Drug overdoses killed 72,000 people in the US in 2017, a 10% increase over 2016, according to new preliminary estimates from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with an influx of deadly synthetic opioids largely to blame. In an article in the New York Times, Margaret Sanger-Katz reports that drug overdose deaths spiked dramatically in 2017, largely due to the increasing availability of stronger, more lethal synthetic opioids. Sanger-Katz clarifies that while overdose rates rose significantly in the mid-Atlantic and Midwestern regions, rates actually fell in New England, where states have launched public health campaigns to prevent and treat opioid misuse. The article shows cautious optimism that the spike will decline, given the increase in federal funding to address the epidemic. The article profiles efforts in Dayton, Ohio, a “hot spot for the epidemic, [where] public health officials are seeing signs of progress. After instituting a new emergency response strategy — and drawing from new federal and state grant funds — the county health department has documented reductions in overdose deaths, emergency room visits and ambulance calls of more than 60 percent between January 2017 and June of this year. The county has reduced medical opioid prescribing; increased addiction treatment resources; expanded community access to an anti-overdose drug called naloxone; and provided addiction treatment to prisoners in its county jail, among other measures. Barbara Marsh, the assistant to the Dayton and Montgomery County health commissioner, says she hopes the trend will hold, and provide some lessons for other parts of the state. “It’s definitely wait and see,” she said. “We want to continue seeing a decline.””
A Pennsylvania grand jury released a damning report on 70 years of child sexual abuse by Catholic priests and the church’s efforts to cover up that abuse by discouraging victims from coming forward, persuading law enforcement not to investigate, transferring abusive priests to new parishes where their abuses were unknown, among many other measures. The report identified more than 300 priests and 1,000 victims, which the grand jury considers an undercount. ““Despite some institutional reform, individual leaders of the church have largely escaped public accountability,” the grand jury wrote. “Priests were raping little boys and girls, and the men of God who were responsible for them not only did nothing; they hid it all. For decades.” … Church officials followed a “playbook for concealing the truth,” the grand jury said, minimizing the abuse by using words like “inappropriate contact” instead of “rape”; assigning priests untrained in sexual abuse cases to investigate their colleagues; and not informing the community of the real reasons behind removing an accused priest.”
The Trump administration provided an update on the status of children still separated from their parents. As of this week, 565 children were still separated from their parents, including 24 children under the age of five. The parents of 366 children have already been deported. NBC News reported this week that federal arrests of undocumented immigrants with no criminal record have more than tripled under the Trump administration: “The surge has been caused by a new ICE tactic of arresting — without warrants — people who are driving or walking down the street and using large-scale “sweeps” of likely immigrants, according to a class-action lawsuit filed in June by immigration rights advocates in Chicago. ICE “administrative” arrests of immigrants without criminal convictions have spiked 203 percent in the first full 14 months of his presidency compared to the final 14 months of the Obama administration, growing from 19,128 to 58,010, according to NBC’s review of ICE figures. During the same time period, the numbers show that arrests of undocumented immigrants with criminal records grew just 18 percent… In a class-action lawsuit filed against ICE by the Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights and Organized Communities Against Deportations, the groups argued that some immigrants in the Chicago area were “taken into immigration custody after pretextual traffic stops” and that “others were taken into custody after ICE came to their home or neighborhood purporting to look for someone else.” The groups allege that from May 18-24 this year, 156 individuals were arrested during a week-long intensified ICE enforcement in the city. Sixty-eight percent of those arrests were made without a warrant.”
A new UCLA study shows the benefits of Los Angeles’ Parks After Dark program, finding that the program’s safety efforts prevented 41 violent crimes and approximately 480 non-violent crimes near county parks between 2010 and 2017, saving Los Angeles County an estimated $2.2 million in criminal justice costs in 2017 alone. Parks After Dark programs include exercise groups, team sports, mental health screenings, educational and job training support, and connections to community resources and services. “Providing a safe place for people to meet, exercise and have fun is the primary goal of Parks After Dark,” said Nadereh Pourat, director of the Health Economics and Evaluation Research Program at the Center and the report’s lead author. “Yet the county has found novel ways to add to the program to support deeper health and social benefits that promote healthier communities.”
This week, California organizations and activists submitted enough signatures to place the California Schools and Local Communities Funding Act on the 2020 ballot. This ballot measure would close loopholes in Proposition 13 that currently enable large corporations to evade taxes. In a statement, SCOPE LA, one of the participating organizations, described the impacts of Prop 13 and how South LA and the rest of the state stand to gain from the California Schools and Local Communities Funding Act: “For 40 years, loopholes in Proposition 13 have been slowly devastating our communities and for many years, it was said that nothing could be done because of the political and financial strength of large corporate property owners… If passed in 2020, this measure will bring $11 billion annually back to schools and public services in California—$2 billion of which would return to LA County.”
This piece in the New York Times explores perceptions of black fatherhood. He highlights Robyn Price Pierre’s book, “Fathers,” which debunks stereotypes about black men and fatherhood, and honors healthy masculinity through images of caring, loving black fathers with their children. “‘Though I was inspired by the relationship between my daughter and her father, I saw mirrors of that relationship all over my life — from men that I saw every day, to men on my social media feed who I had gone to high school with and hadn’t seen in years,” Ms. Price Pierre wrote in an email. “They were fathers, vulnerable and present, and their lives were full and important. None of this fullness, however,