Artwork stating 'Education Destroys Barriers', 'We Demand Treatment', and 'I Need A Chance'

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  • What happens after the police stop? People of color with disabilities face higher risks

    Crisis intervention training for Kansas City police officers does not reach the majority of the department and can fail to address a critical reason that police might use excessive force on people with disabilities. Although the 40-hour training includes a segment on dealing with people with autism and developmental disabilities, the combination of racial bias and some people's eccentric behavior can cause officers' "compliance culture" to kick in and make them overreact to perceived threats. Training without culture change, advocates say, is doomed to have short-lived effects.

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  • Tracking incomplete grades moves students forward – with extra focus from educators

    Norfolk Public Schools had a unique approach to addressing student performance post-pandemic—giving students an incomplete instead of failing them. The move revealed racial disparities that allowed the district to respond. “Of the 12,455 incomplete grades submitted, 71% went to Black students.” The district acted on that information and gave devices to students, limited instruction to four times a week to prevent teacher burnout, and placed a bus driver at every school to send staff to communities.

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  • Cities Want Green Spaces. Here's How to Make Them More Fire-Resistant

    A 20-year project by the nonprofit Lomakatsi Restoration Project to restore native plants helped to spare Ashland, Ore., from the worst destruction of a wildfire. Along the Bear Creek greenway in Ashland, the restoration project's work to replace dense thickets of invasive Himalayan blackberries with native shrubs and trees is credited with slowing the speed and severity of the Almeda Fire. Traditional firebreaks and the greenway at other points on the creek failed to slow the fire, and in some ways even sped its destruction.

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  • Unhoused: Status Quo

    Housing First has successfully been implemented in cities across the world to reduce the number of people sleeping on the streets but in Boulder County, the approach has not been nearly as effective. The lack of affordable housing has resulted in just a small percentage of unhoused people accessing a place to live, while services for those who do not make the cut have been drastically reduced. While plans to create more affordable housing are in place, the Housing First approach in Boulder County has led to a reduction in homelessness services and only one homeless shelter stands.

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  • How effective are China's attempts to reduce the risk of wildlife spreading disease to humans?

    In order to get a handle on the spread of COVID-19, and to prevent future zoonotic disease outbreaks, China introduced temporary regulations banning commercial breeding of wildlife for meat consumption. These have hit farmers hard, with at least 20,000 farming operations shutting down by the end of February. With the bans on their way to fully becoming a law, local governments are trying to provide training and loans to help farmers transition to new products, but some claim the process is slow and doesn’t go far enough to prevent the breeding of the banned creatures for fur farming and traditional medicine.

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  • Analyzing the risk

    The Colorado Pretrial Assessment Tool uses a formula to weigh the risk of releasing someone from jail while they await trial. While prosecutors say the tool is better than nothing, critics, backed by a study of the tool's effects, say it disproportionately harms people of color and people experiencing homelessness. Risk assessment algorithms consider a number of facts about a defendant's past and present to predict whether they can leave jail without committing new crimes or failing to make court appearances. But because they penalize already-overpoliced populations, they are not considered objective.

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  • What the US can learn from how African countries handled Covid

    The death toll and infection rate from the coronavirus pandemic have been extravagant in the U.S., especially compared to that of other countries. The difference is largely explained in how different governments handled the early days of the pandemic. In many African nations – such as Senegal, which has been touted as having one of the best COVID-19 responses – "leadership, disaster preparedness, conformity to scientific advice, and coherence in pandemic response strategies" have played a significant role in the outcomes.

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  • Biden embraces drug courts, but do they actually work?

    Drug courts can help some people with serious drug problems who face serious criminal charges, if such court programs are run carefully, based on evidence-based approaches. But, too often, such courts – which push criminal defendants into treatment as an alternative to incarceration – can do more harm than good. The proof of drug courts' effectiveness is mixed, and fairly thin. Thousands of such courts exist, based on widespread political support for an approach seen as less punitive. But many critics say the courts' track record overall is weak and their approach can be just another form of punishment.

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  • Inside Democrats' efforts to fight election security threats

    The Democratic National Committee (DNC) built up its digital defenses, successfully protecting the 2018 midterm election from the cyber-hacking that occurred in 2016. The DNC now trains staff to spot cyber threats, conducts simulated phishing campaigns to test employees’ vigilance, and security staffers regularly meet with their House and Senate campaign counterparts to offer their security expertise. The DNC also requires protections, such as two-factor authentication, which requires a temporary code in addition to a user’s password and conducts regular “spot checks” of Democrats’ cybersecurity practices.

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  • On Tribal Land, Banishment, Rehabilitation and Re-entry Add Up to Justice

    Remote Alaskan villages traditionally followed the native practice of banishing members of their communities for serious, chronic wrongdoing. Created in the absence of a functioning criminal justice system of police, courts, and jail, banishment provided safety for families and communities from people prone to violence. Though rare, the practice persists even when limited forms of law enforcement and state justice processes are available. People who are incarcerated or on parole who are also banished can be denied the rehabilitative benefits of their family and cultural home.

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