behavior teams. The
study found that the MTSS-B practices were mostly
implemented well by the schools and that the training and
technical assistance program produced positive impacts on
every feature of classroom management and functioning
measured and some aspects of school climate. The MTSS-B
schools did a better job of facilitating orderly classroom
transitions from one activity to the next, of anticipating
and responding to students’ needs, of using proactive
behavior management strategies (for example, praising
students for displays of positive behaviors), and of
active monitoring students. However, the MTSS-B program
did not produce overall impacts on student academic and
behavioral outcomes during the two years of the
intervention.
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Source: MDRC
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This report examines two space-related markets that
together represent the widest variation in market and firm
maturity: the commercial space-based positioning,
navigation, and timing (PNT) market (an emerging market)
and the commercial satellite communications (SATCOM)
market (an established market). This variation between the
two markets is useful for identifying distinct and
cross-cutting themes that could be generalized to other
commercial space markets not analyzed in this research. In
this report, the researchers describe their analysis and
provide findings and recommendations for the U.S.
Department of the Air Force. This report found that
commercial pace services can provide additional capacity
and resilience to existing space capabilities or provide
new ones. The commercial space-based PNT market could
provide greater accuracy and signal strength than is
currently available via GPS. The SATCOM market offers a
variety of technologies that provide high throughput,
jamming resistance, low latency, and global coverage.
However, these services will require U.S. Department of
the Air Force to remove barriers that limit commercial
services from being fully integrated into military
operations. Additionally, the report makes three key
recommendations regarding the way U.S. Department of the
Air Force acquires commercial space services, including
(1) market intelligence capabilities to be able to stay
abreast of developments in technical capabilities, as well
as financial viability and market dynamics invest in
greater; (2) increase the sophistication of contracting
capabilities to be more adept at negotiating contracted
services; and (3) build flexible resourcing options so
that service contract negotiations can be conducted in a
more timely fashion.
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Source: RAND Corporation
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This report provides a current state assessment of how
employers are learning about and being engaged in effort
to design and adopt strategies regarding Learning and
Employment Records (LERs), or digital records of learning
and work. It also describes some emerging messages,
themes, and tactics that show promise in building employer
awareness, understanding, and ultimately adoption of LERs,
digital credentials, and verified skills. This report
found that employer communications and engagement efforts
are stymied by confusing terminology and inconsistent
descriptions. Learning and Employment Records leaders
consistently overindex on communications about technical
details, processes, project progress, and governance
structures, rather than clear descriptions of how
employers will benefit from LER platforms. Additionally,
the report notes that while employers may understand and
be open to the aims of LER initiatives, details matter.
Limited details about how and when employers will engage
with a platform, and what that engagement will require,
limit the effectiveness of engagement efforts.
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Source: Aspen Institute
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Telehealth service utilization expanded rapidly at the
COVID-19 pandemic outset, particularly for mental health
conditions. Unlike physical health conditions that may
require physical examinations or laboratory testing, many
mental health services can be provided virtually. Three
years after the 2020 SARS-CoV-2 national public health
emergency declaration, many facets of the U.S. health care
system have returned to normal. However, trends in mental
health service utilization and spending before expiration
of the public health emergency in May 2023 are largely
undocumented. In this report, the authors assessed monthly
telehealth versus in-person utilization and spending rates
for mental health services among commercially insured U.S.
adults between 2019 and 2022. During the acute phase,
in-person visits decreased by 39.5% and telehealth visits
increased roughly 10-fold (1,019.3%) compared with the
year prior. Jointly, this represented a 22.3% increase in
overall utilization. These trends were generally
consistent across conditions. During the post-acute phase,
telehealth visits stabilized at approximately 10 times
(1,068.3%) pre-pandemic levels, whereas in-person visits
increased 2.2% each month over the period. By August 2022,
in-person visits had returned to 79.9% of pre-pandemic
levels; overall, mental health service utilization was
38.8% higher than before the pandemic. These findings
suggest that telehealth utilization for mental health
services remains persistent and elevated. If this
increased utilization affects spending, insurers may begin
rejecting the new status quo. This concern is particularly
relevant when considered against the backdrop of
telehealth policies that expired alongside the national
public health emergency declaration.
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Source: RAND Corporation
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Many child welfare agencies use the Nurturing Parenting
Program Nurturing Skills for Families (NPP) program to
strengthen parenting skills. The program includes a
flexible sequence of lessons that are tailored to meet
each family's needs. This study estimated the effects of
NPP on child safety and permanency outcomes using a
quasi-experimental design. This study included 1,102
children in Arizona whose families were referred to NPP
between 2018 and 2020 (treatment group) and 6,845 children
in Arizona whose families were referred to other in-home
family preservation services during the same period
(comparison group). Outcomes were based on child welfare
administrative data. The study estimated (1) the effects
of being referred to NPP (regardless of a family's level
of participation) and (2) the effects of completing NPP.
The study found no evidence of impacts of being referred
to NPP. However, children whose families completed NPP
were less likely to experience an investigation or
substantiated investigation 4 months after the service
referral, and less likely to experience a removal 16
months later. The program had favorable effects on child
welfare outcomes when families completed the program.
Additional research is necessary to understand the
supports that enable families to complete NPP and the
specific components that are particularly effective.
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Source: Mathematica
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People who are eligible for Medicaid but not enrolled in
the program or other source of coverage have long been
considered uninsured. Some contend that this group should
be considered at least partially insured because they can
enroll in Medicaid if needed. To address how policymakers
could best interpret counts of the more than five million
people who are eligible for Medicaid but not enrolled, the
authors used data from the Medical Expenditure Panel
Survey Household Component to compare this group to
Medicaid enrollees, Medicaid-eligible people with private
coverage, and two low-income uninsured groups. Assessing
differences in access to health care, use of services, and
spending, results showed that Medicaid-eligible but not
enrolled adults have outcomes much more like those of
other uninsured low-income adults and less like those of
low-income adults with insurance. Compared with Medicaid
enrollees and Medicaid-eligible adults who had private
coverage, the Medicaid-eligible uninsured were less likely
to have a usual source of care, were more likely to face
financial barriers to needed care, had lower utilization
of care, and had a higher prevalence of high out-of-pocket
burdens. These findings have policy implications for how
to interpret counts of the uninsured and highlight the
importance of policies that promote Medicaid enrollment
and retention. The authors argue against viewing
Medicaid-eligible uninsured adults as having substantially
more coverage than other uninsured adults. Results
highlight the gains in access to care and utilization, and
reduced out-of-pocket spending burdens, that may arise
from steps to increase Medicaid enrollment and improve
retention among the eligible population. Additionally,
data showed that the Medicaid-eligible uninsured are not
only low-income, but also more likely to be Black
(non-Hispanic) and Hispanic than the general U.S.
population. Policies promoting enrollment and retention
among Medicaid-eligible adults would improve health equity.
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Source: Urban Institute
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