Florida statute directs OPPAGA to conduct an annual study of pretrial programs that meet certain statutory criteria. To do so, OPPAGA administered a survey to gather information from the programs and reviewed program weekly registers and annual reports to assess compliance with statutory elements. Thirty-three pretrial programs responded to the survey and reported serving over 67,000 defendants in 2024. Most programs reported successful program completion rates of over 78%. Pretrial programs generally complied with statutory requirements for weekly registers and annual reports. However, many programs did not include all statutorily required data elements.

The youth justice system was created because youth are different from adults. State departments of juvenile justice have purpose clauses affirming that rehabilitation is their primary goal. In the youth justice system, youth have access to developmentally appropriate services that are not available in the adult criminal legal system. A better understanding of adolescent development has contributed to a nationwide decline in youth incarcerated in adult prisons and jails, from a peak of 14,500 in 1997 to 2,513 in 2023. At the same time, 29,300 were held in juvenile justice facilities.. Automatic charging, or auto-charging, is one of several pathways that send people under 18 years old into the adult criminal legal system. State auto-charging statutes specify offenses and age requirements where a youth must be charged in adult court. This is called automatic because there is essentially no review of the case before it starts in adult criminal court. Currently, every state has at least one transfer mechanism that allows youth to be charged as adults in the adult criminal legal system, and most states have multiple mechanisms. Twenty-eight states and the District of Columbia have automatic charging provisions. Florida does not.

Loss of firearm rights can be the most significant and enduring result of a criminal conviction for many Americans who rely on them for self-defense and for sport. And, once lost, firearm rights can be difficult to regain. Mechanisms for regaining firearm rights vary from state to state and are often limited in scope and procedurally complex, with the same confusing overlap between state and federal requirements. Restoration is particularly difficult for people who reside in a state other than the one where they were convicted, or who were convicted in federal court. This report seeks to increase public understanding of the relevant legal framework by providing an inventory and analysis of the various state and federal laws that govern the loss and restoration of firearm rights following a criminal conviction. Second, it recommends changes in how firearm restoration mechanisms operate, to make them more accessible while maintaining accountability to public safety objectives. A close look at how firearm rights are lost and regained in states across the country is particularly timely because of the likely revival by the U.S. Department of Justice of a long-dormant program that will enable individuals convicted of non-violent crimes to remove firearm restrictions that apply to them under federal law. But relief from federal restrictions will ordinarily not remove analogous restrictions on firearm possession in state law. Individuals who stand to benefit from federal restoration will need to determine what their rights are under state law, and how to relieve any state restrictions that may apply to them. In turn, states will want to determine whether restrictions in their own laws should conform to or outlive federal ones.

In response to the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, the Legislature enacted the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School Public Safety Act, requiring the creation of threat assessment teams and created the Mental Health Assistance Allocation (MHAA). The MHAA provides supplemental funding for school districts to provide students mental health supports. The Florida Department of Education has implemented all components of the threat management process, including launching a threat management portal. In school year 2023-24, school districts spent 66% of the MHAA on school-based staff and services and 9% on community-based services; the remaining funds were apportioned to charter schools or used for other expenses. During the same period, districts reported using MHAA funds to provide school-based services to 295,927 students and community-based services to 61,404 students.

In 2022, like many school districts nationwide, Winston-Salem/Forsyth County Schools (WS/FCS) in North Carolina faced teacher shortages, a high turnover rate, and testing barriers that made it difficult for new teachers to get licensed. The district, which serves more than 49,000 students across 80 schools, gathered feedback from new teachers to determine the root cause of the high turnover rate. It found that many teachers on their way to licensure struggled to meet state testing requirements, complete coursework, and fulfill assignments, all while navigating the demands of being a beginning teacher. The district then created their own in-house program to address these issues. Once approved by the state in May 2023, the WS/FCS Teacher Residency launched its first cohort in June. The program creates a pathway for teacher assistants, substitutes, other district employees, and community members to become licensed classroom teachers within one year. The success of the residency program is illustrated in the pass rate of state-required assessments, the hiring rates of residents, and positive feedback from principals in the 41 WS/FCS schools where those residents now teach. In the first cohort of the program, 92% of residents passed the assessment, compared to the statewide average pass rate of 85%. In the second cohort, 100% of residents passed the assessment. As of October 2025, 95% of the first cohort, 91% of the second cohort, and 97.5% of the third cohort continue to teach in district schools, demonstrating higher retention rates across all three cohorts than the state average of 87% for beginning teachers. Most of the program participants, 91.6%, agreed that the program prepared them with the knowledge and skills needed to be successful on their first day of school. Additionally, all of the principals in the 41 schools where residents teach rated the quality of teacher residents and their content area knowledge better or much better than other first-year teachers in survey feedback.

Broadband internet has become a critical component of U.S. infrastructure, but policymakers are increasingly concerned that the widespread adoption of this technology has adversely affected adolescent mental health. To test this hypothesis, the research team used 2009–2019 National and State Youth Risk Behavior Survey data and leverage the nationwide rollout of broadband internet. First, the research team showed that adolescents in states with greater broadband internet access reported spending more time online. Next, the research team found that a one-standard-deviation increase in broadband internet access was associated with a 9.3–16.5-percent increase in adolescent suicide ideation. While the research team document increases in suicide ideation for both girls and boys, the results are most pronounced for adolescent girls. Exploring potential mechanisms, the research team shows that greater broadband internet access was associated with increases in cyberbullying and body dissatisfaction among adolescent girls and a reduction in the likelihood that adolescent boys reported getting an adequate amount of sleep.

Florida statute directs OPPAGA to evaluate state economic development programs on a recurring schedule. This year’s review included six programs administered by the Florida Department of Commerce and Florida Department of Revenue: Brownfield Redevelopment Bonus Refund; Capital Investment Tax Credit; Florida Job Growth Grant Fund; Research and Development Tax Credit; Rural Job Tax Credit; and Urban High-Crime Area Job Tax Credit. These programs provided a range of incentives (e.g., tax refunds, tax credits, and grants) and varied with regard to participation, administration, and outcomes. For example, participation was low for the Brownfield Redevelopment Bonus Refund, Rural Job Tax Credit, and Urban High-Crime Area Job Tax programs, while Research and Development Tax Credit applications consistently exceeded the program’s annual statutory limit. Participation in the Capital Investment Tax Credit Program varied, but active program projects exceeded capital investment and job creation requirements. In addition, Florida Job Growth Grant Fund Program participants used funds to expand or improve six types of infrastructure and train students in 13 industries.

In the United States, government expenditures account for about 17% of gross domestic product (GDP). In 2024, the federal government portion totaled $1.87 trillion, or approximately 6.4% of GDP, with the remaining share attributed to expenditures by state and local governments. Government expenditures, which include both consumption spending and investment, play a key role in supporting productivity and economic growth as well as fostering regional economic development. Despite government spending’s contributions to the economy, its statistics are not available at the subnational level. This paper presents a methodology for preparing such statistics and introduces experimental estimates of federal government spending by state. These new statistics would provide valuable information for policymaking, research, and business decision-making at the state level, complementing the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis’s national data on federal spending. Preliminary estimates for 2012–2023 show considerable variation in the economic impact of federal government spending across states. For example, on average from 2012 to 2023, federal spending as a percentage of state gross domestic product ranged from 2.5% in Delaware to 27.6% in Virginia, with the District of Columbia averaging 51.9%.

The use of sensors has steadily grown over the past decade, providing real-time monitoring (e.g., temperature, humidity, light levels) capabilities for homes, buildings, and cities. These sensors, wearables, and mobile devices collect continuous, real-time information with high spatial accuracy and are frequently suggested for use with digital twins. Digital twins are a virtual representation of a real-world object that can be used to simulate and understand responses to different scenarios. One of the key elements of a digital twin is bidirectional data flow between the real-world object and virtual representation, which is the gap that IoT sensors, wearables, and mobile devices have helped to fill. Researchers, public health officials, and first responders can leverage digital twin technologies to understand the complex interactions between people and the environment and to model the impacts of the built environment and population density on local temperature and air quality, as well as the health impacts of these exposures. This research brief discusses the current state of environmentally aware digital twin technologies and highlights areas where the technology needs to improve, such as the need to establish data and metadata standards, the use of edge computing resources to achieve scaling and rapidly communicate results better, and access to labeled data. Researchers found that advances in wireless sensor technology have enabled the realization of smart city digital twins for urban planning and utility management and human digital twins for healthcare applications, and one of the biggest challenges that needs to be overcome to realize the successful integration of environmentally aware supply chain digital twin strategies and human digital twin technologies is access to labeled datasets for training and validation. Improving environmentally aware digital twin technology could help establish more effective forecasting and mitigation strategies to reduce the loss of human life from natural disasters and disease outbreaks.

Communities across the U.S., specifically rural areas, face a growing risk of having too few physicians to meet healthcare needs. Federal law requires the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) to distribute 1,000 new Medicare-funded graduate medical education (GME) residency positions to qualifying hospitals through permanent increases in their resident caps. The law also requires CMS to distribute these positions in at least five annual distributions, with the first of these positions being available for use in 2023. As of September 2025, CMS allocated 600 of the 1,000 new Medicare-funded positions to hospitals from three annual distributions. To date, about half of the 393 hospitals that applied received new positions. In this report, the U.S. Government Accountability Office found that hospitals that received positions in the first three distributions were similar to hospitals that applied for and did not receive positions. For example, nearly all were in geographically urban areas, and most applied to expand existing residency programs that had been approved to train residents for over 10 years. In addition, about half of the hospitals that received positions applied to train more residents in primary care specialties, and hospitals that received positions were generally larger in terms of their resident cap and total Medicare GME payments in 2023, compared to other hospitals that applied but did not receive positions. Selected stakeholders identified benefits of these additional positions, such as expanded training opportunities and increased physician services in their communities. These individuals also described how CMS’s decision to distribute positions by prioritizing applications with the highest health care provider shortages may have disadvantaged some hospitals.

The percentage of women ages 25–44 in the United States who had ever used any fertility services, defined as any medical help to get pregnant or to prevent pregnancy loss, decreased between 2006–2010 and 2015–2019. However, estimates of fertility problems remained stable or increased in that time span. Using the 2022–2023 National Survey of Family Growth, this report estimates ever use of specific fertility services among women ages 20–49 in the United States, as well as ever use of any medical help to get pregnant, any medical help to prevent pregnancy loss, and any fertility services overall, by selected socioeconomic characteristics. Key findings from the report include that among women ages 20–49 in 2022–2023, 13.7% had ever used any fertility services, defined as any medical help to get pregnant or to prevent pregnancy loss, at some time in their lives. A higher percentage of Asian non-Hispanic (13.6%) and White non-Hispanic (12.4%) women had ever used medical help to get pregnant compared with Black non-Hispanic (7.1%) and Hispanic (7.0%) women. The percentage of women who had ever used any fertility services and the percentage who used any medical help to get pregnant increased with higher family income. The percentage of ever use of any fertility services and the percentage of any medical help to get pregnant was higher for women with private health insurance compared with those who had public insurance or were uninsured.

Child poverty in the United States swung from historic lows to troubling highs in just three years. In 2021, with federal pandemic relief and an expanded child tax credit in place, the Supplemental Poverty Measure showed child poverty at 5% — the lowest rate on record. By 2024, that rate had nearly tripled to 13%, returning to pre-pandemic levels. The Supplemental Poverty Measure is a measure of economic deprivation—having insufficient financial resources to achieve a specified standard of living. Ten years ago, the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s first “Measuring Access to Opportunity” snapshot revealed that the percentage of children whose families cannot make ends meet — most of whom had at least one parent working full time — would have nearly doubled without government interventions to alleviate financial hardship at the time. Today, that reality remains. In 2024, 61% of children in poverty lived in families with at least one working parent. This report provides a snapshot of public policies that aim to reduce child poverty work, and the vitality of reliable government data to measure the effects of those policies. Key findings include that between 2022–2024, federal and state policies lowered child poverty by at least 10 percentage points in 34 states and D.C.; New Mexico saw a 19-point reduction, the largest in the nation, and in 2024 alone, tax credits and basic needs programs kept 8.5 million children above the poverty threshold, preventing the Supplemental Poverty Measure rate from nearly doubling.