Total Environmental Scan

In this Fifth Further Notice of Proposed Rulemaking, the Commission seeks to obtain detailed comment to enable it to make further progress toward ensuring that the rates, charges, and practices for and in connection with interstate and international inmate calling services meet applicable statutory standards.

Rates for Interstate Inmate Calling Services

Publisher: Federal Communications Commission

Volume, Issue, & Page: Vol. 86, No. 142

Publication Date: 7/28/2021

Rates for Interstate Inmate Calling Services

An essential consideration for government, business and civil society is how technologies are harnessed and regulated to accelerate growth, encourage innovation and build resiliency in the wake of COVID-19. How governments and other stakeholders approach the governance of technologies will play an important role in how we reset society, the economy and the business environment.

This report examines some of the most important applications of Fourth Industrial Revolution technologies if we are to thrive in a post-pandemic world and the governance challenges that should be addressed for these technologies to reach their potential.

By the end of November 2020, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) was estimated to have resulted in the deaths of between 268,000 and 360,000 Americans.1 The spread of the disease stressed the U.S. health care system, with the number of people needing care over-whelming available resources in some parts of the country. Both the disease and the actions taken to respond to it stressed the country as a whole and had broad impacts on the economic system and government agencies at all levels.

The U.S. Criminal Justice System in the Pandemic Era and Beyond

Author(s): Brian A. Jackson

Publisher: RAND Corporation

Publication Date: 2021

Calculating the answer to the question “How many people have ever lived on Earth?” is complicated. To begin with, when we initially wrote this article back in 1995, “modern” Homo sapiens (that is, people who were roughly like we are now) were thought to have first walked the Earth around 50,000 B.C.E. Discoveries now suggest modern Homo sapiens existed much earlier, around 200,000 B.C.E. This major change in our understanding of human existence spurred new calculations and consultations with experts, resulting in an estimate that about 117 billion members of our species have ever been born on Earth.

How Many People Have Ever Lived on Earth?

Author(s): Toshiko Kaneda and Carl Haub

Publisher: Population Reference Bureau (PRB)

The Sentencing Project's key fact sheet provides a compilation of major developments in the criminal justice system over the past several decades.

Trends in U.S. Corrections

Publisher: The Sentencing Project

Publication Date: 5/1/2021

https://www.sentencingproject.org/publications/trends-in-u-s-corrections/

This report presents data on diversity in public service organizations — in state and local government, education, health care, and related nonprofit organizations. It also compares historical and current public service diversity figures to those of the broader workforce. Aspects of diversity discussed include race, ethnicity, age, gender, and other categories (to the extent that data is available), such as LGBTQIA+ identification, veteran status, cognitive diversity, religion, and language.

Diversity, equity, and inclusion in the public service workforce

Author(s): MissionSquare Research Institute

Publication Date: 9/1/2021

Global prospects remain highly uncertain one year into the pandemic. New virus mutations and the accumulating human toll raise concerns, even as growing vaccine coverage lifts sentiment. Economic recoveries are diverging across countries and sectors, reflecting variation in pandemic-induced disruptions and the extent of policy support. The outlook depends not just on the outcome of the battle between the virus and vaccines—it also hinges on how effectively economic policies deployed under high uncertainty can limit lasting damage from this unprecedented crisis.Global growth is projected at 6 percent in 2021, moderating to 4.4 percent in 2022. The projections for 2021 and 2022 are stronger than in the October 2020 WEO.

The intent of this report is to provide the nation a better understanding of the extraordinary challenges state workforce agency staff faced during the 2020 pandemic and present the measurable results of their tireless efforts. For more information or to begin a conversation, use the contact information provided on each state’s profile within the report.

2021 State of the Workforce Report: Responding to the Pandemic

Publisher: National Association of State Workforce Agencies

Publication Date: 2021

https://www.naswa.org/system/files/2021-03/2021-state-of-the-workforce-reportweb3-9-21.pdf

The global economic recovery is continuing, even as the pandemic resurges. The fault lines opened up by COVID-19 are looking more persistent—near-term divergences are expected to leave lasting imprints on medium-term performance. Vaccine access and early policy support are the principal drivers of the gaps.

Recovery during a Pandemic—Health Concerns, Supply Disruptions, Price Pressures

Author(s): International Monetary Fund

Publisher: World Economic Outlook

Publication Date: 10/1/2021

As the 21st century unfolds, American jails are confronting unprecedented challenges. While both the numbers and the demands of their populations have steadily grown, their resources have not kept pace. As a result, perhaps at no other time have jails been in greater need of capable staff and confident leadership. Yet within just a few years, retirements are expected to seriously diminish the ranks of managers, supervisors, and experienced line employees who are now staffing America’s jails. Add to that their ongoing struggle to recruit and retain well-qualified workers whose importance to the welfare of the community is often unappreciated, and it becomes clear why jail leaders throughout the country recently elevated workforce-related issues to a top national priority.

A number of colleges and universities are finally acknowledging what caste-oppressed students, who mostly share a South Asian immigrant background, have long known, namely that “casteism tends to manifest in US colleges and universities through slurs, microaggressions and social exclusion”. These unfortunate dynamics are rooted in models of social stratification that have a far longer history than that of racism in the US, appearing first in The Rigveda, the oldest known Vedic Sanskrit text that has been orally transmitted since the 2nd millennium BCE. And in the context of Hinduism, this type of ‘othering’ refers to the Brahminic ideology that hierarchizes society into its distinct and immovable social classes.