Meet the YIMBYs

Criminal justice reform advocate Santia Nance speaking at the Senate hearing on Wednesday.
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By Thomas Hanna, communications manager

What's Happening: On Wednesday, the Senate Subcommittee on Criminal Justice and Counterterrorism held a hearing on the effects of understaffing, over-incarceration, and poor conditions in prisons. 

Why It Matters: These issues have created a downward spiral in our nation’s prisons that negatively affects staff, incarcerated people, and community safety. 

What's Next: One Voice United (OVU), an organization representing correctional staff, and FAMM, an organization representing families of incarcerated people, along with lawmakers from across the aisle, will continue shining a light on this crisis and advancing policy solutions to address it.

Read our statement from Arnold Ventures’ Vice President of Advocacy Kevin Ring on the national prison understaffing crisis>

Learn about FAMM and OVU's campaign aimed at addressing the crisis>

Public Finance

• In Semafor, Kadia Goba highlights House Budget Committee Chairman Jodey Arrington (R-TX)’s recognition that getting our nation back on sound fiscal footing will require both spending cuts and revenue raisers to be on the table.
   
• Linda Miller writes about the need for improved data, technology, and incentives around fraud risk management in government for Federal News Network.
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• The Washington Post editorial board describes the ballooning waste, fraud, and abuse in the pandemic-era Employee Retention Credit, and encourages Congress to wind down the program.​

Criminal Justice

• In Bloomberg, Matthew Yglesias reports on how the Real-Time Crime Index, which is supported by AV, is aiming to address the lack of data in understanding crime trends such as the suggested increase in retail theft.
   
• Writing for R Street, former prosecutor Lisel Petis makes the case that criticism of bail reform is misguided. “Rather than reverting to outdated practices that disproportionately penalize the poor and perpetuate cycles of criminality, we must continue to refine, update, and improve bail reform efforts to create a more effective and fair model,” she writes.
   
• A column for the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC) explains why using justice system fines and fees to fund court systems and law enforcement pension plans creates perverse incentives and is a "lose-lose" policy idea.

Higher Education

• Only 55 percent of bachelor’s degree graduates secure employment in a college-level job within 10 years after graduation, according to a new report from the Strada Foundation and the Burning Glass Institute.
   
• A new analysis by the HEA Group finds that eight percent of higher education institutions graduate a majority of students who don't earn more than 150 percent of the Federal Poverty Level, and 22 percent of institutions don't graduate a majority of students who will make above $15 per hour.

Infrastructure

• “Build, baby, build:” The Washington Post editorial board writes about how more than 20 governors raised housing affordability in their State of the State Addresses to their legislatures, underscoring the nationwide nature of the problem.

• The Washington Post broke a major story this week that the U.S. Department of Justice has “launched a wide-ranging investigation of the nonprofit organizations that collect organs for transplant in the United States… which seeks to determine whether any of the groups have been defrauding the government.”

• Thelma Golden, the first black woman curator at the Whitney Museum of Art, who is also known as a desegregator of the art world.
   
• The late Peg Lee, called the Julia Child of Houston, who knew every chef in town and trained half of them, could make anyone feel at ease, and had impeccable style. (free link)
   
• Tu Youyou, a Chinese malariologist and pharmaceutical chemist who discovered a breakthrough treatment for malaria, and is credited for having saved millions of lives because of it. She also won a Nobel prize in 2015 for her work.