Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility - 2021

The world changed in 2020 and everyone was forced to react to an unprecedented global health crisis. Correctional institutions were not immune to this pandemic. This collection of resources highlights many of the developing insights throughout the first year of the crisis and how corrections facilities and agencies were reacting to the problems they faced.

For more on this topic, please see our Coronavirus resources https://nicic.gov/coronavirus

Recent research shows that people who have at least one ally at their job are nearly twice as likely to be satisfied and feel like they belong. As a manager, you have a unique opportunity to be role a model in building inclusion across teams, but you may face unique challenges in remote or hybrid settings.

Managers, Here’s How to Be a Better Ally in the Remote Workplace

Author(s): Melinda Briana Epler

Publisher: Harvard Business Review

Publication Date: 01/27/2022

https://hbr.org/2022/01/managers-heres-how-to-be-a-better-ally-in-the-remote-workplace

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The Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Toolkit explores the practical opportunities and risks that rapidly emerging technologies represent for diversity, equity and inclusion efforts. The toolkit outlines how technology can help reduce bias from recruitment processes, diversify talent pools, and benchmark diversity and inclusion across organizations. Research is also cited that suggests well-managed diverse teams significantly outperform homogenous ones over time, across profitability, innovation, decision-making, and employee engagement.

Diversity, Equity and Inclusion 4.0: A Toolkit for Leaders to Accelerate Social Progress in the Future of Work

Publisher: World Economic Forum

Publication Date: 6/1/2020

In 2021, Dow’s updated Inclusion, Diversity and Equity strategy – ALL IN 2025 – focuses on leading with inclusion, elevating their focus on diversity, and embedding equity into their practices, policies and processes.

Global Workforce Demographics

Publisher: Dow Corporate

Publication Date: 6/1/2021

https://corporate.dow.com/en-us/esg/report/inclusion-and-diversity/investing-in-our-workforce/demographics.html

A 2018 estimate of unemployment among the five million formerly incarcerated people living in the U.S. found that they are “unemployed at a rate of over 27% — higher than the total U.S. unemployment rate during any historical period, including the Great Depression.” In this article, author LeRon L. Barton poses the question: What role is the DEI sector playing in this fight?

What is DEI Doing for the Formerly Incarcerated?

Author(s): LeRon L. Barton

Publisher: Harvard Business Review

Publication Date: 9/6/2021

https://hbr.org/2021/09/what-is-dei-doing-for-the-formerly-incarcerated

This Equity Toolkit contains 3 phases that have been identified to support organizations or schools in operationalizing racial equity.

Each phase contains 3 stages (developing, mid, high) and steps to lead organizational committees through the process of operationalizing racial equity into their school/district/school. Each stage includes: Questions to consider, actions to consider, and resources are built into each sub-phase. We recommend that you move through each phase sequentially, with the reminder that teams can be in several phases at one time. Teams can also circle back to phases depending on the particular racial equity, diversity or inclusion initiative they may be focused on at the moment.

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

The Shared Guiding Principles for Digital Health Inclusion set out in this report complement the larger principles of the EDISON Alliance in order to encourage thoughtful action in its focus areas of finance, education and health. The principles serve as a guide for partnerships in digital healthcare, aiming to raise questions of inclusion at the inception of a project, maximize the opportunities of digitally-enabled medicine and chart a course for responsible and inclusive innovation in connected care.

Shared Guiding Principles for Digital Health Inclusion

Publisher: World Economic Forum

Publication Date: 11/1/2021

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.

Diversity Wins is the third report in a McKinsey series investigating the business case for diversity, following Why Diversity Matters (2015) and Delivering Through Diversity (2018). Our latest report shows not only that the business case remains robust but also that the relationship between diversity on executive teams and the likelihood of financial outperformance has strengthened over time. These findings emerge from our largest data set so far, encompassing 15 countries and more than 1,000 large companies. By incorporating a “social listening” analysis of employee sentiment in online reviews, the report also provides new insights into how inclusion matters. It shows that companies should pay much greater attention to inclusion, even when they are relatively diverse.

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.

Certified diversity executive, host of Diversity: Beyond the Checkbox podcast and Head of Content for The Diversity Movement, Jackie Ferguson, explains: As a society, we don’t always extend empathy to incarcerated and formerly-incarcerated people the way we do to other underserved groups. In fact, I’d say bias often leads us to believe their marginalization is somehow deserved or, at the very least, defensible. Yet if more people understood the reality of our criminal justice system — from wrongful convictions to the large number of people in prison because of small-time drug offenses — they might feel differently. They might even give formerly-incarcerated people a fresh chance at building a career and contributing positively to our workplaces and communities.

Overall, scheme managers and custody visitors were well trained and were continuing to learn from training sessions provided by the Independent Custody Visiting Association (ICVA) and Police and Crime Commissioners (PCCs). However, there were still gaps in the ability of both scheme managers and custody visitors to identify and challenge direct and indirect discrimination.

Just Visiting? Exploring the Effectiveness of Independent Custody Visitors at Monitoring Race and Gender Equality in Police Custody

Author(s): Amal Ali, Hannah Pittaway

Publisher: Criminal Justice Alliance

Publication Date: 12/1/2021

The number of Deaf adults in the correctional system is difficult to specify, as some estimates include individuals who are mildly to moderately hard-of-hearing while others do not. HEARD, an organization that provides support and advocacy to incarcerated Deaf individuals, estimates the number to be in the tens of thousands.

Deaf and Incarcerated: Access, Accommodations, and Care

Author(s): M. Elizabeth Bowman, PhD, LCSW-C, and Jaemi Hagen, MSW

Publisher: National Commission on Correctional Health Care

Volume, Issue, & Page: Volume 36, Issue 1, pgs 4-6

Publication Date: Spring 2022

President Biden signed an Executive Order to advance diversity, equity, inclusion, and accessibility (DEIA) in the Federal workforce. This Executive Order reaffirms that the United States is at its strongest when our Nation’s public servants reflect the full diversity of the American people.

Executive Order on Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Accessibility in the Federal Workforce

Author(s): President Joseph R. Biden, Jr

Publisher: The White House

Publication Date: 6/25/2021

Agencies have new marching orders to promote and improve diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility within the federal workforce, thanks to a sweeping new executive order from the Biden administration.

The executive order, which President Joe Biden signed Friday evening, details the administration’s vision for a federal workforce “that looks like America.” It touches on nearly every aspect of federal employment, from recruitment and hiring to training, leadership development, and employee pay and benefits.

Biden Creates Sweeping Diversity and Inclusion Initiative Through New Executive Order

Author(s): Nicole Ogrysko

Publisher: Federal News Network

Publication Date: 6/28/2021

To date, organizations across the world have followed the American lead when it comes to DEI. They’ve benefited from the extensive research, data, literature, role models, best practices, narratives, and success stories and have been inspired to address inequality in their own workplaces. But for global organizations aspiring to be inclusive of diverse talent across their international teams, it’s just as important that employees in Paris, Mumbai, and Buenos Aires are on board as it is for those in New York and Seattle. To achieve this, leaders can draw inspiration from the management term “glocal,” a mix of the words global and local.

Recent research shows that people who have at least one ally at their job are nearly twice as likely to be satisfied and feel like they belong. As a manager, you have a unique opportunity to be role a model in building inclusion across teams, but you may face unique challenges in remote or hybrid settings.

Managers, Here's How to Be a Better Ally in the Remote Workplace

Author(s): Melinda Briana Epler

Publisher: Harvard Business Review

Publication Date: 1/27/2022

https://hbr.org/2022/01/managers-heres-how-to-be-a-better-ally-in-the-remote-workplace