Public defenders assigned to indigent Philadelphia murder defendants are vastly more effective than court-appointed private attorneys at reducing conviction rates, the likelihood of a life sentence, and overall prison time, raising important questions about the adequacy and fairness of the criminal justice system.
CUBE 2.0, an update of the 2010 release of the 1.0 version, allows users to estimate the "farm-to-gate" greenhouse gas emissions of biomass feedstocks for energy production, as well as the uncertainty in these emissions.
The high cost of crime to society suggests that adding police officers may give large cities a sizable return on their investments, write Greg Ridgeway and Paul Heaton.
Coal-fired electricity generating units (EGUs) provide about 46 percent of the electricity generated in the U.S., yet most of the existing coal-fired electricity fleet is 25–45 years old. Can the industry maintain the capability to design, construct, and operate coal-fired EGUs within reasonable cost, schedule, performance, environmental, and quality expectations?
Our transportation future will be multi-layered and complex—bounded by transportation infrastructure that is under-funded on the one hand and ever-expanding congestion and capacity constraints on the other, writes Johanna Zmud.
Biomass is an increasingly important source of electricity, heat, and liquid fuel. One near-term option for using it to generate electricity is to cofire biomass in coal-fired electricity plants. Factors to consider are plant-site modifications, changes in operations, costs, and logistical issues with delivering biomass to the plant.
Achieving the potential economic and national security benefits offered by alternative fuels requires that their domestic production must be an appreciable fraction of domestic demand for liquid fuels. Alternative fuels derived from oil shale and coal have the potential to meet that important criterion.
In this Google Tech Talk, Greg Ridgeway, director of the RAND Center on Quality Policing, discusses the CQP's work with U.S. police departments on assessing whether their officers are practicing racially biased policing and what can be done to address it.
To inform debate on a new transportation bill being considered, an analysis of literature on the effects of highway infrastructure spending on the economy offers principles for reforming federal policy and programs, as well as ideas for future research.
Geoengineering is risky, but could transform the portfolio of options for limiting future climate change. Some geoengineering approaches could prove fast acting and inexpensive and could be deployed by one or a few nations without global cooperation. This report provides an initial examination and comparison of the risks associated with alternative international approaches the United States might pursue to governing geoengineering research and deployment.
Passwords are proving less and less capable of protecting computer systems from abuse. Multifactor authentication (MFA) — which combines something you know (e.g., a PIN), something you have (e.g., a token), and/or something you are (e.g., a fingerprint) — is increasingly being required. This report investigates why organizations choose to adopt or not adopt MFA — and where they choose to use it.
U.S. power plants seek to diversify their fuel sources and biomass energy is a renewable resource that generally has lower life-cycle greenhouse-gas emissions than fossil fuels. This model estimates the cost and availability of biomass energy resources from U.S. agricultural lands from the perspective of an individual power plant.
A public safety message aimed at improving gun law awareness was found to have an effect on new gun buyers' behaviors, particularly in regards to reports of stolen guns, which more than doubled as a result.
The U.S. Department of Homeland Security is responsible for controlling the flow of goods and people across the U.S. border, a difficult task that raises challenging resource management questions about how best to minimize illicit flows across the border while facilitating legitimate ones.
The federal government could fully fund its surface transportation infrastructure needs by levying a percentage tax on crude oil and imported refined petroleum products.
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