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In recent decades, the social sciences have struggled to predict, monitor, and understand ongoing social crises. This is due in part to a lack of infrastructure to adequately do so. The American Voices Project (AVP), an experimental public-use platform for collecting qualitative data, was designed to expand the capacity of social science research by complementing existing research methods examining the everyday lives of Americans. The AVP was fielded in 2019-2022 as the country’s first nationally-representative, large-scale, multiple-domain qualitative data collection effort. In this double issue of RSF, sociologists Kathryn J. Edin, Corey D. Fields, David B. Grusky, Marybeth J. Mattingly, Kristen Olson, and Charles Varner, computer scientist Jure Leskovec, and an interdisciplinary group of contributors utilize data from the AVP to determine whether the platform can provide insight into the lives of Americans and address social science’s current shortcomings.

Issue 4 examines Americans’ experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic, identifies and explores emerging crises in the U.S., and includes the first set of classical interpretive studies based on a public-use dataset. Kyle Fee and colleagues find that job loss during the pan-demic was associated with declines in financial and mental well-being, that expanded safety net programs did not disincentivize work, and that existing survey-based monitoring is missing important pockets of deprivation. Katherine Cramer and colleagues discover a more thoroughgoing “disaffection crisis” than has been appreciated to date, a crisis in which low- and middle-income earners often feel profoundly disconnected from politics and have little confidence in their ability to meaningfully effect change. Josefina Flores Morales shows that healthcare costs – even after recent and ongoing reforms in healthcare – remain insurmountable for many Latinx Americans, who must then rely on family for unexpected medical costs.

Issue 5 illustrates how the AVP can be used to uncover hidden populations and to explore how some types of crises, mindsets, or sensibilities can have cascading effects that impact multiple areas of people’s lives. Corey M. Abramson and colleagues use the AVP to uncover the population of Americans experiencing physical pain, showing that while pain is very prevalent, it has larger negative effects on the life trajectories of women and those without a college degree than on other groups. Shira Zilberstein and colleagues discover that when individuals discuss their lives they feature “agentic moments” in which they can claim agency despite facing constraints that could be seen as limiting choice and agency.

This double issue of RSF provides compelling insights into the lives of Americans and convincingly makes the case for building a permanent public-use platform for qualitative research.

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The census has registered more than two centuries of growth and transformation in America’s political, social, and economic life. It traditionally gives us the opportunity to ask big questions about and measure changes in American society. In this double issue of RSF, sociologist and demographer Zhenchao Qian, economist Trevon Logan, and an interdisciplinary group of contributors examine how American society has changed—or stayed the same—from 2010 to 2020.

Topics examined in issue 1 include the impact of census counts, changes in neighborhood demographics, gender inequality in education, and racial inequality in employment. Lisa Neidert and colleagues find that the census consistently undercounts Hispanics, Blacks, and Native Americans and overcounts Whites and Asians, which has negative impacts on state and federal funding for vulnerable communities. Nima Dahir shows the arrival of Black immigrants into Black American neighborhoods often results in a decline in the native Black American population and an increase in White residents. Claudia Buchmann and colleagues reveal that women are now earning more advanced degrees than men in the U.S.; however, rising shares of women, including those who are pursing advanced degrees, are attending for-profit institutions and carrying student debt. Julie Y. Cai and Marybeth J. Mattingly find that workers with variable hours have lower incomes than those who have more stable hours and Black workers earn substantially less than their White counterparts when working jobs with volatile hours.

Themes explored in issue 2 include changes in living arrangements, divergent families, and rural America. Hyunjoon Park and col-leagues find that despite growing public concern about the potential rise in solitary living, the likelihood of living alone has not changed much over the last four decades except for older men, who have an increased likelihood of living alone. Christopher S. Carpenter and col-leagues show that gender minority individuals, including transgender and nonbinary individuals, are less likely to be married, more likely to be widowed, and less likely to live in a traditional two-adult household compared to their cisgender counterparts. Daniel T. Lichter and Kenneth M. Johnson reveal that while rural America is often envisioned as a monolith, it is made up of complex and diverse economic, social, and demographic conditions.

This double issue of RSF provides an updated and insightful snapshot of American society in the 2010s.

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Racial disparities in criminal justice system contact are a pressing concern for both scholars and the public. For 25 years, the Russell Sage Foundation has been at the forefront of this issue and has supported research on law enforcement, the criminal justice system, and incarceration with an emphasis on examining racial and ethnic disparities. Since then, the literature on these topics has expanded and we now have a vast body of research on them. In this special issue of RSF, an interdisciplinary group of contributors review research from over the past two decades to advance our understanding of racial and ethnic bias in law enforcement, criminal justice processes, and incarceration.

Shawn Bushway and colleagues review literature on racial disparities in pretrial detention, sentencing, and outcomes of community corrections programs, such as probation, parole, halfway houses, and work-release programs. They find that systematic issues, rather than individual bias, are the main driver for these disparities and that reforms, such as eliminating pretrial detention for nonviolent offenders, who are not on probation or parole, can be effective tools for reducing racial disparities without creating significant harms to public safety. Alia Nahra and colleagues review literature on the difficulties the formerly incarcerated face when they transition from prison into their communities, a process referred to as reentry. They find that criminalization and punishment, such as criminal record discrimination in housing and employment and parole and probation supervision, stymie reintegration, while support from family and welfare programs help reintegration. They also found that formerly incarcerated Black men and women face greater obstacles when reentering their communities. Emily Ryo and colleges review literature on the criminalization of immigration. They find that while immigration law is considered federal civil law, immigration enforcement has come substantially intertwined with criminal law enforcement. They also find that criminalizing immigration results in the categorization of certain groups as dangerous and results in sustaining and promoting policies that target or have disproportionate impact on certain immigrant groups. Additionally, they find that the U.S. has outsourced immigration enforcement to other countries, such as Mexico, Guatemala, and El Salvador, therefore, the effects of criminalizing immigration are not limited to the U.S.

This volume of RSF provides a fascinating look back at the research conducted on racial disparities in the criminal justice system thus far and offers new avenues for future research.