Total Environmental Scan

The world continues to experience an unprecedented and sustained change in the age structure of the global population, driven by increasing levels of life expectancy and decreasing levels of fertility. People are living longer lives, and both the share and the number of older persons in the total population are growing rapidly. Globally, there were 727 million persons aged 65 years or over in 2020. Since women live longer than men, on average, they comprise the majority of older persons, especially at advanced ages. Over the next three decades, the number of older persons worldwide is projected to more than double, reaching over 1.5 billion in 2050. All regions will see an increase in the size of the older population between 2020 and 2050.

This report provides criminal justice policymakers and practitioners with a priority agenda to prepare the nation’s criminal justice system for future public health crises. Through its recommendations, the Commission seeks to better balance the roles and responsibilities of the public health and public safety fields.

About 600,000 Americans have died of COVID-19 since the coronavirus outbreak began. But behind that huge figure is a more nuanced one that brings the human toll of the virus into even sharper relief.

In addition to the overall number of deaths from a given cause, researchers can estimate the number of “life years” lost due to it – a statistic that takes life expectancy into account. For example, if a person with a life expectancy of 80 dies at age 50, they are estimated to have lost 30 years of life. Examining this statistic underscores the extent to which the virus has cut Americans’ lives short.

The COVID-19 pandemic is inflicting high and rising human costs worldwide, and the necessary protection measures are severely impacting economic activity. As a result of the pandemic, the global economy is projected to contract sharply by –3 percent in 2020, much worse than during the 2008–09 financial crisis. In a baseline scenario--which assumes that the pandemic fades in the second half of 2020 and containment efforts can be gradually unwound—the global economy is projected to grow by 5.8 percent in 2021 as economic activity normalizes, helped by policy support. The risks for even more severe outcomes, however, are substantial.

This Bureau of Labor Statistics page provides information on correctional officers and jailers. The duties of this job category include guarding inmates in penal or rehabilitative institutions in accordance with established regulations and procedures. Correctional officers and jailers may guard prisoners in transit between jail, courtroom, prison, or other points. It includes deputy sheriffs and police who spend the majority of their time guarding prisoners in correctional institutions.

Key points of this brief:
• The use of sanction grids or matrices to respond to client behavior has not been shown to have a
significant impact on recidivism outcomes. There are no evaluations of grids/matrices that include
both sanctions and incentives.
• The use of sanction grids/matrices are associated with better uses of agency resources and reduced
use of jail or prison sanctions.
• There is strong evidence that the use of incentives by supervising officers produces improved
supervision outcomes for individuals convicted of more serious offenses and people classified as
higher risk to reoffend.
• Implementation challenges can interfere with the effectiveness of structured sanction and incentive
policies.

The United States has more immigrants than any other country in the world. Today, more than 40 million people living in the U.S. were born in another country, accounting for about one-fifth of the world’s migrants. The population of immigrants is also very diverse, with just about every country in the world represented among U.S. immigrants.

Pew Research Center regularly publishes statistical portraits of the nation’s foreign-born population, which include historical trends since 1960. Based on these portraits, here are answers to some key questions about the U.S. immigrant population.

How many people in the U.S. are immigrants?

Given a current global population of about 7.8 billion, the revised estimate means those alive in 2020 represent nearly 7% of the total number of people who have ever lived.

The federal prison population, which declined for the first time in decades under President Barack Obama, fell further during the administration of President Donald Trump.

Claudia Goldin, former head of the American Economic Association, called the period beginning in the mid-1970s the quiet revolution in women's labor. The ranks of female workers had grown steadily after World War II, but what changed drastically starting in the '70s, according to Goldin, wasn't the raw numbers, but mindset. Women made employment decisions for themselves, they pursued careers, and their work became part of their identity. The COVID-19 pandemic, by any measure, has been a blow to that identity. Piled atop challenges such as pay disparities and expensive childcare is an economic downturn that hit women workers measurably harder than men—the so-called “she-cession.” One particularly sobering number: According to the U.S.

Experts highlight advances with the potential to revolutionize industry, healthcare and society if some of the many thousands of human volunteers needed to test coronavirus vaccines could have been replaced by digital replicas – one of this year’s Top 10 Emerging Technologies – COVID-19 vaccines might have been developed even faster, saving untold lives. Soon virtual clinical trials could be a reality for testing new vaccines and therapies. Other technologies on the list could reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions by electrifying air travel and enabling sunlight to directly power the production of industrial chemicals. With “spatial” computing, the digital and physical worlds will be integrated in ways that go beyond the feats of virtual reality.