Fear of crime is not new, nor is it rare. Across nearly 60 years of national data, at least one-third of Americans have said they are afraid to walk alone at night, one of the most common measures of fear of crime. In 2025, that meant about 90 million adults in the U.S. were living with some level of fear in their daily lives. This report, based on an online survey commissioned by the Council on Criminal Justice, investigates that question, examining which crimes people fear most and the perceived risk of victimization for those crimes. Asked to rank their fear of 27 offenses, respondents identified theft, residential burglary (when not at home), and online theft as crimes that worried them most. The largest gaps between fear and perceived risk were for murder, being punched, and being slapped. Respondents were more worried about a family member being victimized than themselves, friends, neighbors, immigrants, or local businesses, and women reported higher levels of worry than men for every offense except online theft. Anti-immigrant sentiment, racial resentment, and neighbor visibility (the degree to which neighbors recognize each other and publicly interact) generally showed no or very weak associations with offense-specific fears.

According to the federal judiciary’s Fiscal Year 2027 congressional budget summary, security incidents of significant concern, as reported by the U.S. Marshals Service, increased for judges by 57% in Fiscal Year 2025 and are on pace to rise again in 2026. Drawing on interviews with 35 sitting and retired federal judges, this report analyzes the causes and ramifications of increased threats against judges, shares judges’ assessments of the existing security infrastructure, and recommends policies to improve judicial security. Findings include that every judged interviewed for the report perceives judiciary threats to be more serious today than in the past. Potential causes of increased threats include a spate of contentious, high-profiles cases (e.g., cases related to the January 6 events) and sharp social division and polarization. Interviewees expressed concern about the increasingly common practice among public officials and others with large platforms of singling out individual judges (and sometimes their family members) for personal attack. Recommendations for improving judicial security include adequately funding security services, clarifying tax liability for these services, and strengthening federal and state programs that protect the personally identifiable information of judges and their families.

In Payne v. Tennessee, the right for victims to present victim impact statements, and to be heard, was granted to remind jurors that victims exist as unique individuals. Despite concerns that victim impact statements may impede the rights of defendants, their utilization has gone largely unchecked. This article explores legislation across all 50 states, Washington, D.C., and the federal government to determine how victim impact statements are formalized across the country. Findings indicate that victim impact statements lack consistent implementation, providing unequal access for victims and defendants alike. For example, thirty-six states, Washington, D.C., and the federal government grant victims the right to "be heard" or present victim impact statements in the courtroom. Though most provide this right by simply stating that victims have the right to be heard or the right to present a victim impact statement, some states provide more details, including seven that provide information on who all counts as a victim, including family and friends of the primary victim, especially if the primary victim is deceased. In Florida, victims must be informed of both their right "to be heard at all stages of criminal proceedings" and their right to make a victim impact statement at sentencing.

Charter schools are semi-autonomous public schools that receive public funds. They operate under a written contract (a charter) with a state, district, or other entity. The charter details how the school will be organized and managed, what students will be expected to achieve, and how success will be measured. Many charter schools are exempt from select laws and regulations affecting other public schools in accordance with the terms of their charters. Charter school laws vary by state and often differ on several important factors, such as who may authorize charter schools, how authorizers and charter schools are held accountable for student outcomes, and whether charter school teachers must be certified. Currently, 46 states and the District of Columbia have charter school laws. Nineteen states (not including Florida) allow for approval preference to be given in charter applications to specific types of schools. In most of those states, the preference is allowable for schools that will serve students at risk of academic failure or economically disadvantaged students. Twenty-three states (including Florida) require charter school teachers to be certified. Some of these states allow for schools to seek a waiver or specify a percentage of all teachers who must be certified.

This study describes earnings and labor market outcomes for on-time, 2017 high school graduates in Washington State with some college but no credential (i.e., students who enrolled in postsecondary education but stopped attending before earning a credential). Per the authors, the “some college, no credential” pathway describes 29% of the on-time 2017 graduating cohort, making it the most traveled pathway in the analysis. Findings include that 50% of students on the some college, no credential pathway were stably employed in 2023, similar to the rate of stable employment among students who did not enroll in college at all (49%) but lower than students who earned associate’s degrees (58%). Stably employed students on the some college, no credential pathway had median annual earnings of $42,473, which is around $500 more than students who did not enroll in postsecondary education at all and around $300 to $900 less than those who earned associate’s degrees. Promising interventions targeting students with some college but no credential include identifying opportunities for short certificate programs that lead to well-paying careers, focusing on community college education support, and expanding opportunities for adult learners to receive Academic Credit for Prior Learning toward, among other things, teacher certification.

For nearly two decades, graduate students could borrow the full cost of attending graduate school from the federal government. However, the One Big Beautiful Bill Act limited annual federal loans to $20,500 for most graduate students and $50,000 for students in designated professional fields. Private lenders are essential to filling the estimated $8.1 billion gap created by the new limits, but doing so would require the private graduate lending market, currently about $1.4 billion annually, to expand six-to-sevenfold. This study links institution-by-field borrowing data with earnings data, finding that in fields such as law and business, students attending higher-cost programs tend to earn more. Higher earnings, in turn, give lenders information about graduate programs that are likely to produce earnings high enough to support larger loans. In fields like social work, counseling psychology, and physical therapy, higher borrowing at more expensive programs is not associated with higher earnings, giving lenders less information about which students could support additional debt. The author concludes that the new limits on graduate borrowing could curb private borrowing for low-return programs and make it harder for students without strong credit histories or family resources to finance graduate education that is likely to pay off.

In the COVID-19 pandemic era, people moved from high-density, expensive areas to more affordable areas, putting upward pressure on local housing prices. This study examines the geographic distribution of rent growth during the pandemic and its effects on renters using administrative new lease data and household-level data on rent and income from the American Community Survey. The authors analyze rents and incomes by area in two ways: by pre-pandemic rent levels and by pre-pandemic rent-to-income ratios. Findings include that rents grew more in areas with lower pre-pandemic rents but not in areas with lower rent-to-income ratios, consistent with higher-income remote workers moving away from high rent areas to more affordable areas. Lower-income households experienced larger increases in rent relative to their income compared to the median renter. However, area-level rent-to-income ratios reflect both compositional changes in renter populations from mobility and changes in local rents. The authors highlight the need for future work to track affordability for the same households over time to fully understand pandemic era affordability trends.

This report analyzes state tax revenue data for the first quarter of 2026, highlighting variation across states and major tax sources. Key year-over-year trends include that inflation-adjusted tax revenues declined in 26 states during the first nine months of fiscal year 2026, including Florida, while only seven states reported real revenue growth of 4% or more. Personal income taxes were the strongest revenue sources across states, though several states with recently enacted income tax rate reductions reported lower collections. Many states have implemented tax cuts impacting 2026 revenues despite growing budget pressures. For example, sixteen states enacted sales tax decreases, with Florida and Michigan projected to experience the largest sales tax revenue declines. Florida’s sales tax reductions impacting Fiscal Year 2026 included the repeal of the sales tax on commercial real property leases, the creation of new permanent exemptions for selected goods and services, and the establishment of a recurring back-to-school sales tax holiday. Florida also expanded temporary sales tax holidays from September through December, 2025, for items like firearms and camping equipment. In total, these changes are projected to reduce Florida sales tax revenues by approximately $1.3 billion in fiscal year 2026.

In 2024, suicide was the 10th leading cause of death in the U.S. and the second leading cause of death for people ages 10–44. In recent years, suicide mortality rates have leveled off. This report provides final 2024 mortality rates for suicide and shows changes in rates by age group, sex, and means of suicide between 2023 and 2024, as well as rates by state of residency for 2024. Key findings from the report include that the overall age-adjusted suicide rate increased from 13.0 deaths per 100,000 standard population in 2014 to 14.0 deaths in 2017 with no significant change between 2017 and 2024 (13.7). Between 2023 and 2024, suicide rates decreased for women age 25 and older in each age group. Between 2023 and 2024, suicide rates decreased for males ages 15–24 and 25–44. Between 2023 and 2024, rates decreased for suffocation-related suicide among males and poisoning-related suicide among females. In 2024, suicide rates varied across states, from 5.7 in the District of Columbia to 29.7 in Alaska. Florida’s rate was 13.9 deaths per 100,000 standard population in 2024.

Involvement with the child welfare system varies dramatically across places. While some of this variation may reflect differences in underlying maltreatment risk, it may also result from differences in institutional responses to similar circumstances. This study links Michigan public school data to Child Protective Services reports from 2017–2024, noting that school-level reporting rates in Michigan during the study window ranged from nearly zero to more than half of students reported between kindergarten and fifth grade. Findings include that school-specific child maltreatment reporting practices account for about 40% of the variation in reporting rates across schools after accounting for differences in student risk; using student movers for robustness checks, the authors note that this estimate is forecast-unbiased. The authors separated reporting practices into two categories, diagnostic skill and preferences, and found that differences in diagnostic skill explain more than twice as much variation in reporting rates as differences in preferences, with higher-reporting schools tending to be more skilled at identifying high-risk cases. The authors conclude that improving maltreatment detection skill would yield significant welfare gains, while policies aimed at reducing reporting (e.g., restricting anonymous reporting) will lower welfare by increasing the number of high-risk cases that go unreported.

Vertical integration in health insurance is widespread in the U.S., with major insurers now controlling large parts of the health care supply chain. Proponents of integration see it as a mechanism for greater data sharing, care coordination, and efficient matching of patients to treatment. Opponents of integration have pointed to increased opportunities to game regulations and hide profits through so-called “tunneling.” This paper describes the extent of vertical integration involving five major health insurers. Per the authors, descriptive evidence provides a picture of the integration-related linkages that may improve synergies across the supply chain but also reveals opportunities for financial flows that avoid regulations like those tied to Medical Loss Ratios. For example, one insurer’s network of related entities contains over 2,000 subsidiary firms, a structure with rich opportunities for synergies to benefit patients and payer alike as well as opportunities to game regulations, hide profits through tunneling, and foreclose markets to rivals at various levels of the supply chain. Findings also include that cross-comparison of the five major insurers is not always possible due to differences in organizational structure and how insurers report investments.