This report describes the steps used to calculate the federal Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) formula-based award amounts and presents summary results of the Fiscal Year 2022 calculations. The JAG program provides states, tribes, and local governments with critical funding necessary to support a range of criminal justice areas. States and localities receive funds based on their resident population, as reported by the U.S. Census Bureau, and on violent crime data, as reported to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation’s Uniform Crime Reporting Program. The report found that the total allocation for the 2022 JAG funding was approximately $291.4 million, of which $285.1 million went to states and $6.4 million to U.S. territories and the District of Columbia. The five states with the largest total allocations were California ($32.8 million), Texas ($24.1 million), Florida ($17.1 million), New York ($15.1 million), and Illinois ($10.7 million). A total of 1,594 local governments were eligible for awards, either directly or through a joint award with other governments within their county. Two states had 100 or more local governments eligible to receive award funds either directly or through a shared award: California (221) and Florida (117). The five local governments eligible to receive the largest awards were New York City ($4.3 million), Los Angeles ($2.3 million), Chicago ($2.2 million), Houston ($2.1 million), and Philadelphia ($1.5 million).

This report draws on data from the National Juvenile Court Data Archive (Archive) to profile 437,300 delinquency cases and 51,500 petitioned status offense cases handled in 2021 by U.S. courts with juvenile jurisdiction. The report also tracks trends in delinquency and petitioned status cases between 2005 and 2021. The report found between 2005 and 2021, the number of cases decreased for all offense categories: 78% each for property and public order, 75% for drugs, and 62% for person. Furthermore, the offense profile of the court’s 2021 delinquency caseload was similar to that of 2005, but had a greater proportion of person offenses and smaller proportions of property and public order offenses. In 2021, 56% (244,100) of the estimated 437,300 juvenile court cases were handled formally (with the filing of a petition). Of these cases, 48% (118,100) resulted in a delinquency adjudication. In 65% (77,200) of cases adjudicated delinquent in 2021, formal probation was the most severe sanction ordered by the court.

The Comprehensive Opioid, Stimulant, and Substance Use Program Key Performance Indicator Report is a programmatic assessment of key metrics. The measures leveraged for this assessment are historically relevant program and emphasize the activities of the program as established in the solicitation. This assessment supports the mission of the federal Bureau of Justice Assistance to promote community safety in relation to the opioid epidemic and provides insight into how the opioid program is impacting stakeholders, communities, and individuals throughout the country. The report includes data on several priority areas including Naloxone training, law enforcement and other first responder diversion programs, alternative to incarceration programs, substance use treatment, and recovery support services. During Calendar Year 2021, 461 grantees (funded in Fiscal Years 2017-22) reported data with 151 sub-grantees. During Calendar Year 2021, 461 grantees (funded in Fiscal Years 2017-22) reported data with 151 sub-grantees. In 2021 19,290 individuals were referred to substance use or co-occurring treatment services. From this group, 63% of individuals received services and 44% remained engaged in treatment services for more than 30 days. In 2022, 34,888 individuals were referred to substance use or co-occurring treatment services. From this group, 59% of individuals received services and 36% remained engaged in treatments services for more than 30 days.

Since the 1970s, the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) has monitored the academic performance of 9-, 13-, and 17-year-old students with what have become known as the long-term trend assessments. Although the long-term trend assessments are typically administered every four years, the National Center for Education Statistics conducted this administration of the long-term trend assessments ahead of schedule to provide data on post-pandemic student performance. The reading and mathematics assessments at age 9 were administered from January to March of the 2021–22 school year and the assessments at age 13 were administered from October to December of the 2022–23 school year. The primary focus of this report is to enable long-term comparisons to performance on the first assessment year in each subject assessed. Results in this report are based on the performance of nationally representative samples of 9- and 13-year-old students. The average scores in long-term trend reading and mathematics for 9-year-olds in 2022 were higher than the earliest assessments in the 1970s, but lower compared to the previous assessments in 2020. The 2022 reading score for 9-year-old students was 7 points higher than 1971, but 5 points lower than 2020. The 2022 mathematics score for 9-year-olds was 15 points higher than 1973, but 7 points lower than 2020.

This study includes two reports – one focused on community colleges and the other on four-year institutions – and analyzes student data from the National Student Clearinghouse to measure the performance of community colleges and four-year institutions in enabling students who started at a community college as part of the fall 2015 cohort to transfer and earn a bachelor’s degree. The study reports state-by-state transfer rates and outcomes by student subgroup, and found that low-income (11%), older (6%), Black (9%), and Hispanic (13%) students transfer and complete bachelor’s degrees at even lower rates than community college students overall (16%). Furthermore, the study found only modest progress in transfer performance over the past seven years. Only about a third (33%) of those enrolled in community colleges in the fall of 2015 transferred to four-year institutions, and of those who transferred fewer than half (48%) earned a bachelor’s degree in six years. The five states with the highest proportion of entering community college students who transfer and earn a bachelor’s degree are New Jersey (21%), Illinois (20%), Maryland (19%), Oklahoma (19%), and Virginia (19%). Additionally, the study found that New Mexico, Texas, California, Arizona, and Florida enroll the highest shares of Hispanic students in their entering community college cohorts (31% in Florida to 50% in New Mexico), but their cohort bachelor’s completion rates for Hispanic students range from just 8% in New Mexico to 14% in Florida.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) was asked to issues related to the U.S. Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) oversight of commercial launch and reentry operations with humans. This report describes how the FAA oversees the safety of commercial operations with humans onboard, and is preparing for expanded oversight of human spaceflight. The FAA oversees commercial space operations with humans onboard under its broader licensing framework. However, FAA is currently prohibited from issuing regulations directed at protecting the safety of humans onboard, with some exceptions, due to a moratorium that Congress established in 2004 to limit certain regulatory burdens on an emerging industry. This moratorium is set to expire on March 8, 2024. FAA is preparing for expanded oversight of human spaceflight – if the moratorium were to expire – by working with the industry to develop future regulations and building FAA's workforce capacity. In preparation, the FAA chartered a rulemaking committee in April 2023 to solicit industry's input on a future regulatory framework aimed at protecting the safety of humans onboard, and is leveraging the expertise of current staff and recruiting new staff to support human spaceflight safety efforts. However, GAO also found that FAA has ongoing hiring challenges and workforce constraints, which have affected these efforts.

The share of residents socially vulnerable to disasters is higher in counties where income inequality is the same as or greater than the national average, according to an analysis of the Census Bureau’s Community Resilience Estimates (CRE) Equity Supplement. Nationally, 20.6% of people were found to be highly vulnerable to disasters in 2022. But in counties where income inequality was at or above the national average, 23.4% were highly vulnerable. In counties with income inequality below the national average, 19.2% of residents were deemed highly vulnerable. The CRE provides an easily understood metric for how socially vulnerable every neighborhood in the United States is to disasters, including wildfires, flooding, hurricanes and pandemics such as COVID-19. Modeled estimates are based on 10 components of social vulnerability including income, and access to transportation and the internet. Current estimates use Census data and provide the number and percentage of residents in the nation, states, counties and census tracts in three groups, people with zero, one or two, and three or more vulnerabilities. The CRE shows the number and percentage of residents living with zero, one-to-two, or three-plus components of social vulnerability. Those with three or more components are considered to be the most socially vulnerable group and more susceptible to a disaster. Social vulnerability to disasters is not distributed uniformly. Rather, a swath of counties from the Southwest to the South Atlantic tended to have a greater share of individuals with three or more vulnerabilities.

This report compares the flow of strategic sector investments in distressed counties to their share of national economic activity, population, and overall private investment levels. Recent federal legislation – namely, the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act, CHIPS and Science Act, and Inflation Reduction Act – was enacted to incentivize investments in several sectors deemed important for America’s future economic growth and national security. Coinciding with the passage of this legislation, the United States is experiencing a $525 billion private investment surge in strategic sectors, defined as clean energy, semiconductors and electronics, biomanufacturing, and other advanced industries. The authors analyze the geographic distribution of private sector investment to understand the extent to which distressed communities are benefiting from this place-based industrial strategy, and find that economically distressed counties are receiving a disproportionate share of private sector investment in these strategic sectors relative to their economic output and population. Since 2021, $26.6 billion of clean-tech investments have translated into real spending. One in four of these dollars ($6.6 billion) has reached employment-distressed communities, compared to 16% of overall strategic sector investments. Furthermore, employment-distressed communities received actual clean-tech investment at 3.2 and two times their gross domestic product (GDP) and population levels, respectively.

Human papillomavirus (HPV) is the most common sexually transmitted infection in men and women in the United States. Vaccination prevents and controls HPV infection and associated outcomes, including genital warts, precancerous lesions, and certain cancers, such as cervical, vaginal, vulvar, anal, penile, and oropharyngeal. HPV vaccination in the United States has been recommended for girls since 2006 and for boys since 2011 and requires multiple doses. This vaccine, targeted for children ages 11–12 years, may be started at age 9. This report uses parent-reported data from the 2022 National Health Interview Survey to describe the percentage of children ages 9–17 years who received at least one dose of the HPV vaccine by selected sociodemographic and health characteristics. Key findings include that in 2022, 38.6% of children ages 9–17 years had received one or more human papillomavirus (HPV) vaccine doses. Children with private health insurance (41.5%) were most likely to have received one or more HPV vaccine doses compared with children with Medicaid coverage (37.0%), other government coverage (30.2%), and those without insurance (20.7%). The percentage of children who have received one or more HPV vaccine doses was higher among those with disability. Children living in large central metropolitan areas (39.4%), large fringe metropolitan areas (41.1%), and medium and small metropolitan areas (39.4%) were more likely to have received one or more HPV vaccine doses, compared with children living in nonmetropolitan areas (30.0%).

This report presents national estimates of self-reported feelings of depression among adults by whether they lived alone or with others. Data from the 2021 National Health Interview Survey were used to describe differences in self-reported feelings of depression and living arrangement by selected sociodemographic characteristics and social and emotional support among adults age 18 and older. The measure of living arrangement was categorized as living alone or living with others. Overall, 16.0% of adults lived alone in 2021. Reported feelings of depression were higher among adults living alone (6.4%) compared with adults living with others (4.1%), for both men and women, across most race and Hispanic-origin groups, and by family income. Adults who reported never or rarely receiving social and emotional support and living alone were almost twice as likely to report feelings of depression than those never or rarely receiving social and emotional support and living with others (19.6% compared with 11.6%, respectively). Yet no significant difference was seen in reported feelings of depression among those who reported sometimes, usually, or always receiving social and emotional support by whether they were living alone or living with others. In conclusion, adults living alone had higher reported feelings of depression than adults living with others. Differences in feelings of depression by living arrangement were observed for most of the characteristics examined.

The federal Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR), a program office of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Administration for Children and Families (ACF), is tasked with evaluating the suitability of sponsors who apply to care for children who arrive in the United States unaccompanied by a parent or legal guardian. Thorough and efficient vetting of sponsors is essential to help protect the safety and well-being of unaccompanied children. To provide information on two important aspects of ensuring safe placements for children, the Office of the Inspector General (OIG) reviewed ORR’s implementation of sponsor screening and post-release follow up calls for children in a sample from early 2021, a time when ORR received a surge in referrals of unaccompanied children. The OIG found that in 16% of children’s case files, one or more required sponsor safety checks lacked any documentation indicating that the checks were conducted. For 19% of children who were released to sponsors with pending FBI fingerprint or state child abuse and neglect registry checks, children’s case files were never updated with the results. In 35% of children’s case files, sponsor-submitted IDs contained legibility concerns. ORR failed to conduct mandatory home studies in two cases and four other cases raise concerns about whether ORR guidance on discretionary home studies should offer more specificity. In 5% of cases, sponsor records within ORR’s case management system were not updated with child welfare outcomes or sponsorship history. In 22% of cases, ORR did not conduct timely follow up calls s, and in 18% of cases, the follow up calls were not documented in children’s case files. The OIG made several recommendations, including that ACF implement additional safeguards to ensure that all safety checks are conducted and documented, as required, prior to approving the release of a child to their sponsor; take additional steps to ensure that mandatory home studies are conducted when required; and develop an effective monitoring mechanism to identify children who do not receive timely follow up calls after their release to sponsors.