Solitary confinement and the U.S. prison boom

Solitary confinement is a harsh form custody involving isolation from the general prison population and highly restricted access to visitation and programs. Using detailed prison records covering 30 years of practices in Kansas (1985–2014), we find solitary confinement is a normal event during imprisonment: 38 percent of whites and 46 percent of blacks experienced solitary confinement during their prison term. Long stays in solitary confinement were rare in the late 1980s with no detectable racial disparities, but a sharp increase in capacity after a new prison opening began an era of long-term isolation that most heavily impacted black young adults. A decomposition analysis indicates the increase in the length of stay in solitary confinement almost entirely explains the growth in the proportion of people held in solitary confinement. Our results provide new evidence of increasingly punitive prison conditions and previously unmeasured forms of inequality during the prison boom.Accepted manuscrip

The Architecture of Discretion: Implications of the Structure of Sanctions for Racial Disparities, Severity, and Net Widening

About four million people are serving a term of probation, parole, or post-release supervision in the United States. Due to the extensive use of incarceration as a punishment for conditions violations, these community supervision programs are a major factor contributing to mass incarceration and, as this Article shows, can play a significant role in exacerbating racial disparities in the criminal legal system. In recent years, jurisdictions throughout the United States have made reforms to their community supervision programs. A major trend in community supervision reform is the integration of new sanctioning structures, such as “swift and certain” sanctions, for conditions violations. These changes not only introduce new types of sanctions but also redesign the architecture of the sanctioning process and provide a valuable opportunity to study how the contours of discretion affect bias, severity, and frequency in the imposition of sanctions. In this Article, I study a statewide probation reform that implemented swift and certain sanctions. I present new empirical evidence on the impact of two key elements of the structure of discretion: the disaggregation of discretion into multiple decision points and the allocation of discretion among various actors in the decision-making process. In addition, this Article includes the first in-depth empirical analysis of swift and certain sanctions on racial disparities. Using a detailed administrative dataset covering nearly 90,000 probation cases, I find that the introduction of swift and certain sanctioning reforms is associated with a statistically significant increase in the overall rate of incarceration among probationers and a statistically significant decrease in racial disparities in incarceration. The overall increase in incarceration is driven by the imposition of new jail and prison sanctions introduced by the swift and certain reforms. The decrease in racial disparities appears to be driven by the narrowing of racial disparities associated with probation revocations. These results suggest that disaggregating and reallocating points of discretion may reduce racial disparities but can come at the expense of widening the carceral net

Metapopulation Dynamics Enable Persistence of Influenza A, Including A/H5N1, in Poultry

Thanks to K. Sturm-Ramirez, C. Jessup, J. Rosenthal and the staff of EcoHealth Alliance for feedback. Disclaimer: The contents are the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of USAID or the United States Government.Conceived and designed the experiments: PRH TF RH DZ CSA AG MJM XX TB PD. Performed the experiments: PRH. Analyzed the data: PRH. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: PRH TF RH DZ CSA AG MJM XX TB JHJ PD. Wrote the paper: PRH TF RH DZ CSA AG MJM XX TB JHJ PD.Highly pathogenic influenza A/H5N1 has persistently but sporadically caused human illness and death since 1997. Yet it is still unclear how this pathogen is able to persist globally. While wild birds seem to be a genetic reservoir for influenza A, they do not seem to be the main source of human illness. Here, we highlight the role that domestic poultry may play in maintaining A/H5N1 globally, using theoretical models of spatial population structure in poultry populations. We find that a metapopulation of moderately sized poultry flocks can sustain the pathogen in a finite poultry population for over two years. Our results suggest that it is possible that moderately intensive backyard farms could sustain the pathogen indefinitely in real systems. This fits a pattern that has been observed from many empirical systems. Rather than just employing standard culling procedures to control the disease, our model suggests ways that poultry production systems may be modified.Yeshttp://www.plosone.org/static/editorial#pee

Knockdown of the Fat Mass and Obesity Gene Disrupts Cellular Energy Balance in a Cell-Type Specific Manner

Recent studies suggest that FTO variants strongly correlate with obesity and mainly influence energy intake with little effect on the basal metabolic rate. We suggest that FTO influences eating behavior by modulating intracellular energy levels and downstream signaling mechanisms which control energy intake and metabolism. Since FTO plays a particularly important role in adipocytes and in hypothalamic neurons, SH-SY5Y neuronal cells and 3T3-L1 adipocytes were used to understand how siRNA mediated knockdown of FTO expression alters cellular energy homeostasis. Cellular energy status was evaluated by measuring ATP levels using a luminescence assay and uptake of fluorescent glucose. FTO siRNA in SH-SY5Y cells mediated mRNA knockdown (−82%), increased ATP concentrations by up to 46% (P = 0.013) compared to controls, and decreased phosphorylation of AMPk and Akt in SH-SY5Y by −52% and −46% respectively as seen by immunoblotting. In contrast, FTO siRNA in 3T3-L1 cells decreased ATP concentration by −93% (p<0.0005), and increased AMPk and Akt phosphorylation by 204% and 70%, respectively suggesting that FTO mediates control of energy levels in a cell-type specific manner. Furthermore, glucose uptake was decreased in both SH-SY5Y (−51% p = 0.015) and 3T3-L1 cells (−30%, p = 0.0002). We also show that FTO knockdown decreases NPY mRNA expression in SH-SY5Y cells (−21%) through upregulation of pSTAT3 (118%). These results provide important evidence that FTO-variant linked obesity may be associated with altered metabolic functions through activation of downstream metabolic mediators including AMPk