Economic Impacts of Prison Growth, and More from CRS
“The historic, sustained rise in [the U.S. prison population] has broad implications, not just for the criminal justice system, but for the larger economy. About 770,000 people worked in the corrections sector in 2008 [and this number is expected to grow]…. By comparison, in 2008 there were 880,000 workers in the entire U.S. auto manufacturing sector.” See “Economic Impacts of Prison Growth” (pdf), April 13, 2010.
Other noteworthy new CRS reports obtained by Secrecy News that Congress has not made readily available to the public include the following (all pdf).
“The Role of the Senate in Judicial Impeachment Proceedings: Procedure, Practice, and Data,” April 9, 2010.
“Military Personnel and Freedom of Religious Expression: Selected Legal Issues,” April 8, 2010.
“Multilateral Development Banks: Overview and Issues for Congress,” April 9, 2010.
“Foreign Aid Reform, National Strategy, and the Quadrennial Review,” April 12, 2010.
“Supreme Court Appointment Process: Roles of the President, Judiciary Committee, and Senate,” February 19, 2010.
This rule gives agencies significantly more authority over certain career policy roles. Whether that authority improves accountability or creates new risks depends almost entirely on how agencies interrupt and apply it.
Our environmental system was built for 1970s-era pollution control, but today it needs stable, integrated, multi-level governance that can make tradeoffs, share and use evidence, and deliver infrastructure while demonstrating that improved trust and participation are essential to future progress.
Durable and legitimate climate action requires a government capable of clearly weighting, explaining, and managing cost tradeoffs to the widest away of audiences, which in turn requires strong technocratic competency.
FAS is launching the Center for Regulatory Ingenuity (CRI) to build a new, transpartisan vision of government that works – that has the capacity to achieve ambitious goals while adeptly responding to people’s basic needs.