System Overload: The Costs of Under-Resourcing Public Defense

July 28, 2011 by Andrew Atwal

Justice Policy Institute

Public defense systems across the United States are overburdened, according to this new report from the Justice Policy Institute.  This new report also considers how some of the public defense systems affect county and state budgets, along with the lives of those behind bars, the impact of the system on families and the challenges facing those who are re-entering communities after serving time.

The study looks at why public defenders often do not have enough time to conduct extensive and thorough investigations, or meet with and provide quality representation for their clients – many of whom are low-income people of color – and how that contributes to disparities in the criminal justice system.

According to the report, 73 percent of county-based public defender offices lacked the necessary number of attorneys to meet caseload standards. 23 percent of the offices had less than half of the attorneys needed to meet caseload standards.

In the United States, only 12 percent of county public defender offices with more than 5,000 cases per year had enough lawyers to meet caseload standards. About 60 percent of county-based public defender offices do not have caseload limits or the authority to refuse cases because of excessive caseloads, despite national standard recommendations that attorneys handle no more than a set number of cases per year.

To ensure a more fair and effective justice system that guarantees quality representation, reduces wasteful spending practices and decreases the overuse of incarceration, the report makes several key recommendations.

One is integrating a holistic and community-based approach to public defense. The report notes that such practices can help address the root causes of justice system involvement and prevent future involvement by treating the whole client.  This can save money on defense, improve public safety and have a general positive impact on communities and people, the report states.

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Early Childhood Policy Focus: Healthy Eating and Physical Activity

July 27, 2011 by Andrew Atwal

Child Trends

This brief analyzes data and current research on the nutritional and exercise habits of children under the age of 6 years. Several factors affect these habits including the choices made by parents and children, public policies and financial restrictions (which include the availability, accessibility and cost of healthier food options).

According to the most recent Healthy Eating Index, which is the United States Department of Agriculture’s measure of diet quality, children (ages 2 to 5) scored an average of 60 (out of a possible 100) points for their healthy eating level.

Children’s diets were the healthiest in terms of their consumption of total grains, total fruits and milk. On the other hand, they were the worst in terms of dark green vegetables, orange vegetables, legumes and saturated facts. These findings show that children need to increase their consumption of vitamin-rich foods, nutrient-dense foods (including those low in fat and ones that do not contain added sugars) and decrease their intake of sodium, high calorie foods and saturated fat.

Research shows that bad or insufficient diets can jeopardize children’s development, threaten their readiness for school and have lifelong effects on adult productivity. However, adequate consumption of important nutrients and vitamins (most notably Vitamins A, C, D, and E, as well as magnesium and phosphorous) is critical for normal growth and development and learning. Young children who do not get enough vitamins and nutrients might be negatively affected in terms of how well and how much they learn.

Researchers note that the wide availability and variety of passive entertainment media options for children (including television, video games and computers) may be negatively affecting the level and amount of children’s physical activity.

The study notes that snacking and skipping meals can also result in weight gain and nutritional deficiencies.  More than one in eight children have reported rarely or never eating breakfast, and one in four skip breakfast at least some of the time. Snacking is associated with nutrient-poor calories, because the foods children report eating often tend to offer little in the way of minerals, protein and vitamins and are also usually relatively high in sugar and fats.

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Kids’ Share 2011: Report on Federal Expenditures on Children through 2010

July 26, 2011 by Andrew Atwal

The Brookings Institution and The Urban Institute

The fifth annual Kids’ Share report represents a milestone in the analysis and reporting of federal expenditures on children because the available data now spans 50 years, from 1960 to 2010.

In 1960, the largest federal contributions to families with children came from the dependent tax exemption, Social Security benefits and education. However in 2010 the dependant exemption has far less of a relative value, and Medicaid, the child tax credit and the earned income tax credit have become the three largest federal expenditures on families and children.

Federal expenditures in 2010, which is the most recent year of data available, seemed to be affected by the recession of the latter half of the decade as well as by long-term trends. In response to the recession and the increased unemployment rate, the federal government increased its expenditures on children.

The children’s share of the federal budget was 11 percent in 2010, which is slightly higher than it was in 2009, and significantly higher than it was in 1960. However, this increase might only be temporary as the children’s share of the federal budget is expected to decline to less than 8 percent of the total federal budget by the end of the next decade.

Between 2010 and 2015, outlays on children are expected to fall from $374 billion to $339 billion, which is a decrease of 9 percent.

Together, Medicaid and the three child-related tax provisions accounted for 47 percent of the total expenditures on children. Among the other largest federal spending programs on children are Social Security, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), several education-related programs, and the Child Nutrition Program.

There was also a temporary increase in spending on some programs because of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA), which was enacted in 2009. The act had a large impact on education outlays, with both Title I schools and special education programs showing substantial outlays from ARRA funding. In addition, it is estimated that about two-thirds of the new $53.6 billion State Fiscal Stabilization Fund (SFSF), which was established by ARRA, was spent on K-12 education, $17 billion of which was spent in fiscal year 2010.

A large majority of the state and local spending on children in 2008, the last year for which data is available, was on education, with a significantly lesser amount of spending on health and other costs. State and local spending on education averaged about $6,853 per child in 2008 (spread across all children under 19 years old, and including those not in school). Expenditures for health were more evenly split among state and local governments and federal spending with the federal government providing 59 percent and state governments providing the remaining 41 percent. In addition, health spending accounted for 11 percent of total public investments in 2008.

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Secondhand Smoke and Sensorineural Hearing Loss in Adolescents

July 22, 2011 by Andrew Atwal

Archives of Otolaryngology

Secondhand smoke, the perils of which continue to grow, has now been linked to possible hearing loss in adolescents.

Although exposure rates vary across regions and by other factors including race, socioeconomic status and gender, about half of the nation’s population is exposed to secondhand smoke and the detrimental effects of SHS have been shown across all demographic groups.

When exposed to tobacco prenatally and while in childhood, SHS has been linked to sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS), increased asthma severity, behavioral and cognitive problems, otitis media (OM) – or ear infection – and low birth weight, among other maladies.

In the auditory system – which is the sensory system for hearing – SHS is a known risk factor for OM. In addition, recurrent acute OM is more common in the nearly 60 percent of children exposed to SHS in the United States.

Secondhand smoke exposure might also have an impact on auditory development, leading to sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL), according to this new study reported in the Archives of Otolaryngology.

To conduct the study, data was analyzed from 2,288 adolescents between the ages of 12 and 19, from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES 2005-06). Participants were evaluated during a home interview to determine family medical history, current medical conditions of the participants, medications being used, whether smokers lived in the households, and general socioeconomic and demographic information.

The researchers found that SHS exposure has been linked to diseases in the United States affecting everyone from the young to the elderly. This particular study found that SHS is found to be associated with hearing loss in adolescents in the United States.

In multiple variable analyses, controlling for gender, race, age and poverty, exposure to tobacco smoke was associated with a 1.83-fold increased risk of hearing loss among adolescents.

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The Multi-Site Adult Drug Court Evaluation

July 21, 2011 by Andrew Atwal

Urban Institute

This new evaluation by researchers from the Urban Institute’s Justice Policy Center (UI-JPC), RTI International (RTI) and the Center for Court Innovation (CCI) is the first long-term study of drug courts for adults. The study lasted for five years and examined 23 courts and six comparison jurisdictions in eight different states.

The main goals of the evaluation were to test whether drug courts reduce the use of drugs, crimes and other problems of their clients in comparison with offenders not exposed to drug court; address how well drug courts work, and determine the factors that make drugs courts more or less effective than regular courts in achieving desired outcomes; explain how offender attitudes and behaviors change when exposed to drug courts and how these changes could explain effectiveness of drug courts; and examine whether  drug courts generate cost savings.

One of the most significant findings from the study is that these court programs can significantly decrease criminal behavior and drug use, because participants sensed that their judge treated them more fairly, showed greater interest and respect for them, and gave them more opportunities to talk during court proceedings.

The study found few differences among multiple categories of offenders– defined by social ties, demographics, mental health, prior drug use, and criminality– in terms of the magnitude of drug court impact. Findings indicated that nearly all categories of offenders benefit comparably from drug courts, which the researchers said could suggest that widespread drug court policies to restrict the eligibility to a narrow subset of the population might be counterproductive. In addition, drug courts also affected criminal behavior among most of the same subgroups. There were also no subgroup-based differences in the rate of positive drug tests.

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Achievement Trends of Schools and Students in Arizona’s Title I School Improvement Program

July 20, 2011 by Andrew Atwal

Institute of Education Sciences (IES)

This report describes how Arizona public schools found to need improvement under Title I of No Child Left Behind are distributed across various levels under the improvement scheme, compares trends in reading and math proficiency for students attending schools at each level and examines patterns of movement in and out of school improvement status among Title I schools. It also shows that even schools that didn’t meet their annual goals have shown marked rises in their test scores.

The report primarily addresses the following research questions and objectives about Arizona students and public schools—how many schools are struggling to meet improvement guidelines, where the schools are located and how various schools moved in and out of various improvement categories from the 2005-06 school year to the 2008-09 school year. Schools in “improvement” may be spread across various levels, based largely on how many consecutive years a school has failed to improve test scores. The number of years of “failure” triggers various levels of assistance to the schools and students.

Overall, the study found that the percentage and number of Arizona schools in improvement (that is, failed to meet yearly goals) are increasing. Of Arizona’s 1,912 public schools in the 2008-09 school year, 62 percent (1,181) received Title I funding. Among those 1,181, 26 percent were in improvement. That compares with the 2005-06 school year, when 56 percent of public schools received Title I funding and 14 percent of those were schools in Improvement.

In 2008-09, more Title I middle schools were deemed in need of improvement (52 percent) than high schools (39 percent) and elementary schools (18 percent).

During this same time period reading and math proficiency increased for students in all three school types (based on their school type in 2008-09). In 2008-09, Arizona Title I schools in improvement had student proficiency rates of 43 percent to 61 percent, Title I Schools not in improvement had rates of 60 percent to 71 percent and non-Title I schools had proficiency rates of 76 percent to 84 percent. However, since the 2005-06 school year, the schools in improvement made proficiency gains of 5 percentage points to 9 percentage points, more than  Title I schools not in Improvement (3 percentage points to 7 percentage points) and non-Title I Schools (less than 1 percentage point to 4 percentage points).

Among the 978 schools receiving Title I funding throughout the period of study, more schools, both by percentage and number, entered the school improvement program than schools that left the program.

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National Postsecondary Enrollment Trends Before, During and After the Great Recession

July 14, 2011 by Andrew Atwal

National Student Clearinghouse Research Center

This report spotlights national and regional college enrollment trends among traditional-age, first-time students during the fall semester of each year from 2006 to 2010 – before, during and after the recession.

It categorizes the total enrollment and changes across years by institution sector and control; enrollment changes across the years nationally and by geographic region; full- and part-time enrollment by institution type and geographic region; and first-year persistence and retention rates based on individual student pathways across institutions.

Results of the study show that changes in college enrollment accompanying the recent recession, and among traditional-age college students have not been as pronounced as many had previously believed.

At the same time, postsecondary institutions faced challenges including shifts in enrollment patterns, cuts in funding from state governments, and general uncertainties regarding financial aid practices.

Although there were consistent increases in community college enrollments from 2006 to 2009, they decreased slightly from 2009 to 2010 among traditional-age college students. The enrollment declines in 2010 seem to follow an enrollment surge at many community colleges in 2009. The findings show the need for continued state support for community colleges and also enhanced structural development within the two-year public college sector.

During the recession, private-sector colleges appear to have maintained their market share of student enrollments more effectively than predicted. This could be for various reasons, including better targeted recruitment efforts; state budget cuts and financial strains faced by the public four-year colleges; and the likelihood that families able financially to send their children to expensive private schools were not as affected by the downturn.

The recession appears, however, to have caused a noticeable shift in students’ choices regarding whether to enroll full- or part-time. Nationally, four-year institutions saw very little change in the proportion of students enrolling full-time. However, the proportion of students enrolling full-time at public community colleges increased slightly during the recession. Although these particular findings are not dramatic, they do suggest that students who might have otherwise attended four-year institutions instead enrolled full-time at community colleges.

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Four Times More Florida Deaths from Legal, than Illegal, Drugs

July 08, 2011 by Andrew Atwal

Florida had four times as many deaths from legal drugs as illegal drugs in 2009, according to a report from the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention published today, signaling what it says is a need for more attention to prescription drug abuse.

By 2007, unintentional poisonings in Florida had grown to be the second leading cause of injury-related death, after motor vehicle accidents. Of all unintentional poisonings, 93 percent were drug overdoses.

Of all overdoses occurring in Florida between 2003 and 2009, about 86 percent were unintentional, about 11 percent were suicides and 2.6 percent were of undetermined intent.

From 2003 and 2009 in Florida, the number of annual deaths that showed lethal amounts of one or more drugs increased 61 percent from 1,804 in 2003 to 2,905 in 2009 – when drug overdoses caused eight deaths each day. In addition, the overdose death rate in Florida increased 47.5 percent during the same time period.

Between 2003 and 2009, death rates from all drugs, except for cocaine and heroin, increased. The death rate for prescribed drugs increased just over 84 percent, with the greatest death rate increase stemming from oxycodine (264.6 percent).

Since 2007, Florida has seen the rapid increase of hundreds of pain clinics that prescribe large quantities of oxycodine and alprazolam (Xanax), some of which is ultimately used for non-medical purposes, according to the report, part of the CDC’s Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report.  Many of the customers of such pain clinics often travel to Florida from Appalachian States such as Kentucky to obtain the drugs for resale in their home states, the report states.

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Affordability and Transfer Critical to Increase Bachelor’s Degree Completion

July 06, 2011 by Andrew Atwal

National Center for Public Policy and Higher Education

The importance of the U.S. having more college graduates and the role that community colleges must play in producing such an increase are addressed in this new report. It places particular emphasis on states with rapidly growing young populations where ethnic groups and low-income students with low rates of college participation and completion are most highly concentrated.

The report states that too many college students will not make it to get their degree because of rising tuition costs and ineffective transfer policies.

The students at the highest risk levels are those who begin their college education at a two-year institution, often because of financial necessity. Students from underrepresented racial groups are more likely to enroll in community colleges as their first postsecondary institution. On a national level, 50 percent of Hispanics start at community college. This rate is 31 percent for African-Americans and 28 percent for Caucasians.

The report states that this problem is likely to get worse in coming years because of the projected increase of high school graduates in states such as Arizona, Texas, and California, where more than half of post-secondary education students currently are enrolled in two-year higher education institutions.

Over the last 20 years, tuition at public two-year colleges has increased far more rapidly than the inflation rate, according to the report. But at the same time, family incomes, when adjusted for inflation, have actually declined over that same time period.

This combination puts extreme pressure on states to make up the difference in financial Aid, but the report notes that states’ efforts have been inadequate. The remaining shortfall falls back on students who then need to work more Job hours to be able to afford college and means they are forced to take fewer classes – both factors make them less likely to complete any kind of college degree.

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Blacks, Native Americans Highly Overrepresented in Foster Care, Report Shows

July 05, 2011 by Andrew Atwal

Most states continue to place high rates of African-American children in foster care, said a recent report on race and foster care by the National Council of Juvenile and Family Court Justices (NCJFCJ).

The report, Disproportionality Rates for Children of Color in Foster Care, breaks down the disproportionality rates of children in foster care for each state in 2004 and 2009. Disproportionality is calculated in this study by taking the population of children in foster care for a particular race and dividing it by the proportion of the same racial group in the child population.

There has been a national decrease in African-American disproportionality rates – the rate was 2.65 in 2004, and dropped to 2.36 in 2009 – but nearly every state involves a higher amount of African-American children in foster care than their population figures would predict. States with the highest disproportionality rates of African-Americans in foster care in 2009 were Wyoming with a rate of 6.0, Utah (4.4), Wisconsin (4.2), and California (4.1). Hawaii and Oregon were the only states where African-American children were actually under-represented in the foster care population.

Most states with high African-American disproportionality rates also remove a high rate of children, period, according to research by the National Coalition for Child Protection Reform, which calculates its state rate-of-removal index by dividing the number of children removed from their homes by the number of children living in poverty.

Of the 17 states with a rate above 2.5, only Illinois and Ohio have a rate-of-removal index below the national average of 18.3. Four of the 17 states – Wyoming, Nebraska, Iowa and Colorado – are in the top 10 on the rate-of-removal index.

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