Justice in Review: New Trends in State Sentencing and Corrections 2014-2015

In 2014 and 2015, 46 states enacted at least 201 bills, executive orders, and ballot initiatives to reform at least one aspect of their sentencing and corrections systems. In conducting this review of state criminal justice reforms, Vera found that most of the policy changes focused on three areas: creating or expanding opportunities to divert people away from the criminal justice system; reducing prison populations by enacting sentencing reform, expanding opportunities for early release from prison, and reducing the number of people admitted to prison for violating the terms of their community supervision; and supporting reentry into the community from prison. By providing concise summaries of representative reforms in each of these areas, this report serves as a practical guide for other state and federal policymakers looking to affect similar changes in criminal justice policy

Making the Grade

With its July 2015 announcement of the Second Chance Pell Pilot Program, the U.S. Department of Education ushered in what could be a new era of expanded opportunities for postsecondary education in our nation's prisons. The Second Chance Pell Pilot makes students incarcerated in state and federal prisons eligible for need-based financial aid in a limited number of authorized sites—meaning postsecondary education is likely to become a reality for an increased number of the more than 1.5 million people in prisons nationwide.Research shows that—among other benefits to individuals, families, communities, and prisons—incarcerated people who participate in prison education programs are 43 percent less likely to recidivate than those who do not. This report offers lessons from the field on the implementation of these programs in corrections settings across the country

Overlooked: Women and Jails in an Era of Reform

Since 1970, there has been a nearly five-fold increase in the number of people in U.S. jails—the approximately 3,000 county or municipality-run detention facilities that primarily hold people arrested but not yet convicted of a crime. Despite recent scrutiny from policymakers and the public, one aspect of this growth has received little attention: the shocking rise in the number of women in jail.Women in jail are the fastest growing correctional population in the country—increasing 14-fold between 1970 and 2014. Yet there is surprisingly little research on why so many more women wind up in jail today. This report examines what research does exist on women in jail in order to begin to reframe the conversation to include them. It offers a portrait of women in jail, explores how jail can deepen the societal disadvantages they face, and provides insight into what drives women's incarceration and ways to reverse the trend

IDENTIFYING VEHICLE ROUTE BASED ON USER ACTIVITY

Techniques are presented herein for an algorithmic framework to select the best vehicle route based on user activity. A minimum wireless service level is guaranteed in each leg of the route by accounting for anticipated user activity and localized network overloads estimated from route queries

Classy Delicates: A Case Study

Andy Steiner was checking the Internet for late night West Coast baseball game scores early on Saturday morning, August 3rd, 2007, when an email message popped up on his screen. It was a message from a prospective buyer for Classy Delicates, Steiner’s online lingerie retailing business.  Intrigued by the offer, Steiner contacted the prospective buyer who reiterated his intention and talked specific terms for the purchase.  “Isn’t this a coincidence,” remarked Steiner to his wife, Julia.  “We were just talking about the future of our business and here comes this new offer. This is the fourth offer we’ve had.”  “We should consider a sale of the business seriously,” said Julia, “even though you were thinking of upgrading the site to improve traffic.”  “How much time do we have to examine the offers?” asked Julia to her husband.  “The current buyer has made an offer to one other business and he told me that it’s either the other business or us, and not both.  I don’t know if he is bluffing or not, but I think we have a week to decide for all four,” answered Steiner.&nbsp

Environmental Change and Management Staffing: An Empirical Examination of the Electric Utilities Industry

This paper examines the relationship between environmental change, changes in competitive dynamics, and top management staffing in the electric utilities industry during the period surrounding the passage of the Energy Policy Act of 1992 (EPAct 92). The findings suggest that following the passage of the EPAct 92, competition in the electric utilities industry intensified placing greater emphasis on achieving internal, firm-level efficiencies. This external environmental change and the corresponding shift in the competitive context resulted in an adjustment in the composition of the top management coalition in these firms. The dominant coalition following the EPAct 92 consisted of older managers with longer company and industry tenure who had efficiency-oriented backgrounds in operations, engineering, and accounting/finance

Peter and Elaine Moss: Franchisees

Peter Moss, a business school professor, and his wife, Elaine, a corporate executive, bought a Hair Shear franchise in the suburban Maryland area in July 2007. Hair Shear was a national chain of over 2,000 stores, all of which were franchisee owned.  Peter and Elaine Moss contracted with Philip Levinson, a commercial real estate agent authorized by Hair Shear, to obtain a suitable location for their franchise.  During her training session at Hair Shear headquarters in Kansas City, Missouri, Elaine learned of the importance of a good location for the success of the franchise.  The first location identified by the real estate agent did not work out because the strip mall’s main tenant, a day spa, vetoed the entry of a hair dressing salon, considering the salon to be a competitor.  Elaine Moss identified a second location only to be told much later by the real estate agent that the location was taken by a barber friend of the landlord.  Disappointed by their inability to find a suitable location, the Moss’ met a couple who owned multiple Hair Shear stores in Maryland who suggested that they typically negotiated directly with landlords.  This couple suggested a third location for the Moss’ to consider.  The dilemma facing Peter and Elaine Moss is two fold: “which of the two was the ideal location for their store?” The larger question was,” should they bypass the authorized real estate agent and negotiate directly with the landlord?”

Erg-O: Ergonomic Optimization of Immersive Virtual Environments

Interaction in VR involves large body movements, easily inducing fatigue and discomfort. We propose Erg-O, a manipulation technique that leverages visual dominance to maintain the visual location of the elements in VR, while making them accessible from more comfortable locations. Our solution works in an open-ended fashion (no prior knowledge of the object the user wants to touch), can be used with multiple objects, and still allows interaction with any other point within user's reach. We use optimization approaches to compute the best physical location to interact with each visual element, and space partitioning techniques to distort the visual and physical spaces based on those mappings and allow multi-object retargeting. In this paper we describe the Erg-O technique, propose two retargeting strategies and report the results from a user study on 3D selection under different conditions, elaborating on their potential and application to specific usage scenarios

Young Event Services: Lifestyle Or Living? Teaching Case

It was 4:30 in the morning of June 24, 2007, and Julie Young, the owner of Young Event Services (YES) was spending another late night at her desk in her home office--with no sleep.  As she struggled with the variety of chores she was wrestling with, her mind wandered, partly in exasperation and partly in self-pity