RAND work on public safety issues ranges from policing and prisons to violent crime and the illegal drug trade, as well as homeland security and emergency preparedness. RAND delivers research that reflects our core values of quality and objectivity and helps inform policy debates that are often riddled with arguments driven not by evidence but by emotion and ideology.
With the health care safety net in California under stress from the state's continuing financial crisis, jurisdictions across the state face unprecedented challenges caring for the health and social service needs of people released from state prisons.
Efforts by the United States to combat Latin American cocaine smugglers have disrupted drug supplies and captured key cartel leaders, but they have not significantly reduced the region's overall narcotics trade.
Communities can build resilience to disasters through efforts such as joint planning of government and non-governmental organizations and the development of community networks.
To break the impasse over how to deal with spent nuclear fuel from commercial nuclear power plants, policymakers should focus on how various waste management strategies address societal priorities related to nuclear energy.
A proposal for the federal government to support state-run catastrophe-insurance programs would increase the number of people buying earthquake coverage in California and modestly lower both uninsured losses and government assistance following a major quake.
Law enforcement agencies in areas where terrorist threats are considered to be high have expanded their focus beyond traditional crime prevention and investigation to include counterterrorism and homeland security operations.
Five years after Hurricane Katrina devastated the Gulf Coast, neither the federal government nor the private sector is any closer to developing effective solutions to the problems facing flood and windstorm insurance.
Legalizing marijuana in California will not dramatically reduce the drug revenues collected by Mexican drug trafficking organizations from sales to the United States.
A panel of retired senior U.S. military officers, former Members of Congress, National Guard generals and academics with expertise in responding to domestic disasters today delivered to the Congress and the secretary of defense a far-reaching report that details how defense officials can better support the nation's response to a major disaster on United States soil.
Providing body armor to all law enforcement officers in the United States would provide enough benefit to justify the cost.
Legalizing the production and distribution of marijuana in California could cut the price of the drug by as much as 80 percent and increase consumption.
Effective intelligence gathering and a Muslim community unsympathetic to calls to violence have discouraged homegrown jihadist terrorism in the United States.
Encouraging state and local law enforcement agencies to help enforce federal immigration laws could help identify out-of-status immigrants eligible for deportation, but may also have unintended consequences.
Existing high-quality research demonstrates that public investment in police can generate substantial social returns.
Despite high rates of health insurance coverage among children in the District of Columbia, children's access to health care is inadequate and poses a significant health problem for the city's young residents, particularly those who are publicly insured.
Because it will be difficult to prevent cyber attacks on critical civilian and military computer networks by threatening to punish attackers, the United States must focus its efforts on defending these networks from cyber attack.
The valuable roles that nongovernmental organizations can play in helping communities recover from disasters such as Hurricane Katrina are not well-defined in federal, state or local policies. Changing emergency planning rules to make nongovernmental organizations a key component of recovery efforts could get them involved earlier and speed the full recovery of communities after disaster strikes.
News materials distributed by the several law enforcement groups in California about the state's proposed budget have incorrectly cited RAND Corporation criminal justice research.
Researchers from the RAND Corporation have launched an in-depth study of people who lived in New Orleans at the time of Hurricane Katrina in 2005 to gain a better understanding of how they were affected by the hurricane and its aftermath.
State and local health departments get mixed marks for efforts to convey information about the H1N1 virus to the public using their Web sites immediately after U.S. officials declared a public health emergency in April.
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