Total Environmental Scan

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.

A once-in-a-century crisis—a Great Disruption unleashed by a viral pandemic—hit the world economy in 2020. In a matter of months, the number of people living in poverty increased sharply, while income and wealth inequality trended towards new highs. Governments around the world responded rapidly—and boldly—to stem the health and economic contagion of the crisis. Fiscal and monetary stimulus packages were quickly rolled out to save the economy. The crisis responses, however, entailed difficult choices between saving lives and saving livelihoods, between speed of delivery and efficiency, and between short-term costs and long-term impacts.

Experts doubt ethical AI design will be broadly adopted as the norm within the next decade.

A majority worries that the evolution of artificial intelligence by 2030 will continue to be primarily focused on optimizing profits and social control. They also cite the difficulty of achieving consensus about ethics. Many who expect progress say it is not likely within the next decade. Still, a portion celebrate coming AI breakthroughs that will improve life.

Experts Doubt Ethical AI Design Will Be Broadly Adopted as the Norm Within the Next Decade

Author(s): Lee Rainie, Janna Anderson and Emily A. Vogels

Publisher: Pew Research Center

Publication Date: 6/16/2021

Not only does the U.S. have the highest incarceration rate in the world; every single U.S. state incarcerates more people per capita than virtually any independent democracy on earth. To be sure, states like New York and Massachusetts appear progressive in their incarceration rates compared to states like Louisiana, but compared to the rest of the world, every U.S. state relies too heavily on prisons and jails to respond to crime.

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

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

What lies ahead for us? Although the modern world allows us to know and control so many things, our collective future remains slippery. This seems particularly true this year, as we live through a global pandemic and amid countless existing environmental, economic and political uncertainties. Combining insights from the history of computing, the practical lens of futurism and the imaginative signposts offered by four fictional stories of life in 2030-something, this report aims to equip leaders with the tools they need to more accurately imagine the future of information, locality, economics and education, and to plan accordingly.

In collaboration with Deloitte

Congress tasked BJS and the U.S. Census Bureau with reporting on post-prison employment of persons released from federal prison. The study population in this report includes 51,500 persons released from the Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) whose release records could be linked by the U.S. Census Bureau to employment and wage files from the Longitudinal Employer-Household Dynamics (LEHD) program.

Employment of Persons Released from Federal Prison in 2010

Author(s): U.S. Department of Justice

Publication Date: 12/1/2021

https://bjs.ojp.gov/content/pub/pdf/eprfp10.pdf

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.

From breath sensors that can diagnose disease to wireless charging of low-powered devices, the 10th-anniversary edition of the World Economic Forum’s Top 10 Emerging Technologies Report lists new technologies poised to impact the world in the next three to five years.

Top 10 Emerging Technologies of 2021

Publisher: World Economic Forum

Publication Date: 11/1/2021

https://www.weforum.org/reports/top-10-emerging-technologies-of-2021

In June 2020, RAND and University of Denver staff conducted an expert workshop on com-munity supervision in a digital world. The workshop was convened to identify high-priority technology and policy needs related to supervising individuals in an increasingly digital world. This report presents the proceedings of that workshop, topics considered, needs that panel participants developed, and overarching themes that emerged from the panel discussion. This report and the results it presents should be of interest to community corrections agency administrators, community corrections officers, correctional assessment and treatment staff, risk-needs assessment technology providers, digital supervision technology providers, and the research community.