March 22, 2024
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This report describes an evaluation study of the Milwaukee
Police Department’s (MPD) efforts to optimize its public
surveillance network through two video analytic
technologies: automatic license plate recognition cameras
and high-definition cameras connected to gunshot detection
technology. Using qualitative data on MPD’s camera
operations and interviews with staff members who work
directly with the camera program, the study found that the
impact of the interventions was mixed. The study examined
many crime outcomes including total violent crimes
(homicide, aggravated assault, robbery, rape), total
property crimes (burglary, larceny/theft, motor vehicle
theft), simple assaults, minor offenses, offenses that
involved a firearm, vandalism offenses, drug crimes, and
weapon law violations. There were three noteworthy
findings when examining the results as a whole. First,
models covering large areas, such as the city and two
focus areas, observed significant decreases in the
outcomes after the interventions were installed, but few
significant changes were noted when compared to match
areas without the interventions. The more specific models
that focused on intersections where the cameras where
installed also found decreases in the outcomes after the
interventions, but some models found increases in the
amount of crime. These increases are most likely the
result of the camera program observing crimes that may
have been missed by the department before the cameras were
installed. Finally, cameras connected to the video
analytic technologies found decreases in crime after the
interventions, but results were no different from matched
comparison groups. The researchers noted that the same
quarter the interventions were installed, a new police
chief was sworn in, resulting in new policies, operations,
and organizational staffing. Models covering large areas
observed significant decreases in the outcomes after the
interventions were installed, but few significant changes
were noted when compared to match areas without the
interventions. The report also provides recommendations
for police departments for improving policies and
practices related to video technology programs such as
having a strong, collaborative relationship with the
vendor they select to make upgrades to their surveillance
systems and encouraging departments to continually
reassess how the program is working.
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Source: U.S. Department of Justice, Office of Justice
Programs
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Ridesourcing (also referred to as ridesharing) and taxi
services help meet the transportation needs of many people
in the U.S. There is growing concern about assaults
against drivers and passengers. There are no federal
requirements to collect data on assaults in rideshare and
taxi vehicles; however, researchers found that six federal
databases have some data on assaults on drivers, one of
which reported 19 fatal assaults in 2019. Three
ridesharing companies publicly report on fatal physical
assaults and the most serious types of sexual assaults,
reporting about 4,600 such sexual assaults in 2019. Five
taxi companies interviewed collect but do not publicly
share incident data, which can include assault data.
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Source: U.S. Government Accountability Office
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This study evaluates the effectiveness of Alternatives to
Incarceration (ATI) programs in the federal criminal
justice system across thirteen federal districts,
particularly their impact on post-program recidivism. It
explores the development and expansion of ATI programs,
which offer defendants charged in federal court the
opportunity to participate in a formal judge-led
multi-disciplinary team program that emphasizes
community-based rehabilitative approaches that target root
causes of criminal behavior. These programs emphasize
treatment over punishment while holding defendants
accountable using proscribed protocols of sanctions and
incentives. Depending on the rules of the individual
program, defendants who successfully complete the program
receive a reduced or non-incarcerate sentence, or have
their charges dismissed. The study utilizes data from the
participating districts to compare the outcomes of ATI
participants with those of matched counterparts who did
not participate in the programs. In addition to examining
outcomes of defendants while on pretrial supervision, the
study examines re-arrests for new criminal behavior one,
two, and three years after defendants’ exit from the
program. The authors found that for all 480 participants
available for one-year follow-up (including both
successful and unsuccessful participants), the ATI group
exhibited statistically significant lower rearrest rates
for major offenses than the comparison group. However the
two-year and three-year recidivism follow ups showed no
statistically significant differences in re-arrest rates
for major offenses.
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Source: Federal Sentencing Reporter
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This paper studies the extent to which educational access
is determined by sorting based on heterogeneous
preferences over school attributes, or local institutions
that constrain residential location and school choice,
such as school catchment areas and housing regulation. The
authors define educational access as the component of a
neighborhood's value that is determined by the set of
schools available to its residents. The authors develop a
spatial equilibrium model of residential sorting and
school choice, estimated using data from a large school
district in the United States. The authors find that
low-income families prioritize proximity to schools while
high-income families and families with high-skilled
children place more value on school peer composition. The
authors use the model to evaluate how the geography of
neighborhood sorting influences the aggregate and
distributional outcomes of a school-choice expansion
(place-based) and a housing voucher (people-based) policy.
The authors find that both policies result in net welfare
losses, with only marginal improvements in school peer
composition for the average low-income family. Although
eligible families benefit from these policies, the
negative impact falls on families who currently invest in
their children's education by residing in expensive
neighborhoods. Under both policies, higher-income families
are less exposed to the inflow of low-income children into
their schools, either because of their longer distance
from target neighborhoods or because of the cost imposed
by residential zoning regulation on voucher recipients.
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Source: National Bureau of Economic Research
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Colleges, systems, and states have identified collecting
data on parenting students as a necessary step to support
educational opportunities for adults and families. In
recent years, the states of California, Illinois, Oregon,
and Texas have moved to routinely track college students’
parenting status, and the U.S. House of Representatives
recently considered relevant legislation. The
Data-to-Action (D2A) Campaign for Parenting Students seeks
to help colleges in California, Illinois, and Oregon
satisfy current legislative requirements by working with a
set of grantee institutions and systems to efficiently
collect parenting-status data. However, each state,
college, and postsecondary institution has different
considerations when it comes to collecting data on
students’ parenting status. These considerations can
affect priorities, methodology, question wording, data
storage, and even the definition of parenting students.
Based on D2A work and ongoing research, this brief informs
practitioners, policymakers, and legislators about the
technical considerations for parenting student data
collection and offers recommendations. It also examines
the importance of sharing power with students during the
data-collection process and how to minimize
data-collection-related threats to students. The authors
anticipate updating this resource with future versions as
the D2A Campaign progresses.
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Source: Urban Institute
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Florida was home to four of the nation’s top five
fastest-growing metropolitan statistical areas and three
of the top 10 that gained the largest number of people
from 2022 to 2023, reflecting continued population growth
across the South. The increases in Florida (the nation’s
third most populous state) were fueled by rapid growth in
select metro areas in the state during that period. These
include the city of Wildwood — The Villages — known for
its large retirement community – whose population rose
nearly 5% to 151,565, making it the nation’s
fastest-growing metro area. And Lakeland-Winter Haven, the
second fastest-growing metro area, up nearly 4% to
818,330. And also Ocala and Port St. Lucie, the fourth and
fifth fastest-growing metro areas, respectively. Their
populations increased by more than 3% each to 409,959 and
536,901. Three other metro areas collectively added
nearly 150,000 residents from 2022 to 2023:
Orlando-Kissimmee-Sanford (54,916); Tampa-St.
Petersburg-Clearwater (51,622); and Miami-Fort
Lauderdale-West Palm Beach (43,387) — the fourth, fifth,
and 10th largest numeric gaining metro areas nationwide,
respectively.
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Source: U.S. Department of Commerce
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United States ports' ability to efficiently move
containers into and out of terminals is crucial for the
U.S. economy. In 2020, coastal ports handled cargo that
accounted for nearly half of U.S. trade. Faced with
increased container volumes and supply chain challenges,
some ports in the U.S. and abroad have adopted automation
technologies to improve performance and increase capacity.
Automation technology at ports reduces human involvement
in processing and handling cargo. All of the 10 largest
U.S. container ports have adopted automation technology to
varying degrees. At least one terminal at each of these
ports uses process automation technology to optimize,
track, or communicate container movements (e.g., automated
gate systems). Four also use automated cargo handling
equipment to load, unload, and move containers. Selected
foreign ports generally adopted more automation
technologies than U.S. ports due to factors such as larger
container volumes and variations in labor availability.
Port operators consider factors like costs, profitability,
priorities, and labor agreements when deciding whether to
automate. Some port stakeholders said automation can
improve worker safety, simplify tasks, and increase
efficiency. Others noted mixed effects on performance,
such as one port's automated equipment working slower than
conventional equipment. Other possible tradeoffs include,
for example, reductions or changes in port jobs.
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Source: U.S. Government Accountability Office
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The Housing Choice Voucher (HCV) Program helps more than
2.3 million low-income families affordably rent homes in
the private market. The program’s effectiveness and reach
are constrained by several significant challenges,
including falling landlord participation, extended housing
search periods, and declining voucher holder success
rates. These challenges have been slowly building. In
2023, a panel of senior U.S. Department of Housing and
Urban Development (HUD) officials attributed the low
participation rate among landlords primarily to the
perceived burdens of program requirements that HUD and the
public housing agencies impose upon them. HUD’s
multifaceted response to these HCV program challenges
includes in-house program analyses and agency-sponsored
third-party research. The response also involves
discussions with sponsors and potential funders of
guaranteed basic income pilots now under way across the
country with the aim of expanding their portfolios to
include demonstrations of direct rental assistance. HUD
tacitly acknowledged there were long-standing problems
with their national housing quality standards (HQS) when
it replaced the HQS regime that was developed in 1995 with
new housing quality requirements that took effect for the
HCV program in 2023 and will go into effect for other HUD
programs in 2024. However, HUD left the legacy HCV program
inspection and enforcement regime associated with the
obsolete HQS system largely intact. The authors conclude
that the current inspection and enforcement regime is no
longer necessary and offer several alternative approaches.
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Source: Urban Institute
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Chronic school absenteeism can lead to poorer academic
performance and school engagement for students. It is also
a risk factor for school dropout, which is associated with
many long-term health impacts. This report uses data from
the 2022 National Health Interview Survey to describe the
percentage of children ages 5‒17 who experienced chronic
school absenteeism due to illness, injury, or disability
by sociodemographic and health factors. Key findings from
the survey include that in 2022, 5.8% of children ages
5‒17 experienced chronic school absenteeism for
health-related reasons in the past 12 months. The
percentage of children who experienced chronic absenteeism
varied by race and Hispanic origin. Children with family
incomes of less than 200% of the federal poverty level
were more likely to have experienced chronic school
absenteeism than those with family incomes of 200% of the
federal poverty level or more. Children with disabilities
(14.8%) were about three times more likely to have
experienced chronic school absenteeism than children
without disabilities (4.4%).
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Source: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services,
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
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The 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline, launched in 2022,
holds promise for significantly improving the mental
health of Americans in distress. However, local
policymakers planning how 988 should interface with the
911 emergency system face many challenges in ensuring that
callers to both services get the appropriate responses.
The process of assessing a caller's needs and deploying
the right resource—be it phone counseling, emergency
medical services, police, or fire response—requires
procedures tailored to every jurisdiction's governmental,
geographic, and population characteristics. Resources to
support policymakers considering 988/911 interoperability
are limited, and lessons learned are not widely shared,
which can impede effective implementation. Researchers
studied 988/911 interoperability in communities in South
Dakota, New York, and Virginia. The authors found that
planning and implementation for 988/911 interoperability
should be collaborative, including representatives from
988 and 911 call centers, law enforcement, mobile crisis
teams, peer support specialists, behavioral health
specialists, and people who have lived experience with
crisis services. Additionally, having a local champion
participate on the teams that are executing 988/911
interoperability helps facilitate planning and
implementation. Formalizing policies, procedures, and
documents is essential. Developing agreement between
stakeholders on formal policies, procedures, and documents
can take time and can require involvement of agency legal
departments.
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Source: RAND Corporation
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Thus far, behavioral health research in the United States
has not explored the prevalence or correlates of sober
curiosity (SC) - exploratory or experimental abstinence or
moderation or temporary alcohol abstinence challenges
(TAACs), such as “Dry January,”, despite significant
attention in media and popular discourse. The current
study explores these activities in a sample of U.S.
emerging adults (e.g., ages 18–29), a population with
higher-risk drinking behavior yet some of the lowest rates
of treatment engagement for alcohol use problems. The
authors collected survey data in 2021-2022 from just over
1,600 participants. The surveys assessed SC
awareness/engagement and past-year TAAC participation.
Overall, 9% of emerging adults were familiar with SC and
7% had participated in a TAAC in the past year. Half of
TAAC participants reported drinking less after the TAAC,
and 15% remained abstinent after the TAAC ended. SC
familiarity and TAAC were both associated with past-month
heavy drinking, cannabis use, higher Alcohol Use Disorders
Identification Test (AUDIT) scores, more past-year alcohol
and cannabis consequences, past-year substance use
treatment, and greater readiness to quit alcohol. The
authors concluded that both SC and TAACs may have
potential to engage young people with a desire to moderate
or eliminate their alcohol consumption. This may occur
directly through use of these strategies or by helping
them connect to additional services.
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Source: RAND Corporation
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