Crack Up or Compromise?

The costs of jail or prison time are greater than most people realize. In recent years, advocacy groups in New Mexico have fought for legislative changes to the criminal justice system around reducing collateral consequences, such as license suspensions and fees, and reviewing overly punitive sentencing practices. Their voices were heard. 
 

What Happened: Gov. Grisham has signed into law a series of justice reform bills that create fair and data-driven justice practices while also delivering accountability and community safety. 
 

Why It Matters: The criminal justice system in New Mexico can be harsh, particularly for poor residents. More than 300,000 people currently have their driver’s licenses suspended for failure to appear in court or failure to pay court fees, creating struggles to drive their kids to school, get to their job, or access health care. Court fees can be crippling for residents and their families, falling disproportionately on women and people of color. Meanwhile, many people are serving long prison sentences even though they could be safely released. The new laws address these and other problems.  

 
What’s Next: The passage of these laws represents a major victory for justice in New Mexico, where lawmakers are increasingly following the evidence to make policy. In the coming legislative sessions, advocates want to continue this momentum as they fight for additional reforms — from pretrial practices to law enforcement policies to prison oversight. 
 

Read the story > 

By Thomas Hanna, communications manager

Last December, Washington, D.C. unanimously passed police accountability legislation. However, nearly six months later, the House of Representatives voted to overturn it. 
 

What’s Happening: In a new op-ed published in The Hill, Jillian Snider, policy director for R Street’s Criminal Justice and Civil Liberties team, and Marc Krupanski, director of criminal justice at Arnold Ventures, discuss how police accountability is a bipartisan issue and should not be used as a partisan prop by Congress.
 

Why It Matters: According to Snider and Krupanski, many of the measures contained in the D.C. law are “commonsense policies that are often popular across the political aisle and with law enforcement.” By taking this action, Congress is perpetuating the harmful and dangerous myth that police accountability is a partisan issue.
  

What’s Next: The Senate will now have the opportunity to end this political theater and send a strong, bipartisan message that “we can and should simultaneously back law enforcement, support efforts to hold them accountable, and promote effective public safety strategies,” Snider and Krupanski write. 
 

Read the op-ed > 

By Juliana Keeping, communications manager
 

The price of insulin continues to grab headlines in the Beltway — but just a few hours away in Virginia, a non-profit pharmaceutical company called Civica Rx is working to manufacture and distribute three types of insulin at low prices. 
 

What’s Happening: Civica insulin will cost $30 and $55 for products intended to be interchangeable with three popular brand counterparts, which have currently or previously cost hundreds of dollars more. Arnold Ventures was among three philanthropies and other health system players that invested in the company and its affordable insulin initiative.   
 

Why It Matters: Media reports have documented lethal rationing as one in four people who need insulin have reported skipping doses or taking less than prescribed due to the drug’s high cost.  

What’s Next: Civica Rx anticipates receiving approval from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration for its first insulin in 2024, and manufacturing test runs are expected later this this year at its Petersburg, Va. production plant near Richmond, spokeswoman Debbi Ford told AV this week. 
 

This initiative is important, but the prescription drug market is so broken, even disruptors like Civica can’t solve its problems. It will take Congress to target the fundamental challenges in the prescription drug marketplace that enable high insulin and drug prices, and there is plenty of work yet to do. 

The average number of traffic stops made per day
by the Chicago Police Department during 2022

New data released by Impact for Equity, formerly BPI Chicago, and the Free2Move Coalition shows that from 2021 to 2022, Chicago Police Department traffic stops increased by 35%. These stops, which disproportionately affect the city’s Black community, are increasingly being made for minor violations having to do with licensing and registration.
 

Although Black people are only 29% of Chicago’s population, Black drivers were subjected to 57% of the traffic stops made in 2022. Black and Latine people were also subjected to 97% of the uses of force during traffic stops.  

Read the report >

• PBS NewsHour reports on the growing movement to provide access to Medicaid for people exiting incarceration. The story, which is based on a conversation with Ryan Levi from Tradeoffs, an AV grantee, details how access to Medicaid can help formerly incarcerated people successfully reintegrate into their communities. 
   
• The New Jersey Monitor and NJ.com covered a recent event at the Brookings Institute that presented research on New Jersey’s ARRIVE Together program, which partners mental health professionals with law enforcement for certain emergency calls.  
   
• A new article published in Science Advances by Shamena Anwar, Shawn Bushway, and John Engberg finds that having a public defender present at an initial bail hearing "decreased the use of monetary bail and pretrial detention without increasing failure to appear rates at the preliminary hearing.” The findings are based on a field experiment in Allegheny County, Pennsylvania.    

• The New York Times reports multibillion-dollar corporations are gobbling up primary care practices. It’s important to remember that consolidation leads to higher health care prices. (free link)
   
• New in the AV-supported Health Affairs Forefront series, Provider Prices in the Commercial Sector, Georgetown University health policy and private insurance expert and professor Sabrina Corlette argues that while price transparency is insufficient to move the needle on health care costs, better price data is key for policymakers, researchers, employers and other stakeholders to identify what’s driving higher costs – and target solutions. 
   
• AV grantee KFF reports that more than half of people eligible for Medicare coverage – the federal insurance program for people older than 65 and people with disabilities – receive coverage in a Medicare Advantage plan. Gaps in data make it difficult to evaluate plan performance.        

• Matt Darling and Will Raderman identify ways to improve upon the “Protecting Taxpayers and Victims of Unemployment Fraud Act” for the Niskanen Center. 

   

  For Forbes, Ben Ritz of AV grantee the Progressive Policy Institute discusses options to give Congress more space to negotiate on the debt limit. 

   

  AV grantee the Penn Wharton Budget Model explains why we are likely going to hit the debt limit earlier than previously estimated. 
   

• A panel of advisors to the Food and Drug Administration unanimously agreed that the benefits of making a birth control pill available over-the-counter – no prescription necessary – outweighed the risks, paving the way for expanded access to contraception, reports Politico.

• A father-son reporting team won a Pulitzer this year for their local reporting for Al.com, work that was supported by Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights and the Columbia Journalism School with support from AV. The Al.com team shared its Pulitzer for local reporting with another AV grantee, Mississippi Today, which was lauded for its watchdog reporting into a welfare scandal that has reached the highest echelons of state government.
   
• The Al.com reporting team also snagged the top reporting prize in the National Headliner Awards. Other Headliner winners include AV grantees Center for Public Integrity with a first place win for online beat coverage; International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, which took home a gold, silver and bronze for digital partnerships reporting; KFF Health News with a second place medal for online investigative reporting; The Maine Monitor with a third place medal for environmental writing; and Spotlight PA with a third place win for political coverage and a third place for online investigative reporting. Congratulations to all the winners.

PBS NewsHour highlights the significant impact of the student success program CUNY ASAP (City University of New York's Accelerated Study in Associate Programs), which doubles graduation rates and according to a new study, also boosts earnings. NewsHour profiled students, administrators, and researchers to illuminate the program's work.

Sheena Meade, CEO of the Clean Slate Initiative, an AV grantee, delivers a Ted Talk on how clean slate laws — which improve the process of clearing past conviction or arrest records — can help millions of people access employment, housing, education, and health care opportunities.

• After the tragic mass shooting in Allen, Texas, AV’s Director of Communications Evan Mintz joined the CityCast Houston podcast to discuss what the data and research says about ways to reduce gun violence.  
   
• On The Rant podcast, hosted by Eloy Oakley, AV's Higher Education Fellow Clare McCann talked about the changing nature of the for-profit education industry and the predatory practices of some online program management (OPM) companies.  

• The Eurovision contest, a global pop music sensation known for its absurdly wild costumes, will air its finale tomorrow afternoon. Discovering top music talent since 1956, the show has crowned winners such as Abba, Celine Dion, and more recently, Måneskin. Have a look at each entrant's music video and see a few contestants sing their hits a capella. U.S. viewers can access the finale on Peacock, live at 3 p.m. ET. 
   
• Yesterday during the 10,000 meter race at the Southeast Asian Games, Singapore runner Soh Rui Yong sped up from behind to share his water with Indonesia's Rikki Marthin Luther Simbolon, who had accidentally missed his cup at the water point. Simbolon won the gold, with Soh finishing right behind him.