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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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.