Critical Releases in Homeland Security: September 4, 2013

"Hurricane Sandy made landfall in New Jersey and New York on October 29, 2012. The results were tragic and devastating. The office towers of Lower Manhattan were left powerless and dark. Miles of rail lines were twisted and torn apart. Beach towns from New Jersey to Rhode Island were buried beneath mountains of debris. Millions of lives were upended. Most tragically, more than one hundred people lost their lives. […] In response to the crisis, and because of the scope of the impact and the need for the highest level of coordination for recovery, President Obama created the Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force (the Task Force) in December of 2012, and designated the Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD), Shaun Donovan, as Chair. The additional members were the heads of twenty-three executive department agencies and offices. […] Task Force members assigned staff with a wide range of talent, skills, and experience from their agencies to develop a viable Rebuilding Strategy. The Task Force organized many multi-disciplinary teams (e.g., engineers, financial analysts, grant managers, urban planners, data system specialists, etc.) to study the critical inter-relationships of complicated states, communities, and systems. These teams built on, and incorporated contributions from, existing Federal, State, and local efforts to develop the Rebuilding Strategy. The Rebuilding Strategy includes 69 recommendations, across several policy areas, that are designed to align funding with local rebuilding priorities, eliminate barriers to recovery while ensuring effectiveness and accountability, coordinate across levels of government, facilitate a region-wide approach to rebuilding, and promote resilient rebuilding so that the region will be better able to withstand the impacts of existing risks and future climate change."

"At the direction of the Attorney General, in early 2013 the Justice Department launched a comprehensive review of the criminal justice system in order to identify reforms that would ensure federal laws are enforced more fairly and--in an era of reduced budgets--more efficiently. Specifically, this project identified five goals: [1] To ensure finite resources are devoted to the most important law enforcement priorities; [2] To promote fairer enforcement of the laws and alleviate disparate impacts of the criminal justice system; [3] To ensure just punishments for low-level, nonviolent convictions; [4] To bolster prevention and reentry efforts to deter crime and reduce recidivism; [5] To strengthen protections for vulnerable populations. As part of its review, the Department studied all phases of the criminal justice system--including charging, sentencing, incarceration and reentry--to examine which practices are most successful at deterring crime and protecting the public, and which aren't. The review also considered demographic disparities that have provoked questions about the fundamental fairness of the criminal justice system. The preliminary results of this review suggest a need for a significant change in our approach to enforcing the nation's laws. Today, a vicious cycle of poverty, criminality, and incarceration traps too many Americans and weakens too many communities. However, many aspects of our criminal justice system may actually exacerbate this problem, rather than alleviate it."