By Jiao Yu Thomas, K.M. Cudjoe , Walter S. Mathis, Xi Chenao 

This study examined the link between neighborhood disorder trajectories and metabolic and inflammatory biomarkers in U.S. older adults. We analyzed data from community-dwelling Medicare beneficiaries in the National Health and Aging Trends Study. Neighborhood physical disorder was assessed annually through interviewer observations over six years. Latent class analysis was used to identify exposure trajectory subgroups. Machine learning based inverse probability weighted (IPW) regression models were conducted to estimate associations with five biomarkers, including body mass index (BMI), waist circumference, hemoglobin A1C (HbA1c), high-sensitivity C-reactive protein (hsCRP), and interleukin-6 (IL-6). Compared to the stable low exposure group, older adults with increased exposure, decreased exposure, and stable high exposure exhibited higher levels of HbA1c. Only stable high exposure was associated with increased hsCRP. No significant associations were found for other biomarke rs. Residential environments play an important role in shaping the biological risk of aging. Incorporating routine screening for neighborhood environmental risks and implementing community-level interventions are pivotal in promoting healthy aging in place.

By Dan Anderberg. Line Hjorth Andersen,  N.Meltem Daysal, Mette Ejrnæs

We examine the impact of a 2002 Danish parental leave reform on intimate partner violence (IPV) using administrative data on assault-related hospital contacts. Using a regression discontinuity design, we show that extending fully paid leave increased mothers’ leave-taking and substantially reduced IPV, with effects concentrated among less-educated women. The reform also lengthened birth spacing, while separations remained unchanged and earnings effects were modest. The timing and heterogeneity of impacts point to fertility adjustments—rather than exit options or financial relief—as the key mechanism. Parental leave policy thus emerges as an underexplored lever for reducing IPV.

By Sarah Picard, Leah Nelson, Rae Walker, Kasey Eickmeyer, and Ellie Wilson

Every year, courts across the United States impose millions of dollars in fines, fees, and restitution on people convicted of traffic violations, misdemeanors, and felonies. Collectively, monetary sanctions and other criminal justice fees are referred to as legal financial obligations or simply court debt. Ostensibly, court debt is intended to sanction offenders, recover the costs of running a court system, raise revenue, and compensate victims of crime. In most jurisdictions, however, court debt is assessed without considering an individual’s ability to pay, and much of what is owed goes uncollected. Estimates suggest that there are approximately $27.6 billion in outstanding obligations. In addition to being an unreliable source of revenue, court debt can have severe and long-standing consequences for those who owe, exposing them to increasing debt, future incarceration related to unpaid debt, and the suspension of voting rights, among other collateral consequences. In jurisdictions across the country, court debt also has a disproportionate effect on the economically disadvantaged, as well as Black and Latino individuals and communities. Many of the equity and collateral consequences described above hold true for court debt assessment and collection in Jefferson County and across Alabama, as documented in a 2018 survey with over 800 Alabama residents who owed court debt. This research attracted the attention of judges in the Tenth Circuit Court in Jefferson County (home to Birmingham) who worked with Leah Nelson, lead researcher on the 2018 survey, and MDRC to develop the Jefferson County Equitable Fines and Fees (JEFF) Project, a multidisciplinary study of the scope and consequences of court debt in the county. With funding from Arnold Ventures, the JEFF Project began in 2022. The findings in this report reflect multiple lines of inquiry, including descriptive and inferential analyses of five years of case-level court data, in-depth interviews with court practitioners, and focus group discussions with individuals who have direct experience with court debt in Jefferson County. Taken together, these analyses point to a system that is neither effective in generating revenue for the court, nor fair, given its outsized impact on Black and indigent people living in poor communities. Over the five years of the study, just under half of the individuals who owed court debt paid in full, with many seeing their debt burden grow over time. The research team also isolated some of the major factors that contribute to debt growth, which include race and economic disadvantage, in addition to factors related to how debt is collected, most notably the practice of assessing a 30 percent late fee on those who do not submit a payment within 90 days. Both court practitioners and individuals who are directly affected viewed the current system as broken, with the latter describing serious financial, emotional, and collateral consequences. Findings from the JEFF Project have already prompted the reconsideration of current practices in Jefferson County, including a pilot project to reduce debt burdens and encourage payments, and the creation of a statewide task force that will examine fines and fees across Alabama. Finally, given that Jefferson County is home to a midsized  city situated in a fiscally and socially conservative state, its social and geographic characteristics make it a useful reference for many cities and counties looking to make changes in their fines and fees systems.

By Tuesday Reitano

Finding responses to illicit financial flows (IFFs) and preventing the extraction, movement and secretion of wealth from the licit global economy has become a growing policy preoccupation. The scale of IFFs and their continued growth has been linked to damaging consequences for governance and the building of peaceful, inclusive societies that achieve development for their citizens. This paper draws on the body of research by the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) to demonstrate how and why responses to IFFs are falling short.

This wide-ranging review concludes that:

• The response to IFFs is too focused on the international financial system, and has failed to recognise and integrate the need to also strengthen oversight and integrity in trade flows, which is one of the dominant means by which illicit value is transferred.

• Informal economic activity, and the size and growth of the informal sector in many economies is undermining the efficacy of regulatory and oversight instruments.

• Political will to tackle the problem appears to be lacking – instead, in a number of key states policymaking has been captured to serve the interests of those for whom the offshore financial system and other legal and regulatory loopholes are of significant benefit. Moreover, state actors are both a significant part of the problem, both as a source of IFFs and as a conduit to enabling their continuation.

The implications of such extensive state involvement are profound, ranging from an overly technical approach to the challenge; the capture and distortion of multilateral processes; the failure to link policy to insecurity and violence, and a closing space for civil society manifested in legal, reputational and physical threat. In the absence of political will, and given the way that the traditional avenues for policy and programmatic response have been compromised, the paper concludes by proposing a few ways to strengthen the response, including by building a stronger and more active role for civil society as activists, whistleblowers and sources of oversight and response; promoting financial inclusion and reducing informality, and focusing on the role of non state actors as potential gatekeepers to guard against IFFs.

SOC ACE Research Paper No. 14. Birmingham, UK: University of Birmingham 2022. 45p.

MAY CONTAIN MARKUP

Donato Masciandaro, EI6d Takats and Brigitte Unger

FROM THE INTRODUCTION: “Traditionally, monetary and financial economics has focused on legal financial transactions, while the economics of crime - following Becker - has neglected the financial aspects. Hence, black finance - finance that relates to illegal or criminal activities - has fallen between the two stools. Due to this separate development in the two sub-disciplines of economics, economic theory has not addressed financial crime sufficiently, so far. This creates a particularly disturbing gap in the literature, since lately, especially in connection with terrorist financing, the financial side of crime has become accentuated in the public and political debate.”

Edward Elgar. Cheltenham, UK • Northampton, MA, USA. 2007. 274p.