bution Decarbonization Actions to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals67NDC Action Relevant SDG
1.5By 2030, the infrastructure will have been expanded and improved to increase non-motorized
mobility trips (including pedestrian and bicycl


d intersectoral planning of the process of electrification of energy demand, which will incorporate the needs of the various sectors and the diversity of renewable energy sources available in the different regions of the country. SDG3, SDG7, SDG8, SD


area of industry, trade, and services will have innovative production models from “cradle to grave” or with a circular economy approach in the main productive chains of agroindustry, services, construction, and creative and cultural economy, among ot


e, livestock, sugar cane, rice, and bananas will apply production systems that are low in GHG emissions both at the farm level and at the processing stage level.SDG2, SDG6, SDG7, SDG8, SDG12, SDG13, SDG15
7.2In 2025, the country will promote a circul


he Payment for Ecosystem Services program, including other services and ecosystems not covered so far, including as a priority soils, peatlands, and other ecosystems with high potential for carbon sequestration, identifying and increasing the funding


ontribution Decarbonization Actions to the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals71NDC Action Relevant SDG
9.5The country will protect and conserve 100% of the coastal wetlands included and reported in the
National Inventory of Wetlands (in th


 with Economic Recovery72NDC Action Relevant SDG
10Action for climate empowerment
10.1 In the first two years of the implementation period of this contribution, a national strategy for
climate empowerment will be in operation with actions in educati


, SDG10, SDG11, SDG12, SDG13, SDG16, SDG17
10.5 By 2030, the capacities in mitigation and adaptation to climate change of decisionmakers at different levels of government, as well as community leaders and young people, have been strengthened in a man


2022, Costa Rica will have established processes and institutional arrangements that allow it to have a permanent capacity for analysis, prospecting, and independent technical publication on climate action. SDG3, SDG5, SDG6, SDG7, SDG8, SDG9, SDG12,


ated, including
the platform of the National System for Monitoring Cover and Land Use and Ecosystems (SIMOCUTE) and its link with the National System of Climate Change Metrics (SINAMECC) and other national environmental reporting systems and their s


c Plan as long-term planning instruments aimed at achieving inclusive and decarbonized economic development.SDG1, SDG2, SDG3, SDG4, SDG5, SDG6, SDG7, SDG8, SDG9, SDG10, SDG11, SDG12, SDG13, SDG14, SDG15, SDG16, SDG17
13.2 The country undertakes to ta


priority adaptation measures are identified for each region, as well as the institutional arrangements necessary for its implementation. SDG3, SDG5, SDG6, SDG9, SDG11, SDG13, SDG14, SDG15, SDG16, SDG17
13.10 By 2030, adaptation criteria and guideline


ouse UK, 2019.Aghion, Philippe, Jing Cai, Mathias Dewatripont, Luosha Du, Ann Harrison, and Patrick Legros, “Industrial
Policy and Competition,” American  Economic  Journal: Macroeconomics , Vol. 7, No. 4, October 2015, pp. 1–32.
AyA (Instituto Cost


pandemia,”
La Nación , January 20, 2021.
Costa Rican Ministry of Health, “National COVID-19 Situation,” webpage, undated. As of December 27, 2021: https://www.ministeriodesalud.go.cr/index.php/centro-de-prensa/noticias/741-noticias-2020/
1532-lin


orld
Bank Policy Research Working Paper No. 6677, Washington, D.C.: World Bank, 2013.
Ianchovichina, Elena, Antonio Estache, Renaud Foucart, Grégoire Garsous, and Tito Yepes, “Job Creation
Through Infrastructure Investment in the Middle East and N


156.
Mazzucato, Mariana, Governing Missions : Governing Missions  in the European  Union , Brussels: European
Commission, June 2019.
Mazzucato, Mariana, and Gregor Semieniuk, “Financing Renewable Energy: Who Is Financing What and Why
It Matters,” T


 del Plan  Nacional  de Descarbonización  2018 –2050  de Costa  Rica :
Estimación  de costos  y necesidades  para  la consecución  de las 24 medidas  de descarbonización  dispuestas  en sus
ejes 8, 9 y 10 , Zurich, September 2021.
State of the Nati


ic, however, led to a sharp increase in unemployment;
the number of unemployed workers increased by over 240,000 people between February and June 2020, and the unemployment rate peaked at over 24 percent, exacerbating prepandemic inequities.
In this


Sponsored by Arnold VenturesProviding Another Chance
Resetting Recidivism Risk in Criminal Background
Checks
SHAWN D. BUSHWAY, BRIAN G. VEGETABILE, NIDHI KALRA, LEE REMI,
GREG BAUMANN
CORPORATIONFor more information on this publication, visit www.r


ch the individual has lived in the community without a new conviction. Given that recidivism risk declines the longer a person lives in a community without a new conviction, risk assessments that omit this information may make people look riskier tha


and weaknesses of various kinds of criminal history record searches. We thank reviewers Greg Ridgeway, Matt Cefalu, and James Anderson for suggestions that greatly improved the work. We are enormously grateful to all the workshop speakers and attend


 and others can use to assess recidivism risk, they may offer a more accurate way to distinguish candidates’ risk of recidivism. Thus, they may offer many with criminal histories a way to demonstrate that they should be offered another chance.
This


t a conviction.
• After a sufficient period without a new conviction, even people initially deemed to be at
highest risk for reoffending (such as those with a more extensive criminal background) transition to risk levels that appear similar to thos


ermine who actually get hired. Evaluating the hiring threshold also helps anchor the decision relative to current practices—an important feature of any evaluation.   viii Implication: Data Quality Can Limit the Development of Successful Recidivism Ri


bug but rather a feature of signaling systems that use information to systematically make inferences about an unobservable characteristic, such as recidivism risk or desistance (Bushway and Apel, 2012).   ix Implication: Exploring and Stressing Model


f techniques and data sources is required before models can be integrated into tools actually used in any given context. For example, we developed our model for the employment context, and therefore designed a model that can be validated under the EE


tional Information on Example 1’s Criminal
Demonstrating Offense Codes That Occur Through Time ................................................... 62
Figure A.3. Example 2 of an Individual’s Sentencing History, Including
a Subset of Covariate In


pproaches can ignore valuable information that a person has signaled about their propensity, or lack thereof, to reoffend between the time of their last major interaction with the criminal justice system and when they apply for a job. The predictive


trictions than individuals who do not have records (Pager, 2003; Pager, 2007). Most employers report that they would not knowingly hire applicants with criminal records (Pager, 2007). Employers also worry about legal liability if the job candidate go


d information be used to differentiate between applicants with
records in terms of their levels of recidivism risk?
The answer to the first question is undoubtedly no (Bushway, Nieuwbeerta, and Blokland, 2011;
EEOC , 2012). The answer to the secon


lid ones that motivate employer decisionmaking.
To help readers understand the potential effect of our ideas on how background checks
should be conducted, we introduce a hypothetical employment scenario grounded in actual   4 reentry policy. Suppo


the use of predictive risk models in
this context. A statistical tool used to eliminate some subjective human biases could unintentionally perpetuate other unfair practices and biases. Even algorithms designed to avoid unfairness can result in inequ


021 (when we
downloaded the data). Table 1.1 shows an overview of the files used and their relevant information.

3 See NCDPS, undated -a. This portal provides access to the data files , which  can be downloaded for  research
purposes :
The fi


cks. This workshop featured a speech by EEOC chair Charlotte Burrows and a series of discussions about this report. Chapter 7 discusses the implications of this report and points for policymakers to consider as they move forward with new policies on


entary ranking of risk among people with different risk factors. The most formal form of this approach is a risk score known as the Burgess tool (Burgess, 1928). The approach makes no claim that the given factors are strictly predictive in any partic


riminal history information to predict risk is framed by the
federal regulations arising from the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title VII of this act prohibits employment practices that have a disparate effect on minorities, unless the employer can show


trix to produce a recommendation about whether to hire someone. This recommendation can often be adjusted by an expert within the hiring company who is tasked with making the final decision. In general, this approach meets many of the objectives of a


b was performed without
incident following the most recent conviction
5. evidence of rehabilitation and references
6. participation in a government bonding program.
The EEOC’s new guidance further notes that, where a plaintiff in litigation es


 studies that assess whether  convictions are linked to future
behaviors, traits, or conduct with workplace ramifications,  and thereby provide a framework for
validating some employment exclusions, such studies are rare at the time of this draftin


representing the employer’s own experience and the criminological literature assessment of relative risk. A cutoff point would then be set, allowing anyone who received a risk score below that cutoff to be hired and moving those with a score above th


rsonnel selection psychology (American Psychological Association, 2018). These tests could
be then statistically linked to outcomes using the three kinds of validity checks described in the Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures written


iction models of the kind currently in use, and the guidelines should be updated to reflect this new approach (Maurer, 2020).

7 The Uniform Guidelines identif y construct validity as a distinct validation approach. Construct validity  involves
t


2016). The second deals with transparency. Regarding the first, a broad concern around algorithmic hiring tools is that measures of job performance in discriminatory workplaces will be biased. Creating tools that predict job performance in discrimina


 able to consider the relative risk of a new conviction over some period both for people who have just been convicted and for people who were convicted many years ago.
This principle is easy to state and explain but surprisingly difficult to impleme


methods from
statistics known as survival analysis or, more generally, time-to-event analyses. To help readers understand simple ideas from survival analysis, we will provide a brief primer on concepts via figures in the remainder of the report.
A


ine event .” That is, typical survival functions evaluate risk  only as anchored from the
baseline event.  This figure represents the one -year survival probability .
  19 Now consider the goal of comparing the risk level of individuals A and B usi


 baseline. The  last graph  demonstrates
how, with differing times for when their respective background check s occur, individual A is now slightly lower risk
than individual B.
  21 Demonstrating the Reset Principle in the North Carolina Data Set


t, if we consider risk, two individuals may now represent equivalent
risk if we match them on their prior number of convictions and respective update times. This
means the risk profiles of individuals with more than ten prior convictions may look s


 context to the literature. The primary considerations are outlined in Figure 4.1, and many should be intuitive to those familiar with research design.
Note that the last estimation consideration, which focuses on the external validation of the
ri


l. , 2014, posited the choice of population as p erson -based v ersus event- based
samples  but is only part of the estimation problem. As a result, although we use Rhodes et al., 2014, as an exemplar
for the idea that population matters, we start


though this ideal setting is clearly impossible to obtain (for both
implementation reasons and obvious ethical concerns), a failure to attempt to construct a sample
to estimate models as similar as possible to this ideal setting can lead to bias or


how risky specific individuals are for any
  29 given opportunity.4 Additionally, it allows us to assume that we are following a specific “group”
of independent individuals through time, as we will only observe their events.
To further demonstrate


in prison or jail are generally not facing background checks by employers, volunteer organizations, or landlords. Unfortunately, this reasonable consideration creates a difficult data requirement. Most formal state criminal record repositories (i.e.


owest risk, but there are no longer flat spots in the estimated survival function. We caution readers not to take away a causal relationship between length of sentence and risk profile at a given point in time from this figure; the differences among


lected in data from discriminatory environments. The criminological literature is quite clear that there is less evidence for racial bias in convictions than in arrests. It is now a routine finding that white people are more likely to be convicted af


 an
updated one-year survival probability requires at least ten years of data. An inspection of the
North Carolina data demonstrates that this choice has at least face validity. Additionally, a closer look at Figure 4.7 shows that the survival curv


demonstrate the validity of our modeling approach to creating estimates that could be used in the background check context. It is important to note that we acknowledge that there are other approaches and models that could also be created to follow th


in the machine learning community (Bennis, Mouysset, and Serrurier, 2020; Erişoğlu, Erişoğlu, and Erol, 2011; Kuo and Peng, 2000; Nagpal et al., 2019; Raman et al., 2010). These models create estimates through a weighted average of many underlying fu


ellow, Bengio, and
Courville, 2016, chapter 5, for a methodological introduction to machine learning basics, and Hastie, Tibshirani, and Friedman, 2009, chapter 7, for a thorough overview on model assessment and selection).
Readers might note that


different points in time for each
data set to illustrate performance of the estimated risk scores through time. The 𝑐-index is a
measure of discriminatory ability of a risk score and provides an assessment of the number of “concordant pairs” when c


re the survival probability is also 0.5. The results also present variation in predictions across wide time ranges. See Appendix D for additional calibration curves for one-year, ten-year, and 20-year survival probability estimates.    40 Figure 5. 2


ic groups of columns as presented in the rest of the table. We see that current prison information changes performance the most (about 8 percent decrease in performance), followed by information related to current number of conviction s
(about 6 per


al background checks.
In the employment context, the additional factors not included in the first step of the formal
background check are brought into play through an appeals process initiated by a person challenging an employment decision. It can


 of background checks. Charlotte Burrows,
chair of the EEOC, then delivered the keynote address, which is summarized in the next section of this chapter. Nina Hicks, the Detroit director of the Center for Employment Opportunities, provided insight a


 the hiring process?
• How can information generated during the time gap between a candidate’s last conviction
or release from prison and when a candidate applies for a job be used to improve
employers’ understanding of a candidate’s recidivism ri


said that, in order for risk-prediction models that adhere to
the reset principle to succeed, innovation is needed in the data and policy environments. These discussions highlighted concerns about data quality that were not featured heavily in this


sfy the reset principle). Current record-compilation efforts focus on finding out when the offense occurred, and there is not currently a policy motivation to look beyond that. The industry itself, she explained, does not have the experience or the d


sk (Bushway and Kalra, 2021), then risk assessment itself is not the key to solving the problem. Instead, the goal needs to be structuring negligent hiring liability so that companies can tolerate more risk in their hiring practices.
Regarding fact


en case. The court recognized the three main factors that should be used by employers when considering a candidate with a criminal record history: type of job, type of crime, and time since last conviction.
Lopez asserted that this research was impo


l history records.
    50 Table 6.1. Workshop Agenda
11:00 a.m. Welcome Remarks
Lee Remi, project m anager, RAND Corporation
Shawn Bushway ( https: //www.rand.org /about /people/b/ bushway_shawn.html ), senior policy
researcher, RAND Corpor


loyers and Employees
 Moderator: Esta Bigler  (https: //www.littler.com /people/ rod-m-fliegel), d irector, Labor and
Employment Law Program, Cornell School of Industrial and Labor Relations
Panelists:
Rod Fliegel  (https: //www.littler.com /p


olunteer screening. In Chapter 4, we discussed empirical considerations for researchers interested in building a risk-prediction model. In Chapter 5, we demonstrated the viability of creating a risk-prediction model that respects the reset principle


riginally high-risk individuals can signal to employers through their behavior after a conviction that they are actually less risky than others.
Models Can Be Used to Predict Risk of a New Conviction
The EEOC worried that it would be impossible to


 individuals.
The next step is for an employer to define whether the level of risk is acceptable or low enough
for a particular job. Recidivism risk models do not include characteristics of the job as a parameter because recidivism risk is not job-


e same throughout the
entire distribution of risk, a situation that is unlikely to occur.    55 of model we developed requires a comparison with the current state. We discuss this issue in the
next section.
Data Quality  Can Limit the Development


or the Criminal Justice Administrative Record System
(CJARS), an effort to combine administrative criminal justice data with data from the U.S. Census Bureau . The
researchers who built CJARS have had to address many of the same issues that we add


nce is “The Time That Has Passed Since the Offense, Conduct and/or Completion of the Sentence” (EEOC, 2012). There is no discussion about what the relevant frame of reference is or whether this information was available, but in the end, the lack of i


art, on the job. If these characteristics are static, then there will be nothing that the applicant can do except wait. However, if dynamic characteristics are included, then applicants interested in employment could take steps to reduce their percei


need for new tools is urgent given the number of people who have convictions in the United States, and we look forward to an active discussion about the fairness and equity of models and tools anchored in the reset principle.
Risk of Recidivism Is N


frames, modeling architecture, and variable measures initially created for the criminal justice context rather than the background check context. This report’s development of the reset principle makes a clear statement that there needs to be a new s


history data:
1. How convictions “cluster” on particular days and how this affects analysis.
2. How the longitudinal structure of the data necessitates complex decisions in defining
different discrete “events” (conviction, release, etc.) and conti


er precision for predicting an individual’s time to their next conviction.

3 Although  these figures demonstrate many events for each individual, we note that many individuals actually  have
only one sentencing record in the data set (a fact tha


arises related to time spent in county jail rather than state prison: The NCDPS data sets do not contain direct information on county jail incarceration. This problem will appear in many data sets and may cause issues for accurately quantifying risk


For example, in the criminal justice system, sen tences often may be
suspended and a conviction will not immediately send an individual to prison (see third row of Figure A.5). How we choose to define events, transitions among states, and timing bet


re split into different levels (I through V) to capture the severity of the offense. Such alterations in scope and distinctions of offenses are expected to continue sporadically through time as laws and norms change in society. These changes can caus


as 𝑆!(𝑡), and represent the
probability that the next event time occurs after some time as 𝑡, i.e., 𝑇!>𝑡, from a baseline
event. This is represented mathematically as 𝑆!(𝑡)≡Pr(𝑇!>𝑡).
In the case of the criminal background-check context, survival f


reshold of acceptable risk
ℛ9? This last query may be similar to what was
desired in El v. SEPTA, an absolute standard of risk (Douglas El v. Southwestern Pennsylvania
Transportation Authority, 2005), and could prompt a future policy discussion ab


es that are similar to this form of the model that allow both
components to be functions of 𝑥, but we do not consider them here.
To estimate the weights 𝑤"(𝑥|𝛾), we used neural networks (see Goodfellow, Bengio, and
Courville, 2016, for a methodol


s were estimated on a subset of data from the NCDPS data set.
The data are restricted to those events occurring after 1995 until April 8, 2021 (when the data were downloaded), events for individuals who are between 18 and 70 years of age, and people


 date
Current event
information  Convictions on date Number of convictions that align on this event date
Number of felonies  Of the number of convictions, how many were felonies?
Number of
misdemeanors  Of the number of convictions, how many w


exual assault
Violation of sexual offense conditions
Weapons offenses
Worthless checks

    75 Appendix D . Additional Model Calibration Curves
As described in the main body of the report, calibration assesses how well probability
estimate


.pdf
Barocas, Solon, and Moritz Hardt, “NIPS 2017 Tutorial on Fairness in Machine Learning,” paper
presented at NeurIPS 2017, Long Beach, Calif., December 4, 2017. As of November 30, 2021: https://fairmlbook.org/tutorial1.html
Barocas, Solon, and


2d 1290 (8th
Cir. 1975), U.S. Court of Appeals, 8th Circuit, July 23, 1975. As of November 30, 2021: https://casetext.com/case/green-v-missouri-pacific-railroad-company
Burgess, Ernest W., “Factors Determining Success or Failure on Parole,” in Andr


7, 2013, pp. 971–1005. As of November 30, 2021: https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/151523478.pdf
Corbett-Davies, Sam, Emma Pierson, Avi Feller, and Sharad Goel, “A Computer Program Used
for Bail and Sentencing Decisions Was Labeled Biased Against Blac


big-data-workplace-examining-
implications-equal-employment/dunleavy%2C%20phd
Dwork, Cynthia, Moritz Hardt, Toniann Pitassi, Omer Reingold, and Richard Zemel, “Fairness
Through Awareness,” Proceedings of the 3rd Innovations in Theoretical Computer


ications,” Crime and Delinquency, Vol. 52, No. 1, January 2006, pp. 178–200. As of April 19, 2021: https://doi.org/10.1177/0011128705281748
Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U.S. 424 (1971), U.S. Supreme Court, March 8, 1971. As of
December 2, 2021: ht


, and Melvin L. Moeschberger, Survival Analysis: Techniques for Censored and
Truncated Data, 2nd ed., New York: Springer-Verlag, 2003. As of November 30, 2021: https://www.springer.com/gp/book/9780387953991
Kuo, Lynn, and Fengchun Peng, “A Mixture-


 2010. As of December 1, 2021: https://www.prisonpolicy.org/scans/sp/Justice-for-All -Challenging-Racial-Disparities-in-the-
Criminal-Justice-System.pdf
Maurer, Roy, “AI-Based Hiring Concerns Academics, Regulators,” Society for Human Resource
Manag


er/files/pager_ajs.pdf
Pager, Devah, Marked: Race, Crime, and Finding Work in an Era of Mass Incarceration,
Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.
Pennsylvania Commission on Sentencing, Interim Report 4: Development of Risk Assessment
Scale


r Uggen, Jason Schnittker, Melissa Thompson, Sara Wakefield,
and Michael Massoglia, “The Growth, Scope, and Spatial Distribution of People with Felony Records in the United States, 1948–2010,” Demography, Vol. 54, No. 5, 2017, pp. 1795–  88 1818. As


 42, The Public Health and Welfare; Chapter 21, Civil Rights; Subchapter VI,
Equal Employment Opportunities; Section 2000e-2, Unlawful Employment Practices. As of December 2, 2021: https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/42/2000e-2
U.S. Code, Title


Sponsored by the National Institute of Standards and TechnologyThe National Institute
of Standards and Technology’s Impact on Fire Safety Standards
BENJAMIN M. MILLER, TOM LATOURRETTE, DRAKE WARREN, DAVID METZ
C O R P O R A T I O NFor more informati


T’s research  contributing to p articular fire
safety standards. The original ob jectives of the project were to (1) document the role of the NIST
in the standards development pro cess, (2) estimate the value th ese standards provide to society,
a


ne of Key Wilder ness Urban Interface Codes ... ................................................ 41
Table 5.3. The National Institut e of Standards and Technology’s  Involvement in Wilderness
Urban Interface Standards Develo pment Organization (an


ds. This report pr esents results for  the first two
objectives. Given that NIST’s contribution is one of several in puts combining to  create these
standards, NIST’s share of the credit for their value could not  be quantified.
Our analysis focus


t and perfo rmance. One area of research
focused on revisiting smoke ala rm design and testing in light o f the shift to the use of largely
synthetic materials in upholstered furniture  versus natural fur nishing materials for which early
smoke al


sance alarms, as well as test ing requirements, system
interconnection, notifi cations targeting ch ildren, and other topics. A nationally representative
survey of American h ouseholds conducte d by RAND in March 2020 f ound that 36 percent of
hou


ng the 2018
Camp Fire in Paradise, Californi a. Our results suggest that the  survivability of houses has
generally been improving over time . This result is consistent w ith steady improvements in
standards and the associated cha nges in building


he active researc h stages, and the biggest benefits are  likely yet to be
realized. In both cases, we disc uss clear evidence of steady sa fety improvements over time and
suggest that those steady improve ments may be largely or partly  attributed


ata at truly astounding speed.
We again find ourselves thanking NIS T staff, David Butry and Douglas Thomas, who shared
code and insights from their wor k, which served as an inspiration for our approach to weighting
NFIRS responses. On the WUI si


it as the U.S. g overnment’s primary agency for shaping and
influencing the development of m easurement stand ards, both nati onally and internationally.
As evidenced in this r eport, NIST plays a un ique and critical r ole in the development of


day-to-day life. Standards affect food production,
transportation services, building design, and consumer products  and services of all types. For more
than a century, national and international SDOs have been developing detailed specifications  an


rocesses and production methods, and related managemen t systems practices.”
While NIST develops standard ref erence materials internally, in  general its research in the
development of standards suppor ts the development of voluntary consensus sta


 competitiveness, and effici ency. In some cases VCSs are
adopted internationally. In addition, VCSs are often incorporat ed into government regulations
such as building codes or other le gal instruments, thus shiftin g a voluntary standard to a
m


o Economic Impacts

standards development process as  well. Other federal government agencies, as well as state and
local government entities, often provide subject matter experti se or technical knowledge on
standards related to their mission or


upled together” (Gross, 1991, p. 119).4 Foreshadowing its con tinued standard-based
approach for add ressing fire safety challenges, NIST worked wit h NFPA to create a national
standard for couplin g hoses and fire hydrants. In 1914, a Fire Resista


ams at  NIST and also established the
National Commission on Fire Pr evention and Control. In 1973, the commission published its
famous report, America Burning, which included several reco mmendations related to expanding
fire research at NIST.6 T


4, including “new standards on firebrand penetration of vents; firebrand ignition of
roofing, siding, window glazing,  and decks; window vulnerabilit y to firebrand assault” (Hamins et al., 2012). The
second is replacing or improving test methods f


RAND survey of researchers in NIST Fire Research Divisi on, September 2019.
RAND spoke with representatives from NFPA, ASTM, Underwriters Laboratories, and ICC
about their standards development procedures and NIST’s involve ment, obtained and revie


ess,
present research findings at SDO events, and communicate with S DO committee members about
standards. Figure 2.4 shows res ponses from our survey of the nu mber of NIST Fire Division
researchers who have submitted for mal proposals, revisions


 1 0 1 2 1 4 1 6Less than 1 year1 to 3 years3 to 5 yearsMore than 5 years
13 Division includes over a dozen current sta ff who have been enga ging with SDOs for more than
five years, and emeritus staff al so have a lengthy record of en gagement wit


 unique
organization, with other research organizations often benefitin g from that work.

14 3. Smoke Alarm Standards
As introduced in Chapter 1, two of the case studies we used to examine the impacts of fire
safety standards focus on standar


 to a broad er understanding of the benefit of home smoke alarms, their
widespread adoption, and developmen t of the first smoke alarm d evice standard. Table 3.1
summarizes several important stu dies and milestones, which are discussed below.
An


he next few years showed remarkable benefits from the smoke al arms’ installation: while the
number of fires was no different f rom expected fire rates for m obile homes without smoke
alarms, the number of deaths and injuries from these fires was f


is further bolstered the ca se for the benefits of
smoke alarms.
 the observation that smoke alar ms on the second floor of a home  had marginal performance
for fires on the first floor. At the time of the tests, the sta ndard on smoke alarm plac


ial smoke alarms, which revealed the need for a  device standard. Although
technically at UL at the time, Richard Bukowski worked with NIS T (and in residence at NIST
for part of the time) on smoke alarm research that led to the d evelopment of UL


e Event NIST Role Impact
2000–2004;
2008 Home Smoke Alarm Tests
 Research experiments on smoke alarm performance
were conducted from 2000 to
2002; NIST published the
original report in 2004, and a
revised version in 2008 Measurement of smoke p


nsitivities of  photoelectric and
ionization detectors to smolder ing and flaming fires, respectively. Performance of commercially
available smoke alarms of either  type was nonetheless generally  sufficient to provide adequate
escape time.
A sec


ff and
research were central to their work. The process was marked by disagreement among the UL 217
Standard Technical Panel members, and multiple proposals failed . NIST research, particularly
by Cleary (2014), played a pivotal role in reaching


ot allowed withi n 3 feet of a door to a kitchen or bathroom containing a shower or tub
 Smoke alarms not allowed within 3 feet of supply registers of a forced air heating or cooling system
1999 NFPA 72
 If within 20 feet of a cooking appliance,


researcher Richard Bukowski was an active member of the UL 217/268 Standard Technical
Panel and of NFPA 72 Technical  Committees throughout his career, starting in the 1970s until
his retirement in the late 2000s. Thomas Cleary of NIST phased into


esearch reports have been cited in NFPA 72 since 1990.
Conclusion
NIST research and other activit y summarized in Tables 3.1, 3.3,  and 3.5 provided important
contributions to our understanding o f the effectiveness of smok e alarms, the developme


  enforced, and effective, their
adoption is of no consequence.

14 Most building codes apply to new construction only, so they wo rk their way into the building stock through
addition or replacemen


ectiveness Gradi ng Schedule is available at Thomure (undated).
More information about ISO’s meas ure of states’ fire protection  capabilities is available at ISO (undated),
16 See also IBHS (undated a).
17 See also IBHS (undated a).
27 This app


or infers that this so mewhat surprising finding results from occupants preferentially

18 As long as the number of fatalities per fatal fire is the same  in cases with and without smoke alarms, both


for
example, factors other than smoke alarms that influence the ris k of fire fatalities (e .g., construction,
29 furnishings, occupant behaviors) differ systematically between homes with and without smoke
alarms, then the actual effect of smoke


—was first published in 1945 by
the Southern Building Code Congress International and used main ly in the southern states. The Building Officials
Conference of America, later know n as the Building Officials an d Code Administrators International,


s to answer the following question: Are more c urrent smoke alarm
standards in statewide minimum  building and residential codes associated with improved fire
outcomes? To answer this question,  we examine the relationship between the smoke alarm


dopted those standards into their statewide
building codes. Further, because building codes are rarely retroactive, the proportion of a state’s
housing stock built after the code was adopted serves as a reasonable proxy for the proportion of
house


tandards.
23 We are unable to do a within-sta te analysis for two reasons. First, individual localities sometimes have additional
code requirements beyond the state level, and there is no datab ase documenting how thes e local codes change over
ti


mes increased. The increase in low-severity
fires (i.e., fires confined to t he object of origin) is surpris ingly large. An incre ase in the number
of low-severity fires would not be s urprising if there was a co rresponding decrease in high-
seve


rtion  of houses subject to statewide
minimum residential building code  updates correla tes with stati stically significant reductions
(or increases) in the number of f ires, injuries, or fatalities reported to NFIRS. We speculate that
these res


t o f 2,389 for Q2 (only  asked if the respondent
answered “Yes” to Q1), 2,386 ou t of 2,389 for Q3 (only asked if  the respondent
answered “Yes” to Q1), and 2,484 out of 2,488 for Q4.
As we speculated previously, one reason we find no evidence of


by events such as by certain cooking acti vities—are also common. A
homeowner might disable a smoke alarm to prevent these nuisance  alarms, such as by removing
the smoke alarm batteries. Our ALP survey found that more than one-third of households


g code  updates is correlated with statistically significant reductions
(or increases) in the number of reported fir es, injuries, or fa talities. We specul ate that these
results may reflect the largest gains having occurred prior to 2003 and the


s an extension of its general fire efforts through the
National Fire Research Laboratory. NIST WUI work appears to be motivated in part by large
wildland fires that occurred in the 1990s and early 2000s, such  as the 1991 Oakland Hills Fire, the
2


of test methods and apparatuses, such as the NIST “ Dragon,”
 which generates
standardized firebrands for use in tests.
Another line of effort is collecting data on historic fires, ty pically in the immediate aftermath
of the fire when data are be


rand-driven ignition. M ost notably, the ten firebran d generators used during IBHS
experiments are based on the des ign of the NIST Dragon, with mo difications to automate fuel
delivery (Standohar- Alfano et al., 2017, p. 14). To motivate th e nee


 focused on requirem ents for structures and other development (e.g., camps) in
forests. In 1953 it was renamed Fi re Prevention Standards for H omes and Camps in Forested
Areas, in 1962 it was renamed Rec ommended Good Practice for Hom es and Camp


and
International Fire Code by miti gating the hazard of wildfires t hrough model code regulations,
which safeguard the public health and safety in all communities , large and small”
(ICC, 2014, p. iii).
IWUIC is a model code providing requireme


 codes. In 1997, ICC and NFPA agreed to c ollaborate on fire codes, but by 1999 t he agreement had ended in
lawsuits between the two organi zations and real ignments of them . In the aftermath IC BO acquired full rights to IFCI
codes, and IFCI appa


enced those SDO’s efforts since at least the late 1990 s. Past NIST work specifically
focused on WUI codes and standards  by leveraging NIST researche r participation on SDO
committees and sharing NIST resear ch results in forums such as NIST-led w


N/A  2015–2017d
ASTM  Various standards  Subcommittee E05.14 on
Quantification of Exterior
Fire Exposures  Member  N/A  As of 2019e
ISO  N/A (technical report
in development)  ISO Technical Committee
92 Working Group 3 (ISO/TC 92/WG 14) on
Lar


d Codes

Estimating the causal impact of standards and codes in reducing  wildfire damages, injuries,
and fatalities is difficult for several reasons. First, complia nce with and enforcement of building
codes may vary. Second, it is not  always c


the design of buildings that ignited with those that survived. Collection of such data could greatly improve the development of WUI standards identifying specific b uilding designs that support
housing survivability in wildfires.
Previous Studies


d versus only 18 percent of the homes built prior to 2008.
The Kasler and Reese analysis i s illuminating since it used a l arge number of observations
from a complete population of str uctures. An important limitati on of their analysis is that it


re smoke and unburned can opies may obscure aerial views
(see Kolden and Wiesberg, 2007, pp. 23–24, 29–30). Errors in th e fire perimeter seem less
likely once the fire has been c ontained, especially in develope d areas, where houses are closely


ounts and Damage Lev els of Houses in the 2018 Camp Fire
 Year Built
Before 2008 2008 or Late r
Permanent homes: undamaged 1,790 138
Permanent homes: partially damaged 401 31
Permanent homes: destroyed 9,525 143
Permanent homes: total 11,716 312


may be correlated with factors
that affect survivability be yond building construction or desig n. Factors such as topography,
vegetation, and housing density (which can depend on lot size) all affect the probability of a
home’s survival, and thes


area are largely assessed
to be very high risk, while most of Paradise is high to very hi gh risk. Areas directly east and west of Paradise, where
many of the more isolated homes t end to be located , are largely  assessed as moderate risk . CAL FI


ty (Marangh ides, et al., 2015). These studies
were further validated when the C amp Fire was observed as sprea ding from structure to structure
(Curwen and Serna, 2018).
However, low density can also be  associated with risks. Syphard  et al. (20


ors with
different outcomes that fell ac ross cell boundaries. Another st rategy suggested by a reviewer that could be pursued

55 Figure 6.6. Density of Single-Family Housing

NOTES: Density is calculated as the number of single-family hou ses


uals. We refer to these
two approaches as a “static” mode l and a “recursive” model. We present both approaches
because neither is inherently superior to the other.
The static model treats the unobs erved local risks proxied by n eighboring houses


r observation, the probit must be calculated using a simultaneous
equations approach, which essentially iterates over possible co efficient values until it converges
on a stable solution. The main benefit of this approach is that  it accounts for c


 s urvivability between the 1950s
and 2000s, then a reduction in survi vability in the 2010s. As shown in Figure 6.1, there are fewer
houses on which to base estimates prior to 1940 and after 2010. The standard errors on the static
model are espec


nstruction (beyond those
required by codes) may change over time in ways that may be cor related with fire risk.
For example, a Headwaters Ec onomics/IBHS report on building wil dfire-resistant homes
recommended installing weed- and erosion-contro


n
the Waldo Canyon Fire (Maranghide s et al., 2015). However, this  strong correlation between
neighboring houses’ outcomes could also reflect neighboring hou ses sharing other high-risk
characteristics. Collecting a nd analyzing additional data


 in our hypothetical estimate)  is similar to that of the
single-family homes examined in our analysis.
Table 6.3 shows that, under these assumptions,  the static model  estimates the damage
averted to be $ 600 million if all  houses had the same


des over time have led
to (or occurred alongside) changes in building designs and mate rials that have improved the
survivability of houses to fire. However, our results do not find a statistically significant increase in survivability following th


activit ies
NIST research is also instrumental in the development and desig n of standardized tests that
are used to systematically eva luate technologies and to confirm  compliance with standards.
Indeed, the need for nationally s tandardized met


d n eeds-driven approach  to selecting resear ch topics, and
its credibility for conducti ng objective, high quality research  make it a crucial contributor in the
development of fire safety sta ndards. If NIST were to become un able to perform it


rns, please contact Nelson Bryner, Chief of the
NIST Fire Research Division (nelson.bryner@nist.gov) or Ben Miller, co-project leader at
RAND (bmiller@rand.org). Thanks in advance for taking a few moments to help us with thisimportant work.
1.
Have y


oke Alarms
Using Scattered Light, Transmitted Light or Ionization (2010)
NEMA SB-11: Guide for Proper Use of System Smoke Detectors
NFPA 72: National Fire Alarm and Signaling Code
NFPA 101: Life Safety Code
NFPA 1141: Standard for Fire Protection Inf


ncident data repor ted in the National Fire Incident
Reporting System (NFIRS) to depict fire activity in non-reporti ng cities.”48 We apply an approach
that is similar in spirit, although ours is designed to ensure “representativeness” at the indiv


90 percent of the 2017 NFIRS records to a
department, and 75 perc ent of departments to  at least one NFIRS  record. Of the departments
that we can match to NFIRS records , we are able to identify or estimate a headquarters zip code
for almost all


92 4,066 342.5
Percentage owne r-occupied 62% 58% 271.9
Percentage vacant 16% 20% 398.4
     Department Percentage that are a local department 98% 92% 480.1
Percentage that are the pr imary agency 33% 17% 663.7
Percentage that are a purely volun


the number of
injuries and fatalities, from th e department level to the state  level. The propensity scores
calculated in Step 1 of our analysi s are used to construct the probability weights used in this
aggregation.54 Because states vary consid


nalysis of the
potential impact of WUI standards.
74 Figure B.1. Outliers in the Number of Fires per Capita

is arbitrary and used for examp le purposes). Some observations clearly stand out as separate
from the rest. For the highest seve


 r esults for injuries and fata lities with outliers  included. Here
the coefficients on the number of  firefighter injuries per capi ta are larger but still statistically
insignificant. The results are  again otherwise similar.
Table B.2. No Stat


ires per c apita had radically decreased
prior to 2003, there is still a slight decrease over time and n otable year-by-year variation in the
number of fires. Year fixed effects ensure we separate safety i mprovements experienced by all
states fro


ary indicators for the decade in which a house was built, an  indicator for whether the home is
permanent versus manufactured, and measures of “density” (the n umber of surrounding homes).
We estimate this probit model in two different ways, each o


h house, all variables are
zero except for the decade in which the house was built, which is 1. For example, a house that is
built in 1984 has 𝐵𝑈𝐼𝐿𝑇1980 ௜ൌ1, and all other variables are zero.
The analysis discussed in Chapter 6 showed that newer h


relatively straig htforward. If den sity were not
included separately, the impacts would likely increase the impo rtance of the spatial lag term,
thereby exaggerating the positive feedback loop.


d Products Using a n Oxygen Consumption Calorime ter,” webpage, undated c.
As of November 1, 2019: https://www.astm.org/Standards/E1354
———, “ASTM E2632/E2632M-13 Standar d Test Method for Evaluating the Under-Deck Fire
Test Response of Deck Mater


o logy,
1455-1, 2008. As of April 2021: https://www.nist.gov/publications/performance-home-smoke-alarms -analysis-response
-several-available-technologies
Bukowski, Richard W., Thomas E . Waterman, and W. J. Christian, Detector Sensitivity and
S


1986, pp. 445–448.
C.F.R.— See Code of Federal Regulations.
Cleary, Thomas G., Improving Smoke Alarm Performance – Justification for New Smoldering
and Flaming Test Performance Criteria , NIST Technical Note 1837, Gaithersburg, Md.:
National Ins


, February 2 020. As of April 22, 2021:
https://www.nfpa.org/-/media/File s/News-and-Research/Fire-stati stics-and-reports/
Emergency-responders/osfdprof ile.pdf and https://www.nfpa.org//-/media/Files/News-and
-Research/Fire-statistics-and-re por


ural-Strength-Ex ecutive-Summary_IBHS.pdf
88 Insurance Institute for Business & Home Safety®, “Post-Hurrican e Investigations,” webpage,
undated a. As of April 22, 2021:
https://ibhs.org/wind/post -hurricane-investigations/
———, Rating the Stat


nce , July 7–9, 1999, A lbury, N.S.W.,  pp. 219–225.
Löw, Petra, “The Natural Disaster of 2018 in Figures: Losses in  2018 Dominated by Wildfires
and Tropical Storms,” Munic h RE, August 8, 2019. As of April 17, 2020:
https://www.munichre.com/topi


ber Exposure Zones Using a WUI
Hazard Scale , Gaithersburg, Md.: National In stitute of Standards and Techno logy, Technical
Note 1748, January 14, 2013.
Maranghides, Alexander, William Mell, Karen Ridenour, and Derek McNamara, Initial
Reconnaiss


ttps://www.nfpa.org/-/media/File s/News-and-Research/Fire-stati stics-and-reports/
Detection-and-signaling/Task-Group-on-Smoke-Detection-Followup- Final-Report-July
-2009.ashx?la=en
———, “NFPA 1141: Standard for Fire Protection Infrastructure fo r


 and Other L ocal Agencies) F ire Hazard Se verity Zone Maps and
Adopted State Responsibility Ar ea Fire Hazard Severity Zone Map s,” webpage, undated.
As of March 26, 2020:
https://osfm.fire.ca.gov/division s/wildfire-planning-engineerin g/wild


ompt roller General of the United S tates,
Washington, D.C.: Government Accountability Office, PSAD-76-173 , 1976.
https://www.gao.gov/assets/120/117465.pdf
Standohar-Alfano, Christine D., Heather Estes, Tim Johnston, Mu rray J. Morrison, and Tan


Gaithersburg, Md.:
National Institute of Standards and Technology, NIST BSS 179, 2 003. As of September 23,
2021: https://www.nist.gov/publications/building-a nd-fire-research-nb snist-1975-2000


Public Health and Soft Power: The Republic of Korea’s Initial COVID-19 Response and Its Implications for Health Diplomacy BOUEY ET AL.$19.50During the early days of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)
pandemic in 2020, the Republic of Korea (ROK


rofit, nonpartisan, and committed to the
public interest. To learn more about RAND, visit www.rand.org.
Research Integrity
Our mission to help improve policy and decisionmaking through research and analysis is enabled through our core values of qual


onal relationship for additional insights and guidance on the analysis. The Korea Foundation provided the funding for the project from 2021 to 2022. The research will be of value to policymakers who are interested in the subject of strengthening soft


educe conflicts. In this report, we identify the characteristics of the ROK government’s initial response to COVID-19 and assess how these characteristics might be translated into soft power assets despite the limitations and risks of health diplomac


tic tools, establish response plans, and secure human resources for the epidemic control even before the country’s first outbreak. 2. A centralized hierarchical response system to coordinate pandemic resource allocation and risk communication. As soo


leverage its success with the initial response to COVID-19 to demonstrate soft power assets that span multiple domains identified by a theory-based soft power index Soft Power 30, including (1) digital resources and technological advancement, (2) pr


power through civil society and governmental exchange programs. The ROK’s success in the COVID-19 response illustrates that the democratic system does not necessarily cause disputes over public health mandates. Decentralized civil organization excha


idence rate of COVID-19 until the fall of 2020, when the pandemic entered a new stage, with vaccines in the last stages of clinical trials and new variants of the virus spreading. The ROK government’s proactive “three T” strategy for nonpharmaceutica


soft power asset analysis by examining the cultural and health system foundations of the response. Chapter 5 provides policy recommendations.  Our approach included a comprehensive literature review of the response in the ROK and a few other Asian co


ndex, SP30 added digital media and combines analysis of standard databases and a multicountry polling score. The global polling focuses on subjective impressions of foreign policy, friendliness, culture, technology products, cuisine, livability, and


States should invest in global health to “strengthen fragile and failing states, to promote social and economic progress, and to protect U.S. security” (Global Health Europe, 2010). Western democratic allies are not the only nations that have recogn


oercion (Shakeel et al., 2019). Similarly, some countries lauded China’s medical team, vaccine, and mask diplomacy efforts during COVID-19 (e.g., Serbia, Italy, Spain, and Netherland), but the efforts caused controversy in others (e.g., Turkey, becau


t overall soft power ranking (SP30, 2019).2 According to the SP30 index, between 2016 to 2019, the ROK improved its government subindex related to effectiveness and individual freedoms. Meanwhile, the country’s extensive tourism campaign, led by K-po


omestic product contracted by only 1 percent, compared with 5.3 percent in Japan, 3.7 percent in the United States, and 11.2 percent in the United Kingdom. The overall unemployment rate increased 1 percent relative to the estimated rate before the pa


ntine and screening at the country’s border expanded, while epidemiologic studies were conducted to trace the contacts of the index case (Moradi and Vaezi, 2020). By January 30, 2020, when WHO first labeled COVID-19 as a public health emergency, the


ed; and level 4, the nationwide response system is activated. See Moradi and Vaezi, 2020.   10 distancing, and quarantine (Lee and Lee, 2020). As a result, no national lockdown was initiated, and localized lockdowns were implemented only in highly in


pacity had been high pre–COVID-19, and some even considered this to be overcapacity. The ROK’s national health insurance system provides disproportionate reimbursement for the testing in clinical settings, which protects the robust testing infrastruc


ing Pandemic Information for the Public Infection Risk to Potential Contacts Contacts Tracing Detection of Imported Border Control and Tracking Voluntary or Involuntary Isolation Cellular Broadcasting  Service                   Artificial Intelligenc


erted into temporary clinics as accommodation support centers (also called community treatment centers, residential treatment centers, or living treatment centers) (Yang, Kim, and Hwang, 2020; Kang et al., 2020). Foundations of Success The literature


at the ROK’s pandemic response system pre–COVID-19 received higher scores than those of Indonesia and United States in many items. The table also highlights the ROK’s superb readiness in its emergency operation programs and activation mechanisms; its


Dynamic listening and rumor management 4 4 4 SOURCES: WHO, 2016; WHO, 2017a; WHO, 2017b; attribute wordings adapted from these sources. NOTES: The scores are   1 = No capacity: Attributes of a capacity are not in place.  2 = Limited capacity: Attrib


ith MERS; significant economic power; and a governing style that includes strict penalties for policy violations were contributing factors.  Other reports support the ROK’s success in establishing transparent and effective government-public communica


Other Asian Countries As a comparison, we also looked into India and Indonesia’s approaches to COVID-19 to reflect on the challenges and barriers for disease containment. Our comprehensive literature review did not provide many in-depth studies on th


s, competent government communication and centralized command, a relatively well-trained government and public health workforce, a collective yet democratic culture, and resilience in health care capacity during a crisis. Many of these features could


search • Transferring technology and donating digital devices • Contributing to regional supply and infrastructure  • Concerns exist about government violation of citizens’ privacy. • This can be perceived a market coercion or competition. • Digital


could be viewed as working against personal freedom and would not be desirable in some countries. • Explanations should target the rationale for the collective actions during COVID-19. Engagement activities COVID-19 prompted the ROK to be more engag


ss friendliness, and capacity for innovation. One highlight of the ROK’s initial success in responding to COVID-19 is the ample supply of testing kits before the first outbreak in February 2020. The speed of testing kit development, approval, and pro


East Asia). However, highlighting such cultural attributes in countries that focus on individual freedom may risk backlash.  In stakeholder interviews, experts pointed out that the ROK’s success in technology development and industrialization is wel


he pharmaceutical and medical device industries, and international collaborations over the long term. Regarding the second concern, while soft power may be on the main agenda of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, other ministries (Ministry of Health an


nd centralized coordination in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic’s destructive path in 2020. The ROK’s COVID-19 response model, which is based on the confluence of communal culture, a strong public health foundation, and democratic institutions, offe


edical devices. Vaccine and medical supply manufacturers can collaborate with regional partners to expand vaccine capacity and establish the ROK as a global vaccine production hub. The government can assist multilateral organizations in engaging with


presenting the will of the people, and those that favor the rule of law.  - While government-sponsored civil organization exchange programs can benefit from the involvement of ROK embassy support, a decentralized civil society engagement strategy can


related keywords (limit to title or abstract), including “laboratory testing,” “surveillance system,” “contact tracing,” “public communication,” and “quarantine.”  The PubMed search for material related to COVID-19 responses after the year 2020 retur


nd sought feedback after we shared a preliminary draft of findings and the policy recommendations. Experts from India and Indonesia also provided information to supplement the limited literature we could collect. This method ensured that the literatu


2022, we followed up with experts via emails and collected their feedback on our preliminary analysis and their opinions on our policy suggestions. We then used selective coding to analyze the qualitative data from follow-up interviews to develop ou


World in Data, undated. As of July 26, 2022: https://ourworldindata.org/coronavirus Demir, Emre, “China’s Wavering COVID-19 Vaccine Diplomacy in Turkey,” webpage, Global Voices, August 13, 2021.  https://globalvoices.org/2021/08/13/chinas-wavering-co


OVID-19 Outbreak: A Real-Time Analysis,” International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, Vol. 17, No. 24, December 21, 2020.  Kang, JaHyun, Yun Young Jang, JinHwa Kim, Si-Hyeon Han, Ki Rog Lee, Mukju Kim, and Joong Sik Eom, “South


nter on Public Diplomacy, May 2021. McGinnis, Michael D., and Elinor Ostrom, “Social-Ecological System Framework: Initial Changes and Continuing Challenges,” Ecology and Society, Vol. 19, No. 2, 2014.  Monocle, “Soft Power Survey 2017/18,” video, Dec


Soft Power 30, “South Korea: 2019 Overview,” webpage, 2015–2019. As of July 26, 2022: https://softpower30.com/country/south-korea/ SP30—See Soft Power 30. Verma, Raj, “China’s ‘Mask Diplomacy’ to Change the COVID-19 Narrative in Europe,” Asia Europe


Prepared for the City of CharlotteSAFE Charlotte
Alternative Response Models and Disparities in
Policing
MOLLY M. SIMMONS, DANIEL TAPIA, RICHARD H. DONOHUE, DENIS
AGNIEL, MATTHEW L. MIZEL, LISA WAGNER, AMANDA CHARBONNEAU, DANIELLE SOBOL
CORPORATION


and Accountability for Everyone, a report published by a team of city council members, the city manager, city leaders, and city government staff (City of Charlotte, 2020).
1 The three SAFE recommendations addressed in this report are
• Recommendatio


Council members, the city manager, city leaders, and city government
staff, contained six proposed recommendations (City of Charlotte, 2020). The SAFE Charlotte recommendations were created with the purpose of improving the quality of public safety


ord and Bjerregaard, 2014), many of the alternative response models concentrate on mental health services. Several police departments provide specialized training and deploy crisis intervention teams (CITs) of frontline officers directly to provide c


 a map of the number of flagged calls by neighborhood (numbers on the map represent neighborhood statistical areas):
Figure S.1. The Number of Flagged Calls (Relating t o Substance Abuse, Mental Health, and
Homelessness) in Each Neighborhood , with


ilot of civilian responders for low-risk,
low-priority calls): Approximately $1.4 million to $1.85 million for the first year.

4 Respondents were asked about varying levels of specialized civilian models and provided input on a range o f
consid


 six  months during the
pilots and at the completion of the pilots.
• In addition to the recommended programs, Charlotte needs to develop a strong triage
model to identify individuals in crisis. This is just one aspect of the continuum of care fo


imilar schedule or patrol area and giving those with the most similar profiles higher weights. We then estimated regressions with relevant control variables to identity each officer’s unique coefficient that
describes the extent of their deviation f


tion of
Charlotte
• Lower corresponding rate of being stopped for Asian drivers
compared with White drivers
• Higher rate of being stopped for Black drivers compared with White
drivers, when rates are computed with respect to the population of


rienced a use of force compared to White arrestees was inconclusive.
• Lower odds of Hispanic arrestees to experience a use of force relative to non -Hispanic arrestees
Severity of force • When  force  was used against a pedestrian or driver , the


 data. The ability to connect CAD events to
use-of-force incidences would facilitate analysis of uses of force. This includes validating
data entry between different data set s to ensure that the correct information is available
(e.g., linked use-


affic
stops and enforcement to focus on crash reductions and moving violations can reduce disparities, improve public safety, and enable a move away from aggressive or zero-
tolerance models, as appropriate. More details on these interventions can b


of Flagged Calls (Relating to Substance Abuse, Mental Health, and
Homelessness) in Each Neighborhood, with the Top 20 Neighborhoods Identified ............ vii
Figure 2.1. Routine-Priority Calls by Hour of the Day ..................................


 Stop by Race/Ethnicity, White Community
Member and No-Action Stops as Baseline ........................................................................... 59
Table 3.15. Odds Ratios for Result of Pedestrian Stop by Race/Ethnicity, White Community


 Top Ten NSAs for Priority 5 Calls, 2015–2020 .......................................................... 89
 xx Table 4.2. NSAs with Highest Average Homelessness, Substance Abuse, and Mental Health
Low-Priority Calls per Week, 2015–2020 ..........


................. 158	Table C.31. Logistic Regression, Officer Characteristics and Citations .................................... 159	Table C.32. Logistic Regression, Officer Characteristics and Arrests ....................................... 160	Tab


in securing witnesses in the aftermath of a 2020 mass shooting event (Foster, 2020), and videos that appear to show CMPD officers intentionally cornering protesters and firing tear gas on them during a summer 2020 protest highlight these tensions (K


mmitted to the hospital, and patients are
sometimes restrained inside the police vehicle. This process introduces an interaction with the carceral system and could be traumatic for patients, some of whom have willingly checked in for care (Knopf, 20


s, we also conducted a literature review on alternative response models for individuals in crisis.
2.2. Background on Alternative Response Models
To develop recommendations for Charlotte and draw on existing knowledge about crisis
response, we c


MCAT pilot to interagency communication and dialogue, particularly the ability to utilize the systems and software of multiple agencies to compare criminal justice and health care records when dispatching to the scene of an emergency. The biggest ba


l., 2021).
6 This program is still in a pilot phase.
In some cases, mental health crisis response units respond to calls for service that involve co-
occurring substance use disorders and/or homelessness (Reuland, 2010), or they take on calls and


d Community Responders for Equity, Safety, and
Service (CRESS) composed of peer specialists to respond to
police calls; additional details unclear.
Fort Worth , Texas Low-level
incidents  First group of responders trained and deployed in 2021 to


ope, 2020). The lessons from the existing research helped us to execute this study and shaped our recommendations.
2.3. Methods  for Recommendations 2 and 4
We approached Recommendations 2 and 4 by conducting a formative evaluation. A
formative


wed the call code in the computer-aided dispatch (CAD) system. The first step
consisted of identifying the CAD code for the call for service. This was done by
examining the TYPE_CODE_ORIG_DESC (the type of the call code by its original description)


oject, and snowball sampling is when additional participants with particular knowledge
relevant to the project are identified during the course of research (Yin, 2015). We worked with
the city to identify the purposeful sample. We then ask ed enrol


by a primary coder, with spot checks by an experienced coder.
We also used the interviews, targeted Google searches, and two community tools (the ONE
Charlotte Health Alliance website and NC211.com) to develop an asset map of mental health,
subst


es, with the frequency and percentage of all routine-priority calls, are included.

 12 Table 2.4. The 20 Most-Frequent R outine -Priority ( Priority 5) Call Types, with F requency and
Percentage
Call Type  Total Number  of
Routine Calls  P


in the number or proportion of calls by day of the week
or by month. See Figures 2.2 and 2.3. In each figure, the top panel shows the number of routine-priority calls, and the bottom panel shows the proportion of all calls on that day of the week or


riginal Call Type  Low-Risk
Percentage  Priority
Escalation
Percentage  Percentage  That
Required
Multiple Units  Total Calls
Illegal parking 85.12 3 0.048  14.349  28,991
Found property  83.78 0.071  15.36 5 14,032
Notify  82.677  4.578  12


Assist medic  985 1.1%

Calls flagged as potentially related to mental health were overwhelming ly welfare checks.
See Table 2.10. All call types accounting for more than 1 percent of calls flagged for mental health are included.
 22 Table 2.


ikely in the afternoon, particularly on Monday.

 25 Figure 2.8. Flagged Calls (Relating t o Substance Abuse, Mental Health, and Homelessness) by
Hour of Day and Day of Week

Flagged calls tended to be more frequent during warm-weather months


tion climate and identify barriers and facilitators to implementation. This section is divided into two subsections. First, we will discuss our findings
on civilian/co-response models for mental health, homelessness, and substance use, and then we w


his has been applauded by community members; however, it was noted that they are not available 24 hours a day. Furthermore, these individuals are likely to be needed at night, but they currently work only during the day.
Because of this tension, ou


h as musicians and athletes, discuss mental illness and crisis intervention and share a nonemergency number in an effort to disseminate information about CPCRT.
Another major issue in Charlotte, which community organizations who provide services ca


y are not available 24 hours a day is problematic. Respondents reported that
this meant that even those who know about CPCRT teams can be reluctant to request them through 911 because they know that there is going to be a delay. Furthermore, limitin


re were some potential benefits to civilian responders, there
were also potential problems. In this section, we will discuss the model of civilians who respond
 34 to low-risk situations. We identified several themes. Most prevalent were concerns


s stigma within CMPD. As one participant stated, “Some police feel
either you’re a badge or you’re not. So, we need to show civilians can do stuff too and can represent the department in a great way. So, house them together, so sworn can see amazing


Our search focused on crisis services and accessible ongoing support services for mental health needs (80 resources), substance abuse disorders (47 resources), and housing and homelessness services (41 resources). We did not include private practices


e fall into the early
intervention area of the continuum. Seventy-six of these resources provide counseling services and support groups, and roughly one-third of these are offered through private, for-profit organizations or individuals. Although it


ovides a mix of services in vivo, meaning in the setting and context in which problems arise, as opposed to in a clinical setting [Phillips et al., 2001]). Charlotte has a limited number of transition support resources, with two providers of ACT and


aged an established framework that uses an internal benchmarking approach for identifying outlier officer behavior. Briefly, this approach evaluates a given officer by comparing them with a weighted combination of all other officers, where the weight


termine whether any individual is acting on racial bias. Racial bias is an issue that has been identified as problematic in police–community member contact. That said, disparities can, in principle, be estimated.
We cannot rule out the possibility


tation in the
population when controlling for neighborhood context (e.g., crime, poverty)?
x. Is the frequency of pedestrian stops by perceived race/ethnicity equivalent to the proportion of those races/ethnicities represented in the community when


 make no difference in the numbers of drivers being stopped, then that
would suggest that there is no disparity.
Finally, for question v, we analyzed the yield rates of searches by different perceived racial
group; yield rates are taken as proxies


gistic  Stop data, CAD data, quality -
of-life data
Point viii. Racial disparities in rate of
consent given to search  Binary logistic  Stop data, CAD data, quality -
of-life data
Point ix. Racial disparities between the
number of vehicles  stops


 of use-of-force incidents during police stops, we also evaluated the
uses of force on individuals who were arrested. This decision was based on the understanding
that use of force during stops represents a small proportion of all uses of force and


 variable—here, White versus non-White identity for arrestees.
10 When the two groups have similar values for all variables we
decide to control for, we consider the data balanced. The specific matching technique we use is coarsened exact matching,


ddress Outliers Who Could Exhibit Bias
Our methodology described here has been employed in other cities  for outlier detection. We
employed an internal benchmarking method to identify officers who were outliers compared with
their peers in terms


rom the group. The first method is through
weighting more- similar observations higher with propensity score weighting, while the second method is to include
additional variables in regressions to control for the influence of other factors (e.g. ,


r rate of being stopped for Black drivers compared with White drivers,
when rates are computed with respect to the population of the
neighborhood where the stop took place
• Lower corresponding rates for Asian d rivers and drivers of other
races


of force relative to
non-Hispanic arrestees
Severity of force  • When force was used against a pedestria n or driver, there was a greater
probability that lethal force (firearms) or less -lethal force (tasers, batons,
sprays) was used instead of


es of experiencing the outcome as White
individuals. If the OR for use of force corresponding to Asian motorists is estimated to be 1.50, it
can be interpreted as follows: When stopped, the odds of an Asian individual being subject to a
use of for


 which different racial/ethnic groups were subjected to stops,
we conducted several analyses. The first analyses used Poisson regression to estimate how the rate of stops differed between racial/ethnic groups after accounting for the neighborhood ch


ian residents.

13 Two neighborhoods were missing racial/ethnic population data altogether . Among the rest, five neighborhoods (1
percent ) had 0 White population, 27 (6 percent ) had 0 Black population, 49 (11  percent ) had 0 Hispanic populat


th respect to all city residents of a particular racial/ethnic group, and then we analyzed rates with respect to residents of a particular racial/ethnic group within the neighborhood of the stop. Full results are given in Tables 3.5 and 3.6.
We est


cal to the analysis of all stops (vehicle and pedestrian) above. We
 55 include the tables for vehicles stops here in Tables 3.7 and 3.8. All effect estimates and
conclusions are similar to the analysis above.
Table 3 .7. Rates of Vehicle Stops b


statistical significance . CIs
are in parentheses.
* We included Native Americans in the other/u nknown category in regressions given their small sample
size.
Frequency of No-Action Stops
For this analysis, we focused on stop data to analyze t


: We used c lustered standard errors by NSA. Bolded text indicates statistical
significance . CIs are in parentheses.
* We present Native Americans as a category separately here but included them  with the
other/u nknown category in regressions g


 Hispanic
 59 individuals had 20.0 percent lower odds (95-percent CI 12.7–26.6) of receiving a written
warning rather than no-action stop and 1.550 times the odds (95-percent CI 1.454–1.653) to receive a citation rather than a no-action stop compa


iven small sample size.
Requests to Search D uring S tops
In total, White motorists received a total of 1,230 requests for consent to search out of a total
of 134,487 total stops that could be linked to CAD data, corresponding to 0.91 percent of


dications that the type of search was “Consent,” but we had no indication from the request data that consent to search was requested. Conversely, there were many instances where a consent to search was requested but a different search type was listed


16)
Native American  14 5 45.0%  NA
White  3,182  1,421  44.7%  NA
NOTES: We used c lustered standard errors by NSA. Bolded text indicates statistical significance . CIs are in
parentheses.
* We present Native Americans as a category separately


rors because all males and females across all duplicates shared the same age. For arrest data, we identified 2,657 nonunique rows on the basis of subject demographics out of the total arrest data set of 95,793. To justify the merger of these two data


nstruct the 95% CIs.

17 This could be problematic for our conventional logistic regression analysis if the accurac y of data entry is
correlated with other variables (e.g. , race, age, type of crime) because this would ultimately produce a biase


e interactions where force was used, those involving White civilians were the
least likely to involve more-than-physical force (21 percent of 600 force episodes) and the least
likely to involve lethal force (0.7 percent). The proportion of incident


1 16 51.6%   28.02 (11 .66–
44.66) 3 9.7% 8.43 (2.41 –
22.93)
White ** 601 123 20.5%  –- 4 0.7%  –-
NOTES: CI s are in parentheses.  Bolded text indicates significance .
* Grouped with “Other” in logistic regression models.
** Reference group .


plaints was estimated to increase by about 16 percent (95-percent CI 12–21). These rates were virtually unchanged when adjusting for neighborhood characteristics.
Racial/ Ethnic Profiling Co mplaints in Communities
We examined all of the descripti


threshold near the center of the distribution, most of the officers we identified as outliers would be “false discoveries” or not truly outliers. Our threshold would identify the number of cases that have a fdr of less than 0.20.

18 While this me


is area is Asian ) and Westover
(18.8 percent of the stops of Asian drivers by this outlier group took place in Westover; 3.3 percent of the population in this area is Asian ). This should also serve to convey the point that
although this method is


up took place here; 17.1 percent of the population in this area is Hispanic), South (19.8 percent of the stops of Hispanic drivers by this outlier group took place here; 7.5 percent of the population in this area is Hispanic), and Hickory Grove (18.9


anic drivers. For White individuals, we detected 17 outliers, 15 of whom stopped more White drivers than their peers. For the two  outliers who stopped fewer White drivers than
their peers, most of their stops occurred in Eastway (53.2 percent of th


or stops often occur when an outstanding warrant for the stopped driver is discovered. Asian officers (OR 1.719, 95-percent CI 1.341–2.202) and Black officers (OR 1.3, 95-percent CI 1.174–1.439) more often issued a citation as a result of a stop comp


 Policies and Strategies That Could Be Affecting Disparities
Given our identification of statistically significant racial/ethnic disparities, we considered
whether any policies or strategies could be driving these results. We reviewed CMPD’s curren


anctity of life is consistent with the Police Executive Research Forum’s first guiding principle on use of force (Police Executive Research Forum, 2016). However, CMPD might want to reconsider the use of the term warrior, as it could inoculate office


kely to
lead to significant cost savings from reducing patrol staffing. In fact, depending on the efficiency with which nonsworn staff clear specific calls, reallocation efforts could lead to a cost increase stemming from fielding additional staff.


are based on information and data from stakeholders, as well as on our analysis. Our primary recommendation related to SAFE Charlotte’s Recommendations 2 and 4 is to establish a pilot program that, if successful, could be tailored for expanded use i


ng property damage, or other property crimes. However, some Priority 5 calls with a higher likelihood to escalate might be best left to sworn officers, even if they are relatively low priority (e.g., intoxicated individuals, suspicious persons or veh


tempted to separate themselves from the police department have not been successful at coordinating response services and avoiding jail or hospitalization for community members (Witzberger and Megas-Russell, 2020).
 89 Geographic Location for Pilot


kers with feedback from community representatives.
Table 4.2. NSAs with Highest Average Homelessness, Substance Abuse, and Mental Health Low -
Priority Calls per Week, 2015 –2020
Homelessness
NSA Divisions  Neighborhood  Count  Approx imate
Ca


d in the development of the cost-benefit analysis for the pilot programs.
Table 4.3. Program Inputs and Change Relative to Status Qu o
Input  Projected Change  Considerations
Personnel  Savings  • Salary and benefits
• Shifts covered
• Number


ority 5 call, assuming twice the status quo response duration (148 minutes). This scenario is also likely when there is a two-person civilian response team handling a call for service. In co-responder programs,
such as CPCRT and others across the co


 a two -person nonsworn
team (Blick et al., 2021).
29 City stakeholders stated that police investigative technicians would have a salary similar to the proposed
nonsworn responders .
 94 Table 4.5. Wages by Scenario Relative to Status Quo ($/Ca


 to two civilians
 95 responding in place of one officer. Scenarios 1 and 2 then lend useful information for planning
purposes. Under Scenario 1, where two civilians respond and take the same amount of time as an officer, the costs are higher, lea


addition, community/police relations improve with the interactions from  a Community Service Officer answering
non-violent calls. It is a softer approach for the community to receive basic police services such as completing
reports, information req


following (City of Ithaca and Tompkins County, 2021):
• $75,500 salary and benefits for each Ithaca Community Solutions Officer (includes $500
for uniform), exact number of officers to be determined
• $70,320.18 salary and benefits for civilian st


cost is additional time spent rather  than hiring of
additional staff. CMPD will need to consider whether additional officers are required to meet increased call load associated with hiring of additional clinical staff.
c A SAFE presentation notes


wheelchair lifts)
• Maintenance
• Sprinter crew vans start at $41,375  (Mercedes -Benz, 2021)
Response duration  Potential savings • Shorter response duration in Denver pilot (25 vs. 34  minutes;
Blick et al., 2021 )
Jail time  Savings  • No c


talization and crime
victimization
Metro areas in
Midwest  (Washington
State Institute for
Public Policy, 2019;
Washington State Institute for Public Policy, 2014 )
  Benefit to cost ratio = $1.16, or
$201 per person • Specific to psychiatric


 estimates from cities with long-standing programs provide concrete information about ongoing costs and sustainability that may might be incorporated in a simple tally of cost information.
Additional Considerations for Cost -Benefit Analysis
The C


bined with outputs from the early stages of the pilot, should guide this effort in the future.
However, our interviewees indicated that enmeshing mental health providers within the
communities they serve is essential. This means that it would be b


partment of Recreation and Human Services, 2021), and relevant academic articles (Bailey et al., 2018; Currier, Fisher, and
Caine, 2010; Dyches et al., 2002; Scott, 2000; Guo et al., 2001). These are supplemented by the
materials and data provided


-level training for the clinician roles.
A review of other similar models, co-response models, and interviews highlighted the need
for team members to have knowledge and ties to Charlotte and the neighborhoods in which they will work, strong commun


ch include a
reporting/discussion of cases. CAHOOTS safety training includes scene awareness, risk identification,
communication with work partners, radio communication, defensive driving, de -escalation, self -
care/clinical debrief, intuition, an


 team options and
definitions .
600 Operations  Clear ly incorporat e all new models into operations .
800-001 Use of Public Records and
Department Information  Clarify whether civilian responders can access records .
800-002 Media Relations  Cl


, Texas, uses a crisis call diversion program (Houston Police Department, undated), in which calls come in to 911, but specially trained staff have the ability to handle and assist callers.
34 The Vera Institute for Justice also outlined how
service


his engagement. For example, we included time at the beginning of the pilot in case new radios and vehicles need to be procured. During the first six time units, Charlotte and CMPD should also make the public aware of the programs being piloted. The


 areas, these
units should start with ten to 12 personnel each. Our estimates show that teams could

 111 handle between 81 and 105 calls per week. These figures should be consistently
evaluated and monitored as the program matures.
• The volume


and education for other sworn and nonsworn staff; and convene a citizen advisory committee to assist with
implementation decisions. These efforts are expected to take approximately six months.
Following this period, we suggest an initial time frame


e police outcomes of interest (e.g., use of force, complaints) could not be connected to CAD event data. Although it is possible to link some CAD events and arrests to use-of-force incidents, not all were an exact match. Establishing some internal me


clarify policies or set guidelines so that current and future officers are less likely to demonstrate outlier behavior. This would enable a feedback cycle in which CMPD is consistently monitoring officers, addressing outlier behavior, and establishi


devices as a condition of their release as they await trial. These persons are suspects in crimes that often involve violence; shifting these duties could present a threat to public safety. Lastly, the Passenger Vehicles for Hire Office generally sup


. More details on these interventions can be found in RAND’s Better Policing Toolkit (Hollywood et al., 2018).
36 These interventions can assist CMPD in focusing on crime and public safety while also
improving relations with and engaging the communi


ndations of the SAFE Charlotte report was to develop a model to
convert low-ris k sworn duties to nonuniform units. To address this recommendation, we are
working with Charlotte to create safe roles for nonuniform representatives to respond to lowe


are not?
o Walk me through what they a re doing now.
§ How common are they?
o What has been the community response?
o Walk me through how you would like to see them function from a practical perspective

4. How would you like the city to e


ric or
family intervention and can assist officers or families with involuntary commitments.]

2. [POLICE, first ask: Do you work with Community Policing Crisis Response Teams?] What are
your thoughts on Community Policing Crisis Response Teams?


wledge
o Individual characteristics
o Intervention characteristics
o Outer settings
o Inner settings
o Process
• General implementation
o Overall thoughts/perspective/experience/knowledge
o Individual characteristics
o Intervention


rime rate , patrol division  0.952  0.863  1.049
Violent crime rate , patrol division  0.708  0.381  1.314
N = 191,998
McFadden’s R -squared =  0.432

 127 Figure C.1 presents the results of our coarsened exact matching for Black arreste


ns
crimeDisorderly Conduct
crimeDistribution Drugs, Controlled Substances
crimeDriving While Impaired
crimeHit and Run, Traffic FatalitycrimeLiquor Violation
crimeMurder & Non −negligent Manslaughter
crimeNon −aggravated Assault
crimePossession, Drug


iolent_div
0.0 0.1 0.2 0.3
Absolute Standardized
Mean Difference●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●
●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●●
●
●All
Matched
 131 Table C.6. Results of Logistic Regression , White Arrestees and Force, Matched Data
Variable  Est


opulation (%)  0.993  0.984  1.003
Youth  population  (%) 1.01 1.003  1.016
Vacant  land (%) 0.993  0.982  1.003
Public nutrition assistance 1 1 1
Household income  0.999  0.993  1.005
Job density  1.009  0.997  1.021
Employment rate  0.99


1.010
Public nutrition
assistance  0.997 0.975 1.019
Property crime rate  0.993 0.984 1.002
Violent crime rate 1.010 0.994 1.026
N 2,760
McFadden’s a djusted
R-squared  0.3692194

 159 Tables C.31 through C.35 present the logistic


isance violations  1.002  0.999  1.005
Property crime rate  0.999  0.998  1.001
Disorder call rate  1 1 1
Violent crime rate  1.007  0.999  1.014
N = 450,680
McFadden’s a djusted R -squared =  0.120

 161 Table C.33. Logisti c Regr


003     0.003
Table C.35. Odds Ratios, Officer Characteristics, Complaints, by Source and Type
  External Complaint   Arrest, Search, Seizure   Use of Force
  Odds
Ratio
Est. Lower
Bound  Upper
Bound   Odds
Ratio
Est. Lower
Bound  Uppe


Center for Emotional Health  New Beginning Sanctuary NC
Charlotte Community Health Clinic  New Beginnings of Southern Piedmont
Charlotte Rescue Mission  New Leaf Adolescent Care
Christ Centered Community Counseling  One Love Services
Co-Depe


m  Urban League of Central Carolinas
RHA Health Services  Urban Ministry Center
S&H Youth and Adult Services (SHYAS)  With Friends Youth Shelter Services Emergency
Shelter Program
Safe Alliance  Women of Hope New Living
Self Advocates of Meck


ness: Evidence-Based Models and Promising Practices, Washington, D.C.: Urban Institute, October 2020. As of June 18, 2021: https://www.urban.org/sites/default/files/publication/103158/ alternatives-to-arrests-and-police-responses-to-homelessness.pdf


enburg Police Department, “CMPD Crisis Intervention Team (CIT),” YouTube
video, September 20, 2016. As of June 18, 2021: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nGkgGZFb7nA&t=31s
Charlotte-Mecklenburg Police Department, “Community Wellness: Community Polic


Files/Departments/ Drys/21%20DRHS%20Person%20in%20Crisis%20ERA%20format%20Plan%20FINAL%20020321.pdf
City of San Francisco Office of the Mayor, “San Francisco’s New Street Crisis Response Team
Launches Today,” November 30, 2020. As of June 18, 2021:


y Epidemiology, Vol. 7, No. 1, January 20, 2020, p. 3.
Fort Worth Police Department, “CCPD Budget Documents & Quarterly Reports,” undated. As of
December 13, 2021: https://police.fortworthtexas.gov/CCPD/ccpd-quarterly-reports
Foster, David, Incom


e_Of_Force%2007102020%20v3.pdf
Irwin, Amos, and Betsy Pearl, “The Community Responder Model: How Cities Can Send the
Right Responder to Every 911 Call,” Center for American Progress , October 28, 2020. As of
June 18, 2021: https://www.americanprog


Issues Brief, San Francisco Department of Public Health, February 2021. As of June 18, 2021: https://www.sfdph.org/dph/files/IWG/SCRT_IWG_Issue_Brief_FINAL.pdf
Mercedes-Benz, “Sprinter,” 2021. As of December 14, 2021:
https://www.mbvans.com/en/s


 Unit Stakeholder Report,
Charlotte, N.C., 2021.
Rahr, Sue, and Stephen K. Rice, From Warriors to Guardians: Recommitting American Police
Culture to Democratic Ideals, Washington, D.C.: National Institute of Justice, April 2015. As
of June 18, 20


l of Darkness and Investigating Disproportionate
Impact in Policing: When Researchers Disagree,” Police Quarterly, Vol. 24, No. 1, March 2020, pp. 55–73.
Starr, Sonja B., “Testing Racial Profiling: Empirical Assessment of Disparate Treatment by
P


of Labor Statistics, “Social and Human Service Assistants,” last updated April 9,
2021. As of June 18, 2021: https://www.bls.gov/ooh/community-and-social-service/ social-and-human-service-assistants.htm
U.S. Census Bureau, “Amherst Town, Hampshire


Prepared for the California Commission on Health and Safety and Workers’
CompensationPosttraumatic Stress
in California’s Workers’
Compensation System
A Study of Mental Health Presumptions for
Firefighters and Peace Officers Under
Senate Bill 5


ebate
surrounding the rebuttable presum ption that posttraumatic stres s disorder (PTSD) among first
responders is work-related and thus  eligible for full workers’ compensation benefits. The main
tasks of the mixed-methods evaluation are to (1) p


, and Gary Briggs at RAND for helping to
implement NIOCCS securely in the  RAND computing e nvironment. We also wish to thank DIR
leadership and staff for providi ng the opportunity and financial support needed to carry out this
study—particularly


ing cause” of th e injury and need not be the
sole or primary cause (CHSWC, 2004). For psychiatric injuries w ithout an accompanying
physical injury, however, section 3208.3 of the Labor Code esta blishes a much higher
evidentiary bar. In most cir


 passage, there were major evidence gaps
related to how PTSD prevalence varies across occupations, how P TSD and other mental health
conditions were being handled in the workers’ compensation syst em, and how the bill potentially
affects costs to


mong First Responders
To estimate the prevalence of m ental health conditions and suicidality in California’s first
responder workforce, we analyzed seven years (2013–2019) of dat a from the California Health
Interview Survey (CHIS). The C HIS is


revalence  of mental health conditions that  might obscure the harmful
impacts of workplace exposure to traumatic events for first res ponders.
Claims Involving PTSD in the Workers’ Compensation System
To understand how PTSD and other mental healt


s  job-related. Mental health pro viders who treat first responders
felt that it often is feasible t o prove that a mental health condition is job-rela ted for first
responders and cited a number of reasons, which we discuss in C hapter 5. These in


rior evidence, mental health stigma and a fear of professional consequences were identified as major barriers to care-seeking.  All first responders
interviewed indicated that thei r departments did not have the n ecessary behavioral health
support


irst responders’ workers ’ compensation claims was
$14,076.
 In the five years from 2020 to 2024, under an assumption of hig h PTSD incidence rates
(comparable to rates of those deployed in Iraq and Afghanistan) with intermediate
assumptions abo


e for Californi a to revisit the questions examined in this study at some
future time that is closer to the expiration of the SB 542 pres umption—perhaps in 2023.
That would allow analysis of the  system after the COVID-19 pand emic has (we hope)


d promoting
workers’ compensation claims, f irst responders suffering from p osttraumatic stress would be
more likely to receive high-qualit y care when it was needed, be fore untreated PTSD resulted in
permanent disability, early r etirement, or


iders should be consulted to
identify and evaluate various avenues for improving access to m ental health treatment for first
responders—avenues that also focus on providing treatment more quickly (such as contractual
agreements with unions, depar


C Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
CHIS California Health Interview Survey
CHSWC
CPI-U Commission on Health and Safety a nd Workers’ Compensation
Consumer Price Index for  All Urban Consumers
DIR (California) Departmen t of Industrial


nges in Number of W orkers’ Compensation Claims Filed ............................................. 126
Potential Changes in Workers’ Co mpensation System in Response t o Claims ................................... 129
Retroactive Application of S


Table 7.7. Number of First Responde rs Seeking Treatment and Fil ing Workers’
Compensation Claims Annually If Nothing Changes ............... .......................................... 132
Table 7.8. Annual Workers’ Compensation Claims Filed fo


e study goals, we conducted a mixed-methods eval uation, combining a
number of quantitative and qualita tive research tasks. Quantita tive analyses included the use of
household survey data to estimate the prevalence of mental dist ress and suicida


 RQ3: Are claims by firefighter s and peace officer s for mental h ealth conditions denied
under circumstances w here the condition app ears to be job-relat ed but the employee
has/d difficulty prov ing that fact, and is/was the rate of denial sta


the retroactive application of the rules set forth in SB 542? P lease separate out firefighter
and peace officer estimated costs.
While we chose to organize our res earch report by theme, rather than following the ordering
of the research question


thin and support fire
and police departments (i.e., chiefs and claims administrators). Using 12 years of workers’
compensation information-system claims data, we describe the ty pes of claims filed by first
responders as well as the initi al and


sent stakehold er perspectives on how to
improve first responders’ access to mental health providers and  on general improvements to
the workers’ compensation system as it relates to mental health conditions and claims.
Chapter 9 concludes by rec


dard of
evidence required for psychiatri c injuries to be compensable, w hich was originally adopted in
1989 as part of the Margolin-Bill Greene Workers’ Compensation Act of 1989, succeeded in
controlling medicolegal costs  by reducing the volume


 intended effects, we expect to see higher claim volumes, fewer claim denials, and, most importantly, more frequent and timely receipt of mental health care by
first responders dealing with pos ttraumatic stress. While direc t evidence showing how c


ity benefits.
Unlike other presumptions for public safety workers that were e stablished in Labor Code
Sections 3212 and 3213, the presumption for PTSD established in section 3212.15 will expire in less than five years without further leg islative


related mental health injuries and conditions across
California. By doing so, we hoped to provide context and insigh t for the quantitative assessment
of the prevalence and job-relatedn ess of mental health conditio ns among first responders. As ou


  we obtained, in consultation
with DIR, claims data with i njury dates from 2010 to 2019 for c laims submitted to employers
that were fire departments or pe ace officer organizations. For each such employer, we calculated
the volume of all claims


and High Denial Rates for
Mental Health Claims High Proportion of Mental Health Claims
and Low Denial Rates for
Mental Health Claims
Northern C A 1 Fire and 1 Police Department 1 Fire and 1 Police Department
Southern C A 1 Fire and 1 Police D


partmen t, a claims administrator who s upported the department, a
mental health provider most use d by first responders in the dep artment, and at least one first
responder with a mental health workers’ compensation claim who worked in the departm


ers and peace officers focused on their experiences with needing
help for job-related injuries a ssociated with mental health sym ptoms; their ability to
access and pay for mental health support via workers’ compensation; the types of mental
healt


 tments. We stopped recruitment of
an applicants’ attorney after five contact attempts.
Concurrently, we also recruite d and interviewed all of the 13 f irst responders who were
referred to us as being interest ed in the study; this included six f


h stakeholder
group. After this initial coding e xercise, we compared the diff erences between the two coders’
application of codes to the int erview text and obtained the fol lowing pooled kappa coefficients:
0.86, indicating “very good” coder ag


sponder employers.
We held the first TAG meeti ng (virtually) on October 13, 2020, before interviews started, to
allow for input and feedback on the overall design and approach . The meeting was structured
with an agenda and included pres entation


 to participate (we had thr ee explicit department/chief refusals out of 24). As such, first
responders from our participati ng departments likely had a diff erent overall experience (again, at
least a little) than those i n nonparticipating depart


to address many of the research
questions. We analyzed data from two household surveys to characterize the prevalence of
mental health conditions and sui cidality among first responders  and workers in similar
occupations. We also used adminis tra


t
of six survey items that asks respondents about the frequency w ith which they have experienced
different mental health symptom s over the past 30 days (e.g., “ During the past 30 days, about
how often did you feel hopeless—all of t he time, mos


also produced similar estimates of suicide attempts in the CHIS , but very few respondents in
first responder occupations re ported any history of attempted suicide, and we considered these
estimates too imprecise to be very  informative: we pres


 of  denials reported
on the SROI. 20 Finally, we use claims from the Medical Bill Payment files of t he WCIS to measure medical
spending, to examine patterns of medical bill denials, and, mos t important, to identify which
workers have PTSD that


r  claims in 2020 is sharply limited
(to ten months, at most, for claims filed in January). The COVID-19 pandemic, furthermore, dramatically altered non-emergenc y health care use, reduced acc ess to in-person care, and
increased the use of telehea


uding categories such as depressive disorders, other mood disorders, and personality disorders: the CCS and CCSR code s used in this definition are l isted in Table 2.2. This definition
was chosen to provide some estimates of the frequency of claims


 f or deriving the diagnosis code  lists necessary to identify the
various presumption-covered cond itions that we examine. The CCS R algorithm was developed
for ICD-10 codes after AHRQ determ ined that the structure of CCS was not optimal for the


o lifeguards. Because
this presumption does not apply  broadly to peace  officers or fi refighters, we omit this presumption from our study.
The use of medical claims to ascertain whether a worker suffers  from specific health
conditions is necess


t employers are pr edominantly self-insured, we
found very few fully insured cla ims by firefighters and peace o fficers (2.9 percent), and we do
not report estimates for fully insured claims.
Because it is somewhat complex t o identify claim reve


 Drivers
and EMTs Emergency Medical Technicians and Paramedics
Emergency Medical Technicians
Paramedics
Ambulance Drivers and Atten dants, Except Emergency
Medical Technicians 29-2040
29-2042
29-2043
53-3011 3400 9110
Peace Officer
Comparis