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The Abstract
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> By Stephanie DiCapua Getman, Arnold Ventures
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When I got home on Tuesday evening, my second-grader proudly showed me a picture he had drawn of SpongeBob’s SquidWard and his seafloor home. I beamed outwardly but ached inside for the families of the 19 young children who will never again experience such a simple joy.
The mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas — my home state — was an act of gun violence so unimaginable that it has not only devastated the families left behind, but shattered an entire community.
The collateral damage is wrenching: those small souls who heard their classmates’ screams and witnessed bloodshed in their safest of spaces, teachers and caretakers whose only thought was to give their lives in protection, and the injured who will carry wounds both physical and mental for a lifetime.
And the collective trauma of a country that can’t understand why this keeps happening.
I will tell you why: Because we allow it. Because we as a country refuse to put our children and their lives ahead of politics. Because we treat the public health epidemic of gun violence as a necessary byproduct of our partisan dysfunction — as a problem we are too paralyzed to solve.
Gun violence kills 40,000 Americans every year, and mass shootings — like the racist slaughter of shoppers at a Buffalo supermarket less than two weeks ago — tend to be the only time we turn our collective heads and gasp at the hellscape we continue to seed with our inaction and political gamesmanship. The fact is most gun deaths are suicides, and it is our nation’s veterans — whose fallen comrades we will honor this weekend — who are most at risk of dying from this type of gunfire, off the battlefield.
Gun violence is prevalent, yet we know very little about it. We have failed to devote meaningful resources to study this problem with the kind of rigor that could produce a shared set of facts on which to base meaningful policy change. We as a country spend more money studying peptic ulcers than we do studying gun violence, which is now the leading cause of death for America’s children. Let that sink in: We prioritize solving the problem of ulcers over saving children’s lives. What does that say about us and what we actually value in this country? Tell me, because today I am at a loss for understanding — and faith.
I recall with great clarity where I was in 2012 when a gunman cut short the barely begun lives of 20 first-graders and killed six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School, the deadliest school shooting in our nation’s history. I was a journalist then and traveled to Newtown, Connecticut, to help relieve the exhausted newsroom of a sister paper in that community. While there, I drove to the school site to pay my respects. It was Christmastime, so the road leading to the campus was lined with 26 trees, one for each victim. Across the street, tents had been erected that spanned several town blocks, and under them sat an overflowing collection of tokens: teddy bears, flowers, toys, trinkets. People did not know where to place their grief, so they placed it there, on those tables, for someone else to absorb. I know how they felt, because I did the same thing, inconspicuously adding a small, green dinosaur that belonged to my then 3-year-old daughter to the edge of one of those tables as I walked by. I knew it was selfish, and I knew it was wrong — that act was for me. What did it really do for the grieving town, except leave them with yet another artifact of tragedy in need of disposal?
Those items were eventually hauled away, and not a damn thing happened to make sure history did not repeat itself. So it did.
Now, 10 years later, I will always remember where I was when I learned of the second deadliest school shooting in our nation’s history. My hope is that this time, we let the town of Uvalde mourn in peace, that we don’t add to the weight of their grief, that instead of stuffed animals or plastic dinosaurs, we leave behind a legacy of change. We do not need to wait for the perfect political conditions. We must find a path forward that protects lives and Second Amendment rights. We can do both: Invest in the problem, follow the evidence we do have about guns, and put in place policies that save lives.
It’s something. And we must do something.
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'We Have Seen What Change
Can Look Like'
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By Evan Mintz, communications manager
Two years ago, America couldn't breathe. People from coast to coast watched on their phone screens, computer monitors, and TV sets as a Minneapolis police officer murdered George Floyd. For 9 minutes and 29 seconds, police ignored the pleas of a man they were sworn to protect and serve. The single tragedy became a symbol of decades of suffering under a structurally flawed policing system — excessive use of force, racial disparities, weak accountability. In response, the nation erupted in the largest civil rights protest movement in recent modern history. Policymakers and police leaders promised to finally address long-standing injustice.
After two years, we're still waiting.
Polarization has stalled a national bipartisan movement for reform. The COVID-19 pandemic and spike in homicides changed the political debate. Reform advocates are stuck in a defensive position. It feels like a once-in-a-generation moment for change ended before it could truly begin.
Yet at the White House this week, there's a reason to hope. President Biden signed an executive order that takes a critical step forward for building accountable policing. The order addresses excessive use of force, officer discipline, and data collection and reporting. And while these reforms only apply to federal law enforcement agencies, such as the FBI and DEA, it sets a standard for best practices that can and should be followed by state and local policymakers.
In fact, we're already seeing states lead the way on building accountable policing. Illinois, Maryland, and Washington state have all passed robust reforms. States that once had no provision to decertify officers, such as California, have implemented new systems. And in New Jersey, even the state's police union is backing efforts to create a new licensure and decertification process.
Marc Krupanski, AV director of policing, and Walter Katz, AV vice president of policing, have written an extensive essay looking back at the past two years, noting how far we've come, and how much further we have to go.
"While the urgency in 2020 through 2021 may have subsided, the need for structural change has not," they wrote. "Fortunately, many advocates, researchers, policymakers, and police leaders themselves have continued to press for police accountability measures despite shifting headwinds. Real change remains not just necessary but possible."
Read the story >
Related: AV’s Vice President of Criminal Justice Walter Katz weighs in on President Biden’s executive order in this NPR story. "I think this is a relatively small step."
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Another Unaccredited,
For-Profit School, Another Lawsuit
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By Torie Ludwin, communications manager
Is it coincidence that the majority of cases Student Defense takes are against unaccredited, for-profit schools? This time, Student Defense is suing coding boot camp Lambda School (now called Bloom Institute of Technology), an education sector rife with abuse.
What’s Happening: Lambda coding camp offered students a seemingly amazing deal: Enter school for free, and then once employed, pay a portion of your income back to the school; this is called an income-sharing agreement (ISA). However, Lambda charged students double the price of the average coding camp and misled them about the school’s job placement numbers.
Why it Matters: In contracts with predatory schools like these, students are often required to enter into arbitration in lieu of going to court when things go wrong, which protects the school in many ways. However, Student Defense has mounted multiple arbitrations against Lambda in addition to this newest lawsuit, turning this kind of supposed legal shield on its end.
What’s Next: The Department of Education has the opportunity to ramp up enforcement against schools who misrepresent job placement numbers as it prepares its new proposed borrower defense rule in its upcoming Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM).
Read the story >
Related: Read about other defrauded students represented by Student Defense in Shattered: Faces of the For-Profit College Crisis and how the U.S. Department of Education can protect students in the future via rulemaking.
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Set Up for Pretrial Success
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By Evan Mintz, communications manager
One primary responsibility of pretrial services programs is to supervise people on pretrial release when required by the court. For too long this has been an overly punitive system that locked up people for their failures even as they suffered from mental health problems, substance use disorder, or homelessness. In a new approach to the field, local pretrial services leaders in counties across the country are beginning to adopt supportive services that promote pretrial success.
Advancing Pretrial Policy and Research has been documenting these efforts at supporting success.
In Jefferson County, Nebraska, the rural county found its criminal justice system filled with cases related to drug use. The pretrial conditions for these cases mandated drug tests and check-ins that Nebraskans' grappling with addiction routinely failed. Rather than helping men and women stay on the right track, this system simply kept them cycling through jail. That changed when Peggy Galloway, Jefferson County’s diversion services and pretrial release director and sole employee, began identifying voluntary supportive services for people ordered to pretrial supervision.
“You can’t expect someone who has been addicted to drugs for years to suddenly be drug tested twice a week and pass without any support services in place,” she said.
In New Orleans, De’Anna LaVigne-Lawson, the director of the pretrial services division at Orleans Parish Criminal District Court, has been working to provide basic services for people who pass through her office. This can mean something as simple as a cup of coffee or as important as child care.
“Children aren’t allowed in New Orleans’ courtrooms, so providing a place where parents would be assured their kid was being taken care of alleviated some of the stress that accompanies court,” explained Lavigne-Lawson.
In St. Louis, Missouri, Sarah Phillips, the pretrial services coordinator, is leveraging a $1 million grant from the Bureau of Justice Assistance to help people find jobs and receive treatment for mental health and substance use. This builds on other efforts to help people find pretrial success, including transportation to make court dates, assistance preparing résumés, access to clothing closets for job interviews, meetings with career coaches, access to psychiatric services, and help securing housing.
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A Bipartisan Plan
to Put People First
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By Anisha Agrawal, Health Care Manager, Complex Care
A new bill introduced by Sens. Tim Scott (R-SC), Bill Cassidy (R-LA), and Bob Casey (D-PA) would require states to develop plans to integrate care for their dual-eligible population.
What's Happening: States are at varying levels of providing integrated care for the dual-eligible population — a group of low-income seniors and individuals with disabilities. People must navigate between two distinct government programs — Medicare operated by the federal government and Medicaid operated by states — resulting in fragmented care and increased spending on government programs.
Why it Matters: This bill would require all states to develop a plan to integrate care for this population. These plans must include eligibility requirements, patient education and enrollment, patient choice protections, mental health benefit coordination, and data collection and measurement. These elements are critical to developing the infrastructure needed to deliver person-centered care for this high-need, high-cost population.
What's Next: “The introduction of this bipartisan bill marks an important step forward in achieving our goal that every dual-eligible individual has access to an integrated care model,” says AV Vice President of Health Care Arielle Mir. Requiring states to have a plan is just the tip of the iceberg. States will need support in developing these plans. That's why AV provides technical support to states implementing integrated models.
Read more about our work to support states in advancing integrated models.
Related: The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services finalized rules to use Medicare Advantage to integrate Medicare and Medicaid coverage for people eligible for both programs. Now it’s time to ensure that all those dually eligible for Medicare and Medicaid can access one of these plans. Read more.
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Jennifer Ferone, associate research director at CUNY Institute for State & Local Governance (ISLG), and Cecilia Low-Weiner, research associate at CUNY ISLG, who discuss what we've learned over two years of implementing New York's statewide bail reforms.
"Look at the positive impacts of people not getting bail and not being in jail while their case is pending," said Ferone. "They’re able to be with their families, remain employed. I think that we’re missing some of the positive impacts from individuals that are impacted by the system."
Read the Q&A >
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$22,221 a year
That’s the cost of the average family insurance premium — as much as a buying a car every year. Meanwhile, nearly 1 in 5 adults in the U.S. owes medical debt. The prices hospitals charge employers and families are a key driver of commercial market health care costs, and state lawmakers looking to address this issue and decide what prices are fair have a new tool at their disposal: The Hospital Cost Tool from AV grantee the National Academy for State Health Policy. It provides key evidence to inform policymakers and employers looking to contain high and rising hospital prices, showcasing data on 4,600 hospitals nationwide. The tool can help policymakers better understand hospital finances, including the prices they charge and their costs, revenue, and payer mix.
“The tool is a boon for state policy development to contain rising prices,” says AV Director of Health Care Hunter Kellett. “Policymakers can now see financial data on hospitals in their state, allowing them to push back on the industry’s talking points and design state-specific policy solutions.”
Read the story >
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Criminal Justice
- The Cleveland Plain Dealer takes issue with the rampant misinformation and grandstanding over bail in Ohio. “What makes Ohio communities less safe is misleading the public and wrongly enflaming attitudes on cash bail — where reform is really, truly just about justice for all, so being poor isn’t an automatic ticket to jail."
- An activist in Seattle has united left and right with an anti-crime program, LEAD, that embraces community policing, reports the Washington Examiner. “Police and prosecutors were opposed to me and my colleagues. But it turns out they needed me, and I needed them,” says Lisa Daugaard of LEAD, the Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion program.
Video: Joey Nash shares his story about a Seattle LEAD case manager who took him off the streets and on track to a better life. “She literally saved my life.”
- “Last year, Leader [Chuck] Schumer asked us to bring him 10 Republican votes for the EQUAL Act. We brought him 11 — a filibuster-proof majority ... It’s time to give this bill a vote on the floor now, before the August recess,” says Inimai Chettiar of Justice Action Network. Learn how the EQUAL Act, which would eliminate the federal sentencing disparity between crack and cocaine, has broad support across the political spectrum and from law enforcement, faith leaders, and advocates.
- Virginia Gov. Glenn Youngkin has restored voting rights to thousands of formerly incarcerated individuals, The Washington Post reports.
- Oklahoma becomes the sixth state to enact clean slate legislation for automatic record expungements, Stillwater News Press reports.
- The Supreme Court’s decision in Shinn v. Martinez Ramirez, will be “disastrous for anyone relying on their constitutional right to effective counsel,” writes Slate. The Marshall Project offers more context.
- Mentally ill defendants need treatment, not jail, argues Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge Terry Lee Smerling in this Los Angeles Times op-ed.
- Four U.S. jurisdictions are exploring ways to break the cycle between jail and homelessness through the “Just Home Project” from the MacArthur Foundation and Urban Institute, Bloomberg reports.
- Blavity profiles REFORM Alliance — of which our Co-Chair Laura Arnold is a founding partner — and its legislative successes reshaping our probation and parole system.
Dive Deeper: In this episode of our Deep Dive podcast, REFORM Alliance’s Meek Mill talks to AV Co-Chair Laura Arnold about his experiences of being trapped inside a broken system that is laser-focused on punishment instead of what it is intended to do: help people stay out of prison.
- A lack of data on who is in Oklahoma's jails and prisons is hindering justice reform efforts, writes The Oklahoman.
- Congratulations to AV alumnus Amy Solomon for her nomination to assistant attorney general, Office of Justice Programs, U.S. Department of Justice.
Health
- Medicare spent $1.8 billion in 2019 on drugs whose clinical benefits have yet to be confirmed by the FDA, reports EurekAlert! on a new Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health study supported by AV.
- South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster signed a law making birth control available without a prescription, to go into effect by December, reports the Post and Courier.
- According to a meta-analysis of 38 studies, patients are more likely to use contraception when doctors proactively counsel them about it, notes UPI.
Higher Education
- Strategic advisers Ithaka S+R issued a report measuring the impacts of federal oversight of accreditors on schools and student outcomes. “Shining a spotlight on accreditors who give the stamp of approval to poor performing institutions may do more to immediately improve student outcomes than anything else.”
- The National Association of Student Financial Aid Administrators released a report on targeted policy solutions to address underlying flaws in the student loan repayment and servicing system.
Democracy
- In R Street, Theo Menon advocates for the adoption of ranked-choice voting in Texas. “In practice, RCV creates an instant runoff. For Texas, this is where RCV shines. By combining two elections, voters avoid hassle, taxpayers save money and candidates can stop their intra-party bickering and turn their attention to the general election.”
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 As we were all horrifically reminded this week, gun violence
in America is a public health epidemic — and a leading cause of preventable death and injury. Black men are 14 times more likely than non-Hispanic white men to be shot and killed with guns. In 2014, law student Claude Motley was among those who survived his encounter with a firearm. The new film “When Claude Got Shot” tells his story in intimate detail, documenting his journey to heal both mentally and physically after an attempted carjacking in Milwaukee by 15-year-old Nathan King. But there are unexpected twists and turns in this story: King is himself shot by another potential carjacking victim, resulting in life-altering injuries, and Motley does not want to see his attacker swept up in the system of mass incarceration. Directed and produced by Brad Lichtenstein and executive produced by Snoop Dogg, this film tells a complex story about the repercussions of gun violence and the meaning of justice. It’s streaming on Independent Lens, and you can read an interview with Motley in this BET story.
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- Free the Pill will host its next webinar on “Youth activism in support of over-the-counter birth control pills” Tuesday, May 31 from 3-4 p.m. ET. Co-sponsored with Advocates for Youth, the webinar will cover the ways youth are taking action in support of over-the-counter birth control pills.
- The 2022 National Research Conference on Firearm Injury Prevention is seeking symposia and abstract submissions on research encompassing all aspects of firearm injury prevention. The deadline for submissions is Friday, June 17 at 11:59 p.m. ET.
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Have an evidence-based week,
– Stephanie
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Stephanie DiCapua Getman develops and executes Arnold Ventures' digital communications strategy with a focus on multimedia storytelling and audience engagement and oversees daily editorial operations and design.
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