This brief discusses the important ways reentry programs should equip themselves with a thorough understanding of these consequences and the available options for addressing them, and several crucial steps programs can take to effectively support young people in navigating these challenges and improve reintegration outcomes. Juvenile court records can trigger a series of collateral consequences, impacting various aspects of life beyond detention or incarceration. These consequences can significantly limit opportunities in several areas critical for successful reintegration, including education, employment, and housing. The brief recommends three types of supports reentry programs can provide to help young people overcome the barriers imposed by juvenile court records: (1) providing educational awareness to inform youth and young adults about the impacts of juvenile records and the eligibility criteria and legal processes involved in record sealing or expungement; (2) supporting record sealing and expungement through connecting young people to legal aid services, advocating in court proceedings, and helping young people gather necessary documentation; and (3) building life skills resilience through job search training, financial literacy, and mentorship.

Law enforcement agencies across the United States use youth law enforcement programs such as camps, Explorers, internships, and vocational education programs to introduce young people to the potential of a law enforcement career. The decline in law enforcement applicant pools makes such engagement strategies even more necessary. To help determine the reach and effectiveness of these programs, the federal Office of Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS Office) provided funding to conduct a census of U.S. youth law enforcement programs. This publication summarizes the findings of that census and draws guidance from it for law enforcement agencies implementing their own youth programs. Intended as a roadmap for successful founding, expansion, or continuation of such programs and as a resource for networking among agencies, it describes key program features and considerations. This publication also provides resources for agencies seeking networking and mentorship from agencies with established youth engagement programs. Through providing a pipeline to hiring and recruitment, youth law enforcement experience programs may be able to support diversity in police departments, possibly mitigating rifts between the police and the public. The programs highlighted in this guide also demonstrate that positive feedback from parents, community groups, schools, and others cuts across race, ethnic backgrounds, and gender. For these programs, the positive experiences for those directly and indirectly involved with youth law enforcement programs are seen as a net benefit.

Early Intervention (EI) systems are police accountability tools widely used to identify and address officers at risk of performance problems. The system alerts management when certain officers are having problems with citizens so that interventions may be undertaken before major problems occur and before any type of formal disciplinary action is required. This study examines the operation and effectiveness of an EI system through the integration of policy and supervisory review practices using a mixed methods design. EI alert data, supervisor response memos, and semi-structured supervisor interviews were collected from a large, metropolitan police agency in the southwestern United States. Results indicated that several officer, supervisor, and EI case characteristics were associated with both supervisors’ EI policy adherence and the likelihood of subsequent EI alerts occurring. These results were supplemented with supervisors’ perceptions of EI processes and reasons for EI system effectiveness and ineffectiveness. Collectively, EI system design and implementation, supervisory review processes, and appropriate oversight of these processes were perceived to be key to an EI system’s success.

This report provides selected findings from the High School Longitudinal Study of 2009 Postsecondary Education Administrative Records Collection (PEAR). The study follows a nationally representative sample of students who were ninth-graders in fall 2009 from high school into postsecondary education and the workforce. The PEAR data collection was conducted in 2021, approximately 8 years after high school graduation for most of the cohort. These data provide information on whether fall 2009 ninth-graders enrolled in post-secondary education by June 2021, and allow researchers to examine enrollment characteristics, degree completion, and financial aid awards for the subset of fall 2009 ninth-graders who enrolled in postsecondary education. About two-fifths of students who had ever enrolled in postsecondary education (40%) had not completed a postsecondary degree or certificate by June 2021. Some 8% had earned a post-secondary certificate or diploma as their highest credential, 10% had earned an associate’s degree as their highest credential, 35% had earned a bachelor’s degree as their highest credential, and 7% had earned a graduate degree as their highest credential. Among fall 2009 ninth-graders who had completed a postsecondary degree or certificate by June 30, 2021, about four-fifths (8%) completed their highest degree in a field other than science, technology, engineering, or mathematics (i.e., in a non-STEM field). A greater percentage of students who scored in the lowest fifth of the 11th-grade mathematics assessment completed their highest degree in a non-STEM field (93%), compared to students who scored in the highest fifth of mathematics achievement (66%).

The guided pathways model, comprising 14 different practices, is a framework for comprehensive, whole-college reform undertaken by community colleges to help all students choose, enter, progress through, and complete a program of study that enables them to secure sustaining-wage employment or transfer with junior standing in a major. Since its introduction in 2015, it has been adopted by hundreds of community colleges across the United States. This paper asks whether guided pathways practices implemented at 62 community and technical colleges in three states—Tennessee, Ohio, and Washington—are associated with improvements in student outcomes during the first year of college. Specifically, using institutional survey and rich administrative data, the authors construct measures of adoption of guided pathways reforms to examine the association between guided pathways practices and fall-to-fall persistence, college credits earned, college math credits earned, and science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) credits earned. Our study reveals substantial variation in the adoption of guided pathways reforms across the states and across community colleges within the states over time. While the authors cannot establish a causal relationship between guided pathways adoption and student outcomes, they find significant positive associations between the statewide adoption of guided pathways reforms and early student outcomes in Tennessee. The observed improvements in that state are likely the result of concurrent reforms—guided pathways and others—implemented simultaneously, rather than of guided pathways reforms alone. The authors did not find evidence of improved student outcomes in either Ohio or Washington following the launch of statewide guided pathways initiatives. The findings suggest that complementarities among adopted practices within and across areas of practice—rather than the adoption of individual practices or the intensity of adoption— seem to drive larger improvements in early academic success across the three states.

This paper studies the causal impacts of public universities on the outcomes of their marginally admitted students. The author uses administrative admission records spanning all 35 public universities in Texas, which collectively enroll 10% of American public university students, to systematically identify and employ decentralized cutoffs in SAT/ACT scores that generate discontinuities in admission and enrollment. The typical marginally admitted student completes an additional year of education in the four-year sector, is 12 percentage points more likely to earn a bachelor’s degree, and eventually earns 5% to 10% more than their marginally rejected but otherwise identical counterpart. Marginally admitted students pay no additional tuition costs thanks to offsetting grant aid; cost-benefit calculations show internal rates of return of 19% to 23% for the marginal students themselves, 10% to 12% for society (which must pay for the additional education), and 3% to 4% for the government budget.

This review examines issues related to processing federal broadband permits and the extent to which selected agencies (1) used reliable data to track application processing times for communications use permits; and (2) processed communications use applications by the required deadline. Using federal permitting data, the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that the federal Bureau of Land Management (BLM) and Forest Service process the most applications from telecommunications providers to install communications use equipment or facilities—including for broadband internet—on federal property. However, from Fiscal Year 2017-18 through Fiscal Year 2021-22, BLM and Forest Service did not have sufficiently reliable to determine the processing time for 42% and 7%, respectively, of their communications use applications. For those communications use applications with sufficient data, BLM and Forest Service reduced their average processing time by 57% from Fiscal Year 2017-18 through Fiscal Year 2021-22. However, despite this overall improvement, about half of the applications either exceeded the 270-day deadline or did not have sufficiently accurate and complete information to determine if they met the deadline.

This research compares the earnings of similar workers in similar occupations in local labor markets that arbitrarily face different licensing requirements depending on which side of a state border they reside in. Occupational licensing is state-sanctioned permission to work in a particular occupation. These regulations are typically passed with the intent to protect consumers’ health, safety, and well‐being. Using data from the U.S. Census (Current Population Survey and location data from the American Community Survey), the author finds an average earnings premium of approximately 8% in occupations required to have a license in their state relative to the same occupation without a licensing requirement on the other side of a state border. Conversely, findings indicate that a 10 percentage point increase in the share of licensed workers with similar skills is associated with earnings that are 1.6% to 2.3% lower for all occupations. Furthermore, these negative effects are stronger for female, non‐Hispanic black, and foreign‐born Hispanic workers and are most concentrated in industries outside agriculture, manufacturing, and mining.

This report presents 2022 data on U.S. births by selected characteristics. Trends in fertility patterns and maternal and infant characteristics are described. A total of 3,667,758 births occurred in the United States in 2022, essentially unchanged from 2021. The general fertility rate declined 1% from 2021 to 56.0 births per 1,000 females ages 15–44 in 2022. The birth rate for females ages 15–19 declined 2% from 2021 to 2022; birth rates fell 7% for women ages 20–24, rose 1% to 5% for women ages 25–29 and 35–44, and rose 12% for women ages 45-49 (the first increase since 2016). The total fertility rate declined less than 1% to 1,656.5 births per 1,000 women in 2022. Birth rates declined for unmarried women but increased for married women from 2021 to 2022. Prenatal care beginning in the first trimester declined to 77.0% in 2022; the percentage of women who smoked during pregnancy declined to 3.7%. The cesarean delivery rate was unchanged in 2022 (32.1%); Medicaid was the source of payment for 41.3% of births. The preterm birth rate declined 1% to 10.38%; the low birthweight rate rose 1% to 8.60%. The twin birth rate was unchanged in 2022 (31.2 per 1,000 births); the 2% decrease in the triplet and higher-order multiple birth rate was not significant.

This brief provides a snapshot of findings from the first two years of the federal Healthy Marriage and Responsible Fatherhood (HMRF) grant program. The HMRF programs provide $150 million per year in discretionary grants, contracts, research and evaluation, and other activities to strengthen families, promote responsible parenting, and improve family economic stability. The HMRF programs are specifically designed to help interested adults and youth build stronger relationships, marriages, father-child engagement, and families. There are currently 110 grant awards to various organizations in 30 states to provide activities to promote healthy marriage and responsible fatherhood promotion activities. The findings showed that 15 grant recipients served more than 7,000 in healthy marriage programs for adult individuals and 18 grant recipients served more than 13,000 adult clients in couples in healthy marriage programs for couples during the first two years of the grants. Furthermore, 52 grant recipients served nearly 14,000 fathers in responsible fatherhood programs and 9 grant recipients served more than 2,400 reentering fathers in responsible fatherhood programs during the first two years of the grants.

In 2022, the United States experienced an infant formula shortage due to the COVID-19 pandemic, a large voluntary recall, and related supply chain issues. By summer 2023, about 20% of parents said they had a hard time finding formula — more than a 14 percentage point drop from fall 2022, according to the experimental Household Pulse Survey (HPS), which has been asking parents if they were having difficulty getting infant formula since September 2022. Working collaboratively, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Food and Nutrition Service, and the U.S. Census Bureau crafted a question series designed to measure the impact of the infant formula shortage. Questions included measures of difficulty for obtaining infant formula and ways parents coped with the shortage. Two of the most common ways households on Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) dealt with the infant formula shortage were by ‘obtaining formula at a different store than where they usually shopped’ and ‘changing to a different brand’. These data were collected over twelve data weeks from September 14, 2022 to August 7, 2023 of the survey, which was sent to more than 1 million adults in households every two weeks.

This study examines how disability beneficiary work behavior responds to a rule change that replaces a cash cliff—a threshold above which benefits reduce to zero—with a benefit offset ramp. Under existing rules, beneficiaries can test work though risk losing benefits with prolonged earnings that exceed that key threshold. With the offset ramp, benefits could adjust each month based on the previous month’s earnings. Using a randomized controlled trial with over 10,000 Social Security Disability Insurance beneficiaries who voluntarily enrolled in the demonstration, the authors find precisely estimated null effects on earnings, income, and benefit amounts. An analysis of mechanisms indicates that administrative burden, the limited size of the incentive, and individual and systemic barriers to employment for people with disabilities likely contributed to the limited impacts. The authors examined the effect of replacing a cash cliff in Social Security Disability Insurance rules, where beneficiaries had benefits reduced to $0 if their earnings exceeded a key threshold by even $1, with a benefit offset that reduced benefits by $1 for every $2 in earnings. By drastically reducing the marginal tax rate that beneficiaries face on earnings above the cash cliff, this change might have offered greater incentive to work for many. However, for some, the new rules might have reduced the incentive to work. Overall, the authors found no impact on earnings, Social Security Disability Insurance benefit amounts, or total income. Estimates are sufficiently precise to rule out substantive changes for the average volunteer: our estimated 95% confidence intervals rule out changes of more than 4% for benefit amounts and total income, and changes of more than 10% for earnings.