November 10, 2023
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This study describes the development and validation of the
Adult Dynamic Validated Instrument for Sex Offense
Recidivism (ADVISOR), which is designed to predict two
types of recidivism-repeat sexual offending and failure to
register (FTR)-specific to people convicted of sex
offenses. Developed and internally validated on more than
40,000 men and women convicted of sex offenses who had been
released from prison, the ADVISOR had adequate predictive
performance, achieving an area under the curve (AUC) score
of 0.71 for sex offense recidivism and 0.73 for FTR
recidivism. An AUC score of 1 indicates the model’s
predictions are 100% correct, while an AUC score of 0
indicates the model’s predictions are 0% correct. The
ADVISOR performed especially well for females for sex
offense recidivism, obtaining an AUC of 0.78 in the
internal validation and an AUC of 0.82 in the external
validation.
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Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice
Programs
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This report is the 18th in a series produced by the federal
Bureau of Justice Statistics. It details the number of
applications for background checks for firearm transfers
and permits received by the Federal Bureau of Investigation
(FBI) and state and local checking agencies. It also
describes the types of permits or checks used by each
state, the number of denials issued by these agencies, and
the reasons for denial. The FBI and state and local
checking agencies received about 16.7 million applications
for firearm transfers and permits in 2019 and 25.0 million
applications in 2020. About 243,000 (1.5%) applications for
firearm transfers and permits were denied in 2019, and
398,000 (1.6%) were denied in 2020. The FBI received about
12.8 million applications in 2020 and denied 185,000
(1.5%), while state and local checking agencies received
more than 12.2 million applications and denied about
212,000 (1.7%). In 2020, state checking agencies denied
2.7% of purchase permits, 1.8% of instant checks, 1.2% of
exempt carry permits, and 0.2% of other approvals.
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Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice
Statistics
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This study investigated the underlying causes of failure to
maintain contact violations by interviewing individuals on
probation in Ramsey County, Minnesota. A significant
finding from the research is that failure to maintain
contact with probation officers, often called absconding in
other jurisdictions, is a prevalent violation, accounting
for 29% of probation violations and 23% of revocations. On
the surface, the reasons for failure to maintain contact
seemed to be simple: eight dropped out of contact with
their probation officer; four individuals never started
probation; two people moved to another state; one person
left an inpatient treatment center; and five perceived that
they had never had a failure to maintain contact violation.
However, the individual stories of each person interviewed
revealed much more complex situations such as individuals
lacking basic needs, substance abuse, and lack of
communication from probation officers. Additionally, this
study sought to understand how people on probation
experienced being apprehended on a warrant, the issuance of
which was reported to be a frequent response for failure to
maintain contact violations. Overall, the experiences of
people who had warrants indicate that while most of the
individuals were aware there was a warrant, only a few
addressed the warrant head on by turning themselves in. The
rest waited until some other intervening event such as
being picked up for a new offense or being stopped for a
traffic violation brought them to the attention of the
police.
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Source: Robina Institute
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Statewide career articulation agreements provide students
guaranteed course credit from a first credential, such as
an industry certification, to a second credential, such as
an associate in science degree. This study found that
students’ ability to enroll in the career credential
programs in the agreements varied substantially by region
due to limited program offerings in some service regions.
Few students complete the credential programs as specified
in statewide articulation agreements. Only 8.1% of students
enrolled in a second credential program after completing
the first credential within the three-year period required
by most statewide articulation agreements. Moreover, only
5.0% of students then went on to complete the second
credential. There are several actions that the Florida
Department of Education should consider taking to increase
the use of the agreements, including providing additional
information to the Office of Articulation and to the
Articulation Coordinating Committee to evaluate the effect
of the agreements; increasing the allowable number of years
between when a student completes the first credential and
enrolls in the second credential program; and working with
state colleges, career centers, and school districts to
provide better marketing and information campaigns to
increase student awareness of the agreements.
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Source: Office of Program Policy Analysis and Government
Accountability
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In this report, the authors review the conceptual
challenges of defining Science, Technology, Engineering,
and Math (STEM) and propose a definition that recognizes
STEM-oriented contributions from the dual missions of
community colleges: preparing students for transfer to a
four-year institution, which the authors refer to as
STEM-Transfer, and training students for technical jobs –
largely unaccounted for in popular definitions of STEM
education – which they call STEM-Tech. STEM-Transfer
relates directly to programs of study that teach explicitly
STEM subject matter (biological sciences; chemistry; earth,
atmospheric, and ocean sciences; engineering; mathematics;
physics; and mechanic/production technologies), while
STEM-Tech encompasses a range of technical programs of
study – including those in computer and information
sciences and the health professions – that community
colleges offer. The authors then provide an accounting of
STEM within the community college sector and develop a
catalog of STEM programs and awards. Broadly, community
colleges appear to provide significant amounts of STEM
coursework, and there are more than three times as many
community college students enrolled in STEM-Tech programs
than in STEM-Transfer programs; similarly, community
colleges award many more associate degrees in STEM-Tech
than in STEM-Transfer. The authors conclude with an
analysis of how many community college graduates work in
STEM and of their relative collective earnings in the
workforce. Based on their findings, they argue that a
broader definition of STEM is more appropriate and should
be adopted by federal agencies and researchers.
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Source: Community College Resource Center
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School districts have until September 30, 2024 to spend
down the last of the historic pandemic Elementary and
Secondary School Relief (ESSER) III funds. There are
questions regarding how district leaders can sustain these
investments and strive to meet students’ growing needs, as
well as the role that state leaders should be playing in
helping districts make the transition from budgets
supplemented by ESSER. This guide provides key
recommendations for how state and district leaders can
equitably approach budgeting beyond ESSER. At the district
level, there are steps district leaders and advocates can
take. District leaders should be transparent about their
district’s financial picture, publicly share meaningful
data, and engage all relevant stakeholders in their
decision-making process; and maximize all available streams
of federal funds. Advocates should scrutinize publicly
available district and school budget documents, and monitor
school closure or consolidation proposals and demand equity
in process and results. At the state level, the report
recommends state leaders find or raise additional revenue;
create temporary transition grants for low-wealth,
high-poverty districts; hold funding harmless for
high-poverty districts if they cannot progressively raise
revenue; and implement budget cuts in ways that do the
least harm to high-need districts if cuts are unavoidable.
Advocates should monitor how states approach fiscal
oversight or intervention.
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Source: The Education Trust
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This study explores what factors are associated with the
sequence of milestone completion and what factors are
associated with achieving economic self-sufficiency among
people who take similar pathways. The success sequence is a
term discussed in the context of policy approaches for
reducing poverty and improving economic opportunity for
adolescents and young adults. The term refers to a series
of milestones in life—most commonly defined to include high
school completion, full-time employment, and waiting for
marriage to have children—that are associated with escaping
poverty and joining the middle class. For this study, the
authors considered respondents as following a success
sequence pathway if they either completed all milestones
(high school completion, full-time employment, marriage,
and childbearing) in the prescribed order or were on track
to complete them in order by age 30 or by the date of their
qualitative interview. The results showed that parent and
family characteristics were the most important category for
high school completion, employment, and childbearing.
However, the ways that parents and family influence
individuals vary across milestones. Furthermore, the
analysis exploring what factors explain who becomes
economically self-sufficient showed that parent and family
characteristics play the largest role in explaining
middle-income status for both participants who followed the
success sequence and those who did not. The authors
conclude that curriculum developers and program providers
should acknowledge that communicating with youth about the
success sequence and its association with economic
self-sufficiency may not be sufficient for youth to follow
it. Programming should also focus on supporting youth who
face external barriers to achieving the success sequence.
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Source: U.S. Administration for Children and Families,
Office of Planning, Research, and Evaluation
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The Mine Improvement and New Emergency Response Act (MINER
Act) of 2006 charged the National Institute for
Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) with expediting the
development and commercial availability of new safety
technologies for underground coal mining. The institute has
facilitated the development of numerous new technologies
but has observed that the commercialization and widespread
adoption of technologies face formidable barriers. This
report presents results of a project characterizing
barriers to the development, commercialization, and
adoption of new technologies for use in underground coal
mining in the United States. Through stakeholder
interviews, the authors identified and characterized 24
barriers falling into three groups (economic, regulatory,
and other) and several subgroups within each group. The
majority of the 24 barriers are related to regulatory
issues (62%), followed by economic issues (25%). The most
commonly cited barrier—the duration of technology approval
dissuades developers—was cited in 29 of the 75 interviews.
The eight highest-priority barriers, as determined by
stakeholder perceptions of frequency of occurrence and
magnitude, consist of seven regulatory barriers and one
economic barrier. The highest-priority barriers and
proposed solutions focus primarily on modernizing and
harmonizing Mine Safety and Health Administration (MSHA)
standards and approval process with best practices used in
other countries. Economic barriers may be the most
challenging to address, as they are inherently linked to
the global energy economy and energy policy. Addressing the
regulatory barriers would involve more-localized efforts
and fewer stakeholders. In particular, addressing
regulatory barriers would necessarily require substantial
involvement by MSHA.
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Source: RAND Corporation
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Artificial intelligence (AI) is poised to transform the
mortgage industry. Although AI models could provide more
efficiency for housing stakeholders, the data used to train
AI models has the potential to perpetuate racially
disparate outcomes. This report reviews the legal and
regulatory barriers to adopting AI models that promote
efficient and equal outcomes. The authors interviewed
nearly four dozen housing industry stakeholders in the
federal government, financial technology (fintech)
companies, mortgage lenders, consumer advocates, and
research organizations, and analyzed current strategies for
AI adoption and the efforts to mitigate racial disparities.
The report has two key findings. First, stakeholders have
already adopted AI into their marketing, underwriting,
property valuations, and fraud detection. Second, smaller,
mission-oriented lenders—such as minority depository
institutions and community development financial
institutions—have lower adoption rates than larger mortgage
lenders and government-sponsored enterprises. This
technology gap has the potential to reinforce racial
disparities in the mortgage market. Based on these results,
the authors provide recommendations to housing stakeholders
to (1) design AI models with intention, (2) use pilot
programs to measure consumer outcomes under AI models, and
(3) produce clear federal guidelines for AI adoption and
its consumer protections.
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Source: Urban Institute
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Previous work has established life satisfaction as an
important indicator of overall health and well-being. This
report describes differences in life dissatisfaction by
selected characteristics, grouped by family income. Data
from the 2021 National Health Interview Survey were used to
examine the percentage of adults that were dissatisfied
with life by selected demographic characteristics (age,
sex, race and Hispanic origin, and nativity status [born in
the United States or U.S. territory]), grouped by family
income. In 2021, 4.8% of adults were dissatisfied with
life. In general, analyses showed significant differences
by all selected demographic characteristics among adults
with incomes of less than 200% of the federal poverty
level. Among this group, men, adults ages 45–64, White
non-Hispanic adults, Black non-Hispanic adults, and adults
born in the United States were more likely to be
dissatisfied with life compared with their counterparts. No
significant differences in life dissatisfaction by selected
demographic characteristics among adults with incomes
greater than 200% of the federal poverty level were
observed. These results highlight the importance of
monitoring life dissatisfaction among detailed subgroups
grouped by income, in addition to the overall national
estimate.
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Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
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Since 2001, the National Center for Health Statistics
National Health Interview Survey Early Release Program has
released selected estimates of health and health care for
the civilian non-institutionalized U.S. population. The
southern region of the U.S. (which includes Florida) for
the most recent time period reported (second quarter of
2023) had the highest percentage (14.4%) of uninsured
adults (ages 18 to 64). This was higher than the national
average (10.4%). Other regions ranged from 7.4% (in the
northeastern part of the U.S.) to 8.3% (in the western
U.S.). Among groupings of race and ethnicity, for the
second quarter of 2023, the largest percentage of uninsured
were Hispanics at 22.3% uninsured and the lowest percentage
of uninsured were White, non-Hispanic at 6.6% uninsured.
Looking at groups based on family income, the largest
percentage of uninsured were those below the federal
poverty level (11.5% uninsured) and the lowest percentage
of uninsured were those with family income greater than
four times the federal poverty level (2.8% uninsured).
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Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
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How police bias and low relatability may contribute to poor
dietary quality is poorly understood. In this
cross-sectional study, authors analyzed data from 2021 from
a cohort of 724 adults living in predominantly Black
communities in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; these adults were
mostly Black (90.6%), low-income (median household income
$17,500), and women (79.3%). The authors estimated direct
and indirect paths between police mistrust and dietary
quality (measured by Healthy Eating Index (HEI)-2015)
through perceived stress, community connectedness, and
subjective social status. Dietary quality was poor and
mistrust of police was high: 78% of participants either
agreed or strongly agreed that something they say might be
interpreted as criminal by the police due to their
race/ethnicity. Police bias and low relatability was
associated with lower perceived social status, and was
marginally associated with low dietary quality. Nineteen
percent of the total association between police bias and
low relatability and lower dietary quality was explained by
an indirect association through lower community
connectedness, or how close respondents felt with their
community Police bias and low relatability may play a role
in community connection, social status, and ultimately
dietary disparities for Black Americans. Addressing police
bias and low relatability is a continuing and pressing
public health issue.
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Source: RAND Corporation
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