Teaching "street law" to the criminally insane

A course in "Street Law" was taught to forensic patients by law students, following a format used by Georgetown University Law Center. Although the course has been taught to high school students and inmates of correctional facilities, this was the first time it has been extended to mental patients found not guilty of crimes by reason of insanity. An outstanding feature of the course was marked enthusiasm shown by patients who, through long institutionalization, had become apathetic, indifferent, and despairing. Their readiness and ability to learn brought to mind a couple of old sayings often heard around mental hospitals, "I may be crazy but I'm not stupid," and "Sometimes you can't tell the patients from the staff." The staff of at least one ward has picked up "teaching and learning to use as a central theme in treatment of patients, not abandoning traditional methods, but shifting the emphasis from therapy to teaching as a way of getting the patient's interest in his own rehabilitation. Judges, reviewing cases for release, have looked quizzical when the patients' active participation in a "law course" has been used as evidence of satisfactory progress.     

The past and the future of violence against women

The most important thing we have learned about violence against women over the past 20 years is that violence is gendered and learned and can only be understood in the context of gender inequality. Most violence is male, and although some violence is done by females, it is far from equal and often done for very different reasons. Among other major findings is that children from violent households tend to grow up to be problematic, which means that a major method of curbing juvenile delinquency in 10 years is to stop violence against women today.     

Do Housing Vouchers Improve Academic Performance? Evidence from New York City

The Housing Choice Voucher program is currently the largest federally funded housing assistance program. Although the program aims to provide housing assistance, it also could affect children's educational outcomes by stabilizing their families, enabling them to move to better homes, neighborhoods, and schools, and increasing their disposable incomes. Using data from New York City, the nation's largest school district, we examine whether—and to what extent—housing vouchers improve educational outcomes for students whose families receive them. We match over 88,000 school-age voucher recipients to longitudinal public school records and estimate the impact of vouchers on academic performance through a comparison of students’ performance on standardized tests after voucher receipt to their pre-voucher performance. We exploit the conditionally random timing of voucher receipt to estimate a causal model. Results indicate that students in voucher households perform 0.05 standard deviations better in both English Language Arts and Mathematics in the years after they receive a voucher. We see significant racial differences in impacts, with small or no gains for black students but significant gains for Hispanic, Asian, and white students. Impacts appear to be driven largely by reduced rent burdens, increased disposable income, or a greater sense of residential security.