July 2016

Steve Teles ranks among America’s leading academic experts on the application of conservative ideas to problems of governance. He chronicled the rise of the conservative legal movement in a 2010 book . This spring, he and co-author David Dagan have released a new study: Prison Break: Why Conservatives Turned Against Mass Incarceration . Not a conservative himself, Teles writes as a sympathetic outsider, always looking for ways to bridge ideological gaps in the service of better policy. With...

Science and common sense don't always tell us the same things, so it's especially satisfying when they agree. In the case of children's exposure to violent media, the science clearly confirms what we already suspect: what children watch and play changes how they behave. Kids who experience more violence in their virtual worlds—television, movies, and video games—are more likely to display aggressive thoughts, aggressive behavior , and angry feelings in the real world. See the American...

About 15 years ago, non-profit and public service providers in Cowlitz County, Wash. were trying to figure out why—despite great planning and programming—there were still problems in the neighborhood that made the most 911 calls. The prevailing wisdom was that the neighborhood was dangerous because it was dark outside people’s homes, and it stayed dark because people liked it that way. It helped conceal criminal activity. But the coordinator for the service collaborative knew she needed to...

Housing assistance programs in the United States are falling far short of meeting a growing demand for aid in the years following the recession. My colleague Kriston Capps previously covered a report from the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities that found that federal rental assistance for families with children is at its lowest point in a decade , even as the number of very low-income families with children has increased by 53 percent in the same time frame. Rental assistance, broadly,...

For those looking to overcome an addiction to prescription painkillers or heroin , buprenorphine presents a relatively safe and proven option. Yet it’s rarely used: A new study estimates that, among Americans who used Medicare to pay for their prescriptions in 2013, about 80,000 had a script for buprenorphine, commonly known as Suboxone (one of the brand names). Meanwhile, the study’s authors estimate about 300,000 Medicare beneficiaries suffered from an opioid use disorder in 2013.

The lower part of South America, the Beijing region, and a little patch of far-east Russia: These were the landmasses that experienced abnormally cool temperatures in June. The vast majority of the Earth’s surface, however, was either warmer than usual or scalding with record-breaking heat , according to NOAA’s latest global analysis . At 1.6 degrees above the 20th-century average of roughly 60 degrees, it was the warmest June in modern history and the 14 th consecutive month of...

A humid afternoon in Philadelphia is an unforgiving time to mill around this prison yard. But here they are, of their own free will. Penned between the thick stone walls and brick towers — ominous battlements that evoke a medieval castle — more than a dozen tourists dressed in shorts and tank tops, capri pants and polos, wander across Eastern State Penitentiary’s baseball diamond with audio packs slung around their necks. A voice pipes through their headphones as they contemplate a 16-foot...

Racial Media Violence is Stressful This month Black America awoke to news of two troubling killings of Black males by-way of police encounters. For most people of color, it becomes increasingly impossible to escape the barrage of news coverage broadcasting the gruesome details of the events that led to the deaths of Alton Sterling and Phinlando Castile. For many, the recurrence of racial tragedies serve as an ever-present reminder of the racial barriers and biases that interpersonally and...

There is a lot of conversation about "anti-racism allies." Here is a story and interview with two women who are committed to putting that philosophy into action. "White Nonsense Roundup (WNR) was created by white people, for white people, to address our inherently racist society. We believe it is our responsibility to call out white friends, relatives, contacts, speakers, and authors who are contributing to structural racism and harming our friends of color. We are a resource for anti-racist...

A new report from the Central Iowa ACEs 360 Coalition shows most Iowa adults have experienced childhood trauma, an indicator of higher rates of chronic diseases, mental illness, violence, risky behaviors, and reduced life expectancy among adults. The 2016 ACEs report, Beyond ACEs: Building Hope & Resiliency in Iowa, examines three years of data collected among adult Iowans measuring eight types of Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs), defined as physical, sexual and emotional abuse, and...

Tonight, countless acute mental-health patients desperate for help will arrive at their local emergency room only to be detained under guard for days as they wait for suitable psychiatric care. It’s a crisis of health-care delivery that, at a minimum, would benefit from the leadership of a national task force to develop solutions for a problem caused by poor funding for community care. The issue of mental-health patients being “boarded” in emergencies rooms, whether they arrive there...

By a handful of indicators—unemployment rates, overall economic growth, even average hourly earnings—the U.S. economy isn’t doing so badly right now. And yet, when it comes to the number of Americans who go hungry, it’s almost like the recovery never happened. The U.S. Department of Agriculture defines food security as "access by all people at all times to enough food for an active, healthy life,” and in 2006, the year before the housing market stumbled, the USDA estimated that fewer than...