For more than 1 in 5 people in state prison, parole boards control their continued incarceration. The sizable role and impact of parole boards warrant sufficient oversight, more transparency, and proper resources to ensure public safety is prioritized. The decisions made by parole boards significantly influence the size of prison populations, staffing needs, and costs in 34 states. The incarceration of over 210,000 people currently in prison is in the hands of 235 people who serve as parole board members in those states. These parole-eligible people have completed any minimum sentence required by law or the court but remain in prison under the authority of the parole board’s judgment. While parole eligibility doesn’t guarantee release, timely and informed decisions are essential for public safety, managing prison populations, and ensuring corrections systems operate effectively despite staffing challenges and overall costs to taxpayers. Parole boards are also responsible for addressing victims’ needs and rights, ensuring fairness, and building community trust. Victims deserve to feel their safety and experiences are valued, and fair parole decisions can offer reassurance. By basing decisions on objective criteria, parole boards strengthen public trust, showing the justice system can balance accountability and safe reintegration. State policymakers can support the critical role of parole boards through strategies including ensuring programming required of people prior to parole is available and able to be completed without delay or due to a lack of funding, urging or requiring parole decision-making to be structured so it is more predictable, objective, and consistent, and preserving parole discretion in the most difficult cases.

Numerous states have adopted the practice of providing salary supplements to the chief or presiding judge or justice of their courts to reflect and compensate for the additional administrative roles and responsibilities those judges have. While the practice is remarkably common for chief justices of courts of last resort, a July 2024 review conducted as part of the National Center for State Court’s Judicial Salary Survey shows several states also engage in the practice for lower courts. At the intermediate appellate court level, 18 states provide for an additional supplement with most setting it as a specific amount in state statute or the state’s budget. For example, the chief judge of the Idaho Court of Appeals receives a flat $3,000 “to compensate for the additional duties of the office.” This began as a $2,000 supplement first added to the chief judge’s salary in 2014 and later increased to the current $3,000 in 2017). Other states set the increased compensation as a percentage of the salaries of the other judges on the court. For example, California chief judges receive a 4% supplement over the salaries of the other judges of the court. At the general jurisdiction court level, 15 states plus the District of Columbia, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands allow for such supplements. Those supplements vary widely. Most jurisdictions (14/19) set the amount as a flat amount set at the state level either by statute or as part of the state’s budget. For example, South Dakota law provides that “the presiding judge of each circuit shall receive additional compensation for administrative duties in the sum of two thousand dollars for each presiding circuit court judge.” Two states set the amount of the supplement based on the number of judges of the court. In California, this means a 2% supplement for presiding judges with 2-14 judges in the court and a 4% supplement for presiding judges with 15 or more judges in the court. In Texas counties with more than five district courts, a district judge who serves as a local administrative district judge is entitled to an additional $5,000 from the state. Two states (Georgia and Indiana) allow localities to supplement judicial salaries. As a result, some chief or presiding judges receive supplements to reflect their administrative duties.

This guide from The Council of State Governments Justice Center is intended to support recipients of Second Chance Act grants administered by the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Assistance. It is intended to foster discussion on best practices, identify considerations for collaborative effort, and help grantees work through key decisions and implementation challenges. The planning and implementation guide is tailored to support grantees in developing and refining a reentry program for adults with substance use disorders that will reduce recidivism and support successful reentry and recovery. The guide includes information on identifying implementation goals, defining or redefining population focus, identifying evidence-based services and supports, developing collaborative comprehensive case plans and post-release supports, collecting data and measuring performance, and planning for sustainability.

This report introduces new data for national and state-level public elementary and secondary revenues and expenditures for Fiscal Year (FY) 2023. Specifically, it includes: (1) revenue and expenditure totals; (2) revenues by source; (3) expenditures by function, subfunction, and object; (4) current expenditures; (5) revenues and current expenditures per pupil; (6) expenditures from Title I funds; and (7) revenues and expenditures from COVID-19 Federal Assistance Funds. The 50 states and the District of Columbia reported $981.8 billion in revenues collected for public elementary and secondary education in Fiscal Year 2023. State and local governments provided $855.4 billion, or 87.1 percent of all revenues. The federal government contributed $126.4 billion, or 12.9% of all revenues. Total revenues increased by 1.6% from Fiscal Year 2022 to Fiscal Year 2023, after adjusting for inflation (from $966.6 to $981.8 billion), local revenues increased by 1.1% (from $407.5 to $412.1 billion), state revenues increased by 4.1% (from $425.9 to $443.3 billion), and federal revenues decreased by 5.1% (from $133.2 to $126.4 billion). Total revenues per pupil averaged $19,871 on a national basis in Fiscal Year 2023. This reflects an increase of 1.2% between Fiscal Year 2022 and Fiscal Year 2023, after adjusting for inflation, and follows an increase of 1.3% from Fiscal Year 2021 to Fiscal Year 2022. Total revenues per pupil increased in the District of Columbia and 23 states between Fiscal Year 2022 and Fiscal Year 2023. Total revenues per pupil decreased in 27 states between Fiscal Year 2022 and Fiscal Year 2023. In Florida, total revenues per pupil in Fiscal Year 2023 were reported as $15,142 which represents a 2.8% increase from Fiscal Year 2022.

School attendance is strongly associated with academic success and high school completion, but approximately one-in-seven students miss nearly one month of school each year. To address absenteeism, we partnered with four public school districts in the metro-Atlanta area and experimentally deployed email and text messages to inform parents about their child’s attendance. Parents received personalized monthly messages through the school districts’ existing messaging platforms that had zero marginal cost per message. The messages informed parents about their child’s number of absences and how that number compared to absences of their peers. For most parents, this information was delivered through email as opposed to text, and parents of students most in need of improved attendance were the hardest to reach. Intent-to-treat estimates show the intervention reduced end-of-year absences by four-tenths to two-thirds of a day (2% to 3%) and reduced the probability of chronic absenteeism by 2% to 6%, while actually receiving the messages reduced end-of-year absences by two-thirds to almost one day (3% to 4%) and reduced the probability of chronic absenteeism by 4% to 7%.

Cyberbullying victimization and mental health symptoms are major concerns for children and adolescents worldwide. Despite the increasing number of longitudinal studies of cyberbullying and mental health among this demographic, the robustness of the causal associations between cyberbullying victimization and the magnitude of mental health symptoms remains unclear. This meta-analysis investigated the longitudinal impact of cyberbullying victimization on mental health symptoms among children and adolescents. A systematic search identified primary studies published in English between January 2010 and June 2021, yielding a sample of 27 studies encompassing 13,497 children and adolescents aged 8 to 19 years old. The longitudinal association between cyberbullying victimization and mental health symptoms among children and adolescents was found to be weakly positive and consistent across time and age. Three significant moderators were identified: the effect of cyberbullying victimization on mental health was larger among older children, groups with a higher proportion of males, and in more recent publications. No evidence of publication bias was detected. This study adds to the existing body of research by providing a new perspective on the long-term effects of cyberbullying victimization on the mental health of children and adolescents’ mental health. Furthermore, it underscores the necessity of developing effective cyberbullying prevention programs, interventions, and legal regulations to comprehensively address this issue.

As of June 30, 2024, State Board of Administration (SBA) investment returns met most market-based investment benchmarks and investment objectives. However, the Florida Retirement System (FRS) Pension Plan and the FRS Investment Plan did not meet 1-year benchmarks and the FRS Investment Plan did not meet 3-year benchmarks. Further, the FRS Pension Plan did not meet the 25-year long-term objective. The SBA’s major investment funds gained $27.2 billion in market value since OPPAGA’s last review in 2023. The majority of gains, $18.3 billion, were in the FRS Pension Plan and are attributable to positive investment returns. The SBA undertook several actions to implement recent legislation. For example, Ch. 2024-187, Laws of Florida, prohibited the SBA from acquiring direct holdings in Chinese companies. In response, the SBA identified 547 companies that were determined to be majority-owned by China. The SBA reported that the September 2025 deadline to divest should provide sufficient time to comply with the legislation and eliminate the board’s long-term exposure to China, which was approximately 1.4% as of July 2024. Since OPPAGA’s 2023 review, the SBA’s budget for major investment funds increased by $14.9 million, with 15 additional full-time positions created. In addition, SBA investment management costs increased 2.0% ($15.1 million) for major investment funds.

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) could revolutionize entire industries. In the near term, it may dramatically increase productivity and transform daily tasks in many sectors. However, both its benefits and risks, including its environmental and human effects, are unknown or unclear. This report highlights five risks and challenges that could result in negative human effects on society, culture, and people from generative AI, including unsafe systems that may produce outputs that compromise safety, such as inaccurate information, undesirable content, or the enabling of malicious behavior. The U.S. Government Accountability Office identified policy to consider that could enhance the benefits or address the challenges of the environmental and human effects of generative AI, including improving data collection and reporting, encouraging the use of AI frameworks, establishing standards, and sharing best practices.

Manufacturing is the largest sector in the U.S. space economy, comprising 25.2% of its gross domestic product (GDP) in 2022. Space manufacturing is also a significant contributor to overall U.S. manufacturing, responsible for 6.4% of computer and electronics products manufacturing GDP in 2022 and 7.5% of other transportation equipment manufacturing GDP. Given the significance of space-related manufacturing to both the space economy and domestic manufacturing, having accurate measures of economic activity for this area of the economy is crucial. This paper introduces a space economy manufacturing plant utilization index to estimate the utilization of manufacturing plants that contribute to the space economy and discuss initial efforts to account for the manufacturing of satellites and space vehicles by companies providing these capital goods for themselves, known as own-account production. This report found that the space economy manufacturing plant utilization index averages 67.2% utilization from 2012-2021. In addition, average quarterly capacity utilization across all U.S. manufacturing ranged from 64.6% to 77.7% during the same period. Lastly, the value of own-account production is currently small but expected to increase with the proliferation of satellite internet constellations.

Depression is among the most common mental disorders in the United States. Treatment for depression typically includes antidepressant medications, psychotherapy, or a combination of both. This report uses the most recent National Health Interview Survey data on the use of prescription medication for depression and explores differences in the use of medication for depression by age, sex, race and Hispanic origin, disability status, living arrangement, family income, education level, region, and urbanization level among U.S. adults in 2023. Key findings include that in 2023, the percentage of adults age 18 and older who took prescription medication for depression was 11.4%. Women (15.3%) were more than twice as likely to take medication for depression than men (7.4%). White non-Hispanic adults and adults who are multiple races were more likely to take medication for depression compared with all other race and Hispanic-origin groups. Adults with disabilities (28.2%) were nearly three times as likely to take medication for depression than adults without disabilities (9.7%). Taking medication for depression decreased with increasing family income. The percentage of adults taking medication for depression was higher in the Midwest compared with other regions and increased with decreasing urbanization level.

This report presents provisional 2024 data on U.S. births. Births are shown by age and race and Hispanic origin of mother. Data on cesarean delivery and preterm births are also presented. Data are based on 99.92% of all 2024 birth records received and processed by the National Center for Health Statistics as of February 4, 2025. Comparisons are made with final 2023 data and earlier years. The provisional number of births for the United States in 2024 was 3,622,673, up 1% from 2023. The general fertility rate was 54.6 births per 1,000 females ages 15–44, an increase of less than 1% from 2023. The total fertility rate was 1,626.5 births per 1,000 women in 2024, an increase of less than 1% from 2023. Birth rates declined for females in 5-year age groups 15–24, rose for women in age groups 25–44, and were unchanged for females ages 10–14 and for women ages 45–49 in 2024. The birth rate for teenagers ages 15–19 declined by 3% in 2024 to 12.7 births per 1,000 females; the rates for younger (15–17) and older (18–19) teenagers declined 4% and 3%, respectively. The cesarean delivery rate increased to 32.4% in 2024, from 32.3% in 2023; the low-risk cesarean delivery rate was unchanged at 26.6%. The preterm birth rate was 10.41% in 2024, unchanged from the rate in 2023.

Asthma affects an estimated 7.7% of the U.S. population and 262 million people worldwide. Symptom monitoring, which can include activities such as such as answering questionnaires and keeping notes,has demonstrated benefits but has not achieved widespread use. This report aims to assess the effect of a scalable asthma symptom monitoring intervention on asthma outcomes. Researchers found a statistically significant increase (0.34) in Mini Asthma Quality of Life Questionnaire (MiniAQLQ) scores for individuals in the intervention group as compared to individuals in the usual care group. In addition, intervention subgroups showed positive differences in MiniAQLQ scores relative to the usual care group, with noteworthy increases among individuals aged 18 to 44 years, those with low baseline patient activation, those with a low baseline MiniAQLQ score, and those with uncontrolled asthma at baseline. While the increase in asthma-related quality of life did not reach the threshold for a minimally important change, exploratory analyses suggest possible benefits for patients with low levels of activation.