The Geography of Incarceration

The Boston Foundation's Boston Indicators Project, MassINC, and the Massachusetts Criminal Justice Reform Coalition, released The Geography of Incarceration: The Cost and Consequences of High Incarceration Rates in Vulnerable City Neighborhoods, a new study that compares the geography of incarceration to the geography of crime in our city.The report accessed a novel data set from Suffolk County Sheriff Steve Tompkins and depicts how incarcerations have had a disproportionate impact on Boston's most vulnerable neighborhoods."This is needed work because the American criminal justice is characterized by high incarceration rates, especially for people of color. This produces cascading negative effects, not just on the lives of the imprisoned but on their families, neighborhoods and our city as a whole," said Paul Grogan, President and CEO of the Foundation.  "I'm hopeful that this work will build on the leadership Chief Justice Gants and the commitment from Governor Baker, Speaker DeLeo and Senate President Rosenberg to work with the Council of State Governments to produce meaningful reform."Among the report's findings, are:Even as Massachusetts has touted its "progressiveness," incarceration rates have been rising faster in recent years in this state than in the rest of the United States, as a whole.More was spent in 2013 incarcerating Codman Square residents than on statewide gang prevention efforts.The cost of housing all Suffolk County Jail inmates in 2013 was two-and-a-half times the Commonwealth's combined FY13 budgets for Bunker Hill and Roxbury community colleges and nearly as much as Boston's combined budgets for Parks and Recreation and Youth and Families departments.The report was released during a forum at The Boston Foundation that included a panel discussion with Suffolk County Sheriff Steve Tompkins, Boston City Councilor Andrea Campbell, State Representative Evandro Carvalho, and John Larivee, President & CEO of Community Resources for Justice. The report recommended a series of reforms, including the redesigning houses of correction so they excel at addressing risks and needs, and eliminating mandatory minimum jail sentences, and in increased focus on diversion and re-entry programming for offenders

GIS and Cultural Mapping for Better TV Programming and Modelling of Coverage Area of Sudan National Television Service (SNTV)

Better TV programming, this paper assumes, won‟t be possible without careful integration of the broadcasted material (i.e. programmes) to viewer‟s geographical and cultural elements on either of the national, regional or local levels. The objective of this paper is to explain how GIS and spatial modelling methods and procedures are applied in cultural mapping and database building. The explanation is made within the framework of the geography of television and related terms such as broadcasting, narrowcasting, station profile, viewing levels, Furthermore; common TV programming concepts are coupled to GIS spatial procedures and models. Samples from SNTV programmes scheduled and broadcasted in the period 2005-2012 were used as data to analyze, using GIS, the ability of such programmes to represent and to reflect the cultural geography of the nation. In addition, digital cultural maps and spatial database building for the country are considered as necessary for better TV programming and broadcasting policies. The results which include spatial mapping, buffers, spatial statistics and models show that; SNTV needs to consider GIS and cultural mapping in order to improve the understanding of its coverage/geography i.e. the homeland. In addition, the benefit from other programmes is rather minimized by many unconsidered factors such as; language type and level, optimum times in relation to viewers‟ economic activities, size of viewers and the availability of viewing facilities particularly in rural areas. A GIS spatially-based model for programme designing, scheduling and broadcasting considering the “what”, “when” and “where” elements of TV programming is suggested. Finally, as a recommendation, research and monitoring of viewers opinion and expectations through projects and regular surveys are needed for better feedback and programme updates

A Playful Experiential Learning System With Educational Robotics

This article reports on two studies that aimed to evaluate the effective impact of educational robotics in learning concepts related to Physics and Geography. The reported studies involved two courses from an upper secondary school and two courses froma lower secondary school. Upper secondary school classes studied topics ofmotion physics, and lower secondary school classes explored issues related to geography. In each grade, there was an “experimental group” that carried out their study using robotics and cooperative learning and a “control group” that studied the same concepts without robots. Students in both classes were subjected to tests before and after the robotics laboratory, to check their knowledge in the topics covered. Our initial hypothesis was that classes involving educational robotics and cooperative learning are more effective in improving learning and stimulating the interest and motivation of students. As expected, the results showed that students in the experimental groups had a far better understanding of concepts and higher participation to the activities than students in the control groups

Why We Can't Wait -- A Case for Philanthropic Action: Opportunities for Improving Life Outcomes for African American Males

This report examines programs and initiatives that impact the life outcomes of African-American males, gathers reflections from the field, and assesses needs and opportunities according to scholars, policy makers, advocates, and organizational leaders. The report documents its findings and recommendations in three categories: academia/research, practitioners/civil society, and public policy/advocacy

Teaching on Jupyter - Using notebooks to accelerate learning and curriculum development

The proliferation of large, complex data spatial data sets presents challenges to the way that regional science - and geography more widely - is researched and taught. Increasingly, it is not ‘just’ quantitative skills that are needed, but computational ones. However, the majority of undergraduate programmes have yet to offer much more than a one-off ‘GIS programming’ class since such courses are seen as challenging not only for students to take, but for staff to deliver. Using evaluation criterion of minimal complexity, maximal flexibility, interactivity, utility, and maintainability, we show how the technical features of Jupyter notebooks - particularly when combined with the popularity of Anaconda Python and Docker - enabled us to develop and deliver a suite of three ‘geocomputation’ modules to Geography undergraduates, with some progressing to data science and analytics roles

Geographical Information System Mapping the Billboards in Samarinda

Advances in information technology on geography are increasingly needed by many people, for example information on distances between regions, locations, facilities and many other information. The information is needed by users for various purposes such as research, development, regional design and natural resource management. Because of this geographical presence can help the presentation of a more interactive information, where users can access complete geographical information using only a computer, web-browser and internet network. So to get that information all in need of a Geographical Information System (GIS). The purpose of this research is to create a web that contains information on the location of billboards in the city of Samarinda. While this research is expected to make it easier for users to obtain information on the location of billboards in Samarinda

Teaching on Jupyter: Using notebooks to accelerate learning and curriculum development

The proliferation of large, complex data spatial data sets presents challenges to the way that regional science --- and geography more widely -- is researched and taught. Increasingly, it is not 'just' quantitative skills that are needed, but computational ones. However, the majority of undergraduate programmes have yet to offer much more than a one-off ‘GIS programming’ class since such courses are seen as challenging not only for students to take, but for staff to deliver. Using evaluation criterion of minimal complexity, maximal flexibility, interactivity, utility, and maintainability, we show how the technical features of Jupyter notebooks -- particularly when combined with the popularity of Anaconda Python and Docker -- enabled us to develop and deliver a suite of three 'geocomputation' modules to Geography undergraduates, with some progressing to data science and analytics roles

Youth Retention: Mount Carmel Revitalization

The Youth Retention: Mount Carmel Revitalization report is a 26 page document prepared by five students for the Bucknell University undergraduate course Geography 218, taught by Prof. Vanessa Massaro. The document describes the problem of retaining young people and provides solutions which communities could implement to retain young people. These solutions include youth-centered programming, early career opportunities, high speed Internet access, regional grant programs, and source information

Cinema in the country: the rural cinema scheme – Orkney (1946-67)

The act of transporting cinema to and exhibiting films for the rural communities of the Highlands and Islands of Scotland has attracted a fair amount of press attention at home and abroad recently ("Box Office"). This is partly due to the events pioneered by the British actress Tilda Swinton and the writer and critic Mark Cousins. This began with the film festival The Ballerina Ballroom Cinema of Dreams held in Nairn on the north east coast of Scotland in 2008, followed a year later by A Pilgrimage which involved tugging a mobile cinema along an exhibition route from Fort Augustus to Nairn incorporating Loch Ness. These initiatives and less publicized others, such as The Small Islands Film Festival (2007-2009), are born of a passionate desire to not only take a preferred vision of cinema to selected areas of rural Scotland, but also, to offer potential audiences a different cinema-going experience by challenging what might be considered the norms of film exhibition