|
|
|
The Abstract
|
|
> By Stephanie DiCapua Getman, Arnold Ventures
|
Employers struggling to fill vacant positions amid our nation’s labor shortage may find clarity in new research released today by RAND Corporation. It sheds light on what is keeping so many people sidelined from the workforce: past involvement with the criminal justice system.
For people with a criminal conviction, that ubiquitous step in the job application process — the background check — usually results in a dead end. Employers turn away qualified workers, and people who have served their time continue to be punished.
RAND’s study is unique: Most research has looked at unemployment rates among people with a criminal conviction. But RAND flipped the script, instead quantifying conviction rates among the unemployed.
The pool of potential workers is substantial. Among unemployed men in their 30s, more than half have a criminal record. An estimated 64% of unemployed men have been arrested, and 46% have been convicted of a crime by age 35. What’s more striking: Black men are 33% more likely to be arrested than white men, further compounding systemic employment challenges. By age 35, roughly half of Black men have been arrested, one in three have been convicted of a crime, and one in four have been incarcerated.
The study was commissioned as part of AV’s work to remove barriers for people who have served their time and help them successfully reintegrate into society, something people across the political spectrum support. “We believe that a criminal record should not be a life sentence to poverty,” says Carson Whitelemons, criminal justice manager at AV, who witnessed her father struggle to find a job after he returned home from prison. “This study demonstrates that addressing the harms of a criminal record is not just a criminal justice issue, but also is crucial for an equitable economic recovery.”
Read more about the study in "Convicted, Unemployed, Overlooked."
Related: Research shows that a criminal record isn't a predictor of job performance or longevity.
|
|
|
|
Criminal Justice Journalism, Reimagined
|
|
|
|
By Evan Mintz, communications manager
From salacious reporting of the Central Park Five case in the 1980s to fear-mongering headlines about pretrial reforms, misleading media coverage of criminal justice issues is nothing new. But many media outlets are now taking meaningful steps to change their coverage of crime and criminal justice. We’ve gathered recommendations from experts on ways journalists can bring better balance and more evidence to their coverage. Here are some highlights:
Talk to the police, but not only the police: “There’s nothing wrong with [news outlets] quoting the police, but they're not the only game in town,” said Thomas Abt, chair of the Violent Crime Working Group and Senior Fellow at the Council on Criminal Justice. “We need a balanced set of voices.”
Report with empathy: “If you're going to report on somebody being sent to jail, hearing about what that experience of going to jail is like is also an incredibly important perspective,” said Laura Bennett, co-author of “ Freedom, Then the Press: New York Media and Bail Reform.”
Call in researchers — and teach them to push in: “Some academics just want to do the research and get it out there,” said Jennifer Doleac, director of the Justice Tech Lab. “And then realizing that there are stakeholders that really have an interest in discrediting you — I think it's just something most academics are not comfortable with.”
Follow the data: “Anecdotes are really powerful, but they aren't [evidence of] trends. One bad thing can happen. And that does not mean that it's a trend, it does not mean that every person is in danger. It does not mean that we should upend a lifesaving reform,” said Bennett.
Read the story >
Related:
|
|
|
|
|
A Win for Consumers, Employers
|
|
|
|
By Juliana Keeping, communications manager
In Massachusetts, an independent state agency made a first-of-its-kind move to hold a dominant health system accountable for its role driving state health care spending higher. The Commonwealth’s Health Policy Commission, the state body tasked with monitoring health care spending, announced it would require dominant health care system Mass General Brigham (MGB) to create a first-ever cost savings reform plan.
Why It Matters: Prices charged by health systems are a key driver of health care costs in the commercial market, and MGB has the highest prices in Massachusetts, according to the most recent RAND Hospital Study. For consumers, those high prices are a kitchen-table issue, hitting the state’s privately insured families and patients with higher premiums and out-of-pocket costs.
What’s Next: Massachusetts was the first state to establish a program — dubbed cost growth benchmark — to set a target for how much a state’s health care spending should grow each year. Today states like Rhode Island, Washington, and Delaware are pursuing or have in place similar cost growth benchmarks. Others are eyeing programs with even stronger enforcement mechanisms. In Oregon, legislation gave the state the authority to penalize health systems that exceed spending growth caps set by the state. The legislative trend is good for consumers and employers hurt by rising health care prices. More legislative progress is anticipated in 2022.
Read the story >
|
|
|
|
|
Is That College Degree Worth It?
|
|
|
By Torie Ludwin, communications manager
To some, this is better than U.S. News & World Report’s college rankings: For the first time since 2018, the federal government’s College Scorecard is sharing data on median student earnings after leaving college. Students and families can search by institution and get a sense of overall outcomes for former students. In addition, College Scorecard is comparing that earnings number with what a typical worker with a high school diploma might make.
Why It Matters: When we’re talking about student earnings after college, we’re really talking about return on investment (ROI) for college — is it going to be worth it to take out loans and pay a lot of money in tuition given the expected earnings? You would think that a student who goes to college stands to earn more money than a high school graduate, and in most cases that’s true. However, at some institutions and in some programs, students leave with more debt and no change to their earning power compared with before they enrolled.
What’s Next: The improved data in the College Scorecard is just a start. What is still needed is better data: by race, ethnicity, age, gender, and full- and part-time status. That way, students can find out how others fare at various programs. In addition, schools and policymakers need to have better data on how to improve higher education outcomes.
Luckily, this data could become safely, securely available with the College Transparency Act, which recently passed in the House with bipartisan support as an amendment to the America COMPETES Act. It is now on its way to the Senate.
Related: NPR interviews Michael Itzkowitz, former director of the College Scorecard, about the federal website’s new update and offers an on-air demo.
Related: The Georgetown Center on Education and the Workforce and the Bipartisan Policy Center have both recently written reports and created online calculators for return on investment in higher education.
|
|
|
|
|
Bringing Everyone
to the Policy Table
|
|
|
|
By Torie Ludwin, communications manager
Policymaking doesn’t happen in a vacuum. People bring to the table their preconceived, conscious, and unconscious biases. People who aren’t at the table, of course, aren’t even heard, and the resulting policy decisions can have inequitable consequences.
“At every table at the federal government I’m in, I’ve often been the only Latina. We need to do better,” says Stella Flores of the Institute of Higher Education Policy (IHEP) and The University of Texas.
What’s Happening: Flores and IHEP’s Mamie Voight, along with more than two dozen experts in higher education, have put forth a framework of five interrelated principles that can guide inclusive policymaking at every level of government: how an issued is framed; how resources are prioritized; who participates in the decision-making process; what data is presented; and the language that is used in the conversation.
Why It Matters: Inclusive policymaking can level the playing field and advance racial equity. IHEP and its committee hope to see this framework used for the U.S. Department of Higher Education's negotiated rulemaking sessions on the federal level, but it can be applied across a spectrum of fields.
Dive Deeper: AV’s Director of Higher Education Kelly McManus sat down with Voight and Flores to discuss how their framework can help us better understand the diverse experiences of students and how equitable policy can support their success. Says Flores: “Policymakers need direct contact with the people who are affected most. It’s hard to understand poverty when you have never experienced it. Understanding the conditions of what we are trying to solve and going beyond our comfort zones can change the conversations.”
Read the Q&A >
|
|
|
|
|
|
Criminal Justice
Health
- Hospitals are breaking price transparency rules, which raises questions about enforcement, reports Bloomberg.
- From Kaiser Health News, a snapshot of the ongoing controversies swirling around the embattled Alzheimer’s drug Aduhelm.
- Patients have had enough when it comes to hospital monopolies, reports Axios.
- One man’s infuriating experience with aggressive hospital billing: Elliot Malin wasn’t supposed to get a bill after donating a kidney to his cousin, but then came the $13,064 charge, reports ProPublica.
- Medicare Advantage plans are a growing force in Medicare, now covering about 43% of total beneficiaries, but the program has also been plagued with higher costs and spending, underscoring the need for policy solutions to ensure that the plans are delivering cost-effective and high-quality care. A new blog series in partnership with The Commonwealth Fund examines challenges in the program and opportunities for improvement.
- How senators are pushing for enforcement of the Affordable Care Act’s requirement that insured patients access contraceptives with no out-of-pocket costs, via The 19th*.
Dive Deeper: AV recently discussed this issue with Mara Gandal-Powers of the National Women’s Law Center, who has been closely monitoring the issue.
- The 19th* also highlights that while North Carolina’s new law allowing pharmacists to prescribe birth control is a significant step forward for access to contraceptives, cost is still a significant barrier for the young and uninsured.
Higher Education
- The extensive fraud and abuse by the now-defunct for-profit college ITT Tech detailed in this Project on Predatory Student Lending report. It includes thousands of internal records showing ITT lied to students in order to gain access to and profit from their federal financial aid.
- Forbes writing on The U.S. Department of Education’s $415 million in student loan forgiveness for approximately 16,000 former students of DeVry University, Westwood College, ITT Technical Institute, and many others.
Related: Read the stories of students who were cheated by predatory schools, part of our series with the National Student Legal Defense Network.
- EdScoop context on the recent bipartisan passage of the College Transparency Act in the House last week.
- What would happen if the Department of Education reinstated the 2014 Gainful Employment Rule in negotiated rulemaking? Third Way's Michael Itzkowitz and Shelbe Klebs run an analysis to find out.
Also
- Why more states should follow Alaska’s lead on elections and adopt ranked-choice voting, from New York University School of Law professor Richard H. Pildes, writing in the New York Times. (free link)
Related: While championing Sen. Lisa Murkowski in the The Washington Post, George Will notes how ranked-choice voting and top-four primaries benefit Alaskans. “This is a Madisonian reform, designed to encourage rule by majorities whose political temperatures do not skew far toward fevers.” (free link)
- With states receiving funds from the American Rescue Plan, the National Conference of State Legislature’s Center for Results-Driven Governing has issued an “evidence brief” recommending scalable, evidence-based workforce solutions. It is first in its “Investing in What Works” series.
|
|
|
|
|
|
“Why, in a country so scientifically advanced, has there been so little evidence-based research into stemming gun violence?” asks NPR's Michel Martin in this short but informative discussion with Mark Rosenberg, founding director of the National Center for Injury Prevention and Control. Rosenberg began advocating for a science-based approach to gun violence prevention almost 30 years ago, and he walks listeners through the history of gun violence research and what we can be doing now to save lives.
|
|
|
|
|
|
- Curtis Kimball is spreading good vibes — and free pancakes — around his San Francisco neighborhood.
- A newspaper editor, dismayed that his supplier of reporter’s notebooks had gone out of business, has taken up the craft himself, producing the slender, spiral bound notebooks ubiquitous in reporters' back pockets.
- The winning entries in this illusion contest are wild.
- Sometimes Magazine is a work of art, about music, that comes out only sometimes.
- Apparently a vibe shift is coming. Make of that what you will.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Have an evidence-based week,
– Stephanie
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Stephanie DiCapua Getman develops and executes Arnold Ventures' digital communications strategy with a focus on multimedia storytelling and audience engagement and oversees daily editorial operations and design.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Were you sent this briefing by a friend? Sign up here to get the AV Newsletter.
|
|
|
|
You received this message because you signed up for Arnold Ventures' newsletter.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
