Unprecedented Reliance Research Articles

From Code to Care: The Impact of Software Engineering and QA on Healthcare Delivery Systems

The rapid digitalization of healthcare has led to an unprecedented reliance on software systems to improve patient care, streamline operations, and ensure regulatory compliance. This article presents a comprehensive analysis of the critical role that software engineering and quality assurance (QA) play in three key areas of modern healthcare: Electronic Health Records (EHRs), telemedicine platforms, and medical device software. Through an examination of current practices, challenges, and case studies, we demonstrate how robust software engineering methodologies and rigorous QA processes contribute to the development of reliable, secure, and efficient healthcare applications. Our findings highlight the importance of data integrity, interoperability, user experience, and regulatory compliance in healthcare software development. Furthermore, we explore emerging trends such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, and the Internet of Medical Things (IoMT), discussing their implications for future software engineering and QA practices in healthcare. This article provides valuable insights for healthcare organizations, software developers, and policymakers, offering recommendations to enhance the quality and safety of software-driven healthcare solutions.

Enhancing mathematics education in the UAE: Elementary teachers’ views on distance education methods

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about an unprecedented reliance on digital technologies in education, regardless of the pre-existing attitude of teachers. This study explores elementary school teachers’ perceptions about teaching mathematics through distance education. Using a quantitative approach, an online questionnaire was administered to primary teachers in the UAE during the spring semester of 2020-2021. The results show teachers’ readiness to adopt digital technology in teaching against increased workload. Difficulties emerged in optimizing student performance in online environments. While the institution supports digital integration, teachers prefer traditional in-person classroom instruction. Therefore, the research would inform some educational systems and curriculum planning worldwide on the best way to integrate digital technology within elementary mathematics education. The study aims to close the gap in mathematics education within a digital context to solve the emerging educational demands.

Moderating role of location autonomy on technostress and subjective wellbeing in information technology companies

Integrating digital tools into day-to-day work activities has become an undeniable reality. However, the unprecedented reliance on technology has brought with it the escalating degrees of technostress evident through health concerns like chronic musculoskeletal problems and decreased job satisfaction. And the COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the negative impact, as IT industries adopted the hybrid workplace approach, especially in developing countries like India. This paper aims to find whether location autonomy moderates the effect of technostress on subjective wellbeing among IT employees working in a hybrid model. A purposive sampling method gathered 440 responses from IT professionals in Bengaluru tech parks. IBM SPSS and AMOS software were used to assess the constructs by SEM analysis, in line with the job demand-control theory. The results showed that location autonomy accounts for 31.6% of the variance in subjective wellbeing, while technostress explains 33.2% of the variance, with dimensions ranging from 21% to 46%. Additionally, location autonomy moderates and strengthens the link between technostress and subjective wellbeing. The study recommends that organizational leaders adopt HR policies that allow employees to choose their workplace rather than mandating a specific location for scheduled days in the week. This approach can potentially improve overall employee wellbeing, offering a favorable resolution to the challenges posed by technostress in the IT industry.

Pain Care Disparities and the Use of Virtual Care Among Racial-Ethnic Minority Groups During COVID-19

Background and ObjectiveCOVID-19 led to an unprecedented reliance on virtual modalities to maintain care continuity for patients living with chronic pain. We examined whether there were disparities in virtual specialty pain care for racial-ethnic minority groups during COVID-19.Design and ParticipantsThis was a retrospective national cohort study with two comparison groups: primary care patients with chronic pain seen immediately prior to COVID-19 (3/1/19–2/29/20) (N = 1,649,053) and a cohort of patients seen in the year prior (3/1/18–2/28–19; n = 1,536,954).Main MeasuresWe assessed use of telehealth (telephone or video) specialty pain care, in-person care specialty pain care, and any specialty pain care for both groups at 6 months following cohort inclusion. We used quasi-Poisson regressions to test associations between patient race and ethnicity and receipt of care.Key ResultsPrior to COVID-19, there were Black-White (RR = 0.64, 95% CI [0.62, 0.67]) and Asian-White (RR = 0.63, 95% CI [0.54, 0.75]) disparities in telehealth use, and these lessened during COVID-19 (Black-White: RR = 0.75, 95% CI [0.73, 0.77], Asian-White: RR = 0.81, 95% CI [0.74, 0.89]) but did not disappear. Individuals identifying as American Indian/Alaska Native used telehealth less than White individuals during early COVID-19 (RR = 0.98, 95% CI [0.85, 1.13] to RR = 0.87, 95% CI [0.79, 0.96]). Hispanic/Latinx individuals were less likely than non-Hispanic/Latinx individuals to use telehealth prior to COVID-19 but more likely during early COVID-19 (RR = 0.70, 95% CI [0.66, 0.75] to RR = 1.06, 95% CI [1.02, 1.09]). Disparities in virtual pain care occurred over the backdrop of overall decreased specialty pain care during the early phase of the pandemic (raw decrease of n = 17,481 specialty care encounters overall from pre-COVID to COVID-era), including increased disparities in any VA specialty pain care for Black (RR = 0.81, 95% CI [0.80, 0.83] to RR = 0.79, 95% CI [0.77, 0.80]) and Asian (RR = 0.91, 95% CI [0.86, 0.97] to RR = 0.88, 95% CI [0.82, 0.94]) individuals.ConclusionsDisparities in virtual specialty pain care were smaller during the early phases of the COVID-19 pandemic than prior to the pandemic but did not disappear entirely, despite the rapid growth in telehealth. Targeted efforts to increase access to specialty pain care need to be concentrated among racial-ethnic minority groups.

The Role of Social Media in Health Misinformation and Disinformation During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Bibliometric Analysis.

The use of social media platforms to seek information continues to increase. Social media platforms can be used to disseminate important information to people worldwide instantaneously. However, their viral nature also makes it easy to share misinformation, disinformation, unverified information, and fake news. The unprecedented reliance on social media platforms to seek information during the COVID-19 pandemic was accompanied by increased incidents of misinformation and disinformation. Consequently, there was an increase in the number of scientific publications related to the role of social media in disseminating health misinformation and disinformation at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Health misinformation and disinformation, especially in periods of global public health disasters, can lead to the erosion of trust in policy makers at best and fatal consequences at worst. This paper reports a bibliometric analysis aimed at investigating the evolution of research publications related to the role of social media as a driver of health misinformation and disinformation since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, this study aimed to identify the top trending keywords, niche topics, authors, and publishers for publishing papers related to the current research, as well as the global collaboration between authors on topics related to the role of social media in health misinformation and disinformation since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Scopus database was accessed on June 8, 2023, using a combination of Medical Subject Heading and author-defined terms to create the following search phrases that targeted the title, abstract, and keyword fields: ("Health*" OR "Medical") AND ("Misinformation" OR "Disinformation" OR "Fake News") AND ("Social media" OR "Twitter" OR "Facebook" OR "YouTube" OR "WhatsApp" OR "Instagram" OR "TikTok") AND ("Pandemic*" OR "Corona*" OR "Covid*"). A total of 943 research papers published between 2020 and June 2023 were analyzed using Microsoft Excel (Microsoft Corporation), VOSviewer (Centre for Science and Technology Studies, Leiden University), and the Biblioshiny package in Bibliometrix (K-Synth Srl) for RStudio (Posit, PBC). The highest number of publications was from 2022 (387/943, 41%). Most publications (725/943, 76.9%) were articles. JMIR published the most research papers (54/943, 5.7%). Authors from the United States collaborated the most, with 311 coauthored research papers. The keywords "Covid-19," "social media," and "misinformation" were the top 3 trending keywords, whereas "learning systems," "learning models," and "learning algorithms" were revealed as the niche topics on the role of social media in health misinformation and disinformation during the COVID-19 outbreak. Collaborations between authors can increase their productivity and citation counts. Niche topics such as "learning systems," "learning models," and "learning algorithms" could be exploited by researchers in future studies to analyze the influence of social media on health misinformation and disinformation during periods of global public health emergencies.

Cyberbullying: Between the Virtual and the Real

In modern society, the use of information communication technologies and digital services is intensifying. The post-Covid-19 era brings many changes in all social spheres and stands out for its unprecedented reliance on digital technologies. Younger generations, who have had intensive interaction with them since the earliest days, are finding their place in the cyber world and, in this way, are increasingly erasing the boundaries between the real and the digital. Vulnerability of human life is one of the characteristics of cyber security and as a very complex phenomenon that is fully justified to be studied in a multidisciplinary manner. Cyberbullying is a widespread phenomenon, most often expressed among the younger population, which can produce great negative consequences for an individual, and even the loss of human life. In addition to the fact that it is necessary to work on raising awareness and pointing out the unsafe cyberspace in which interaction and communication take place, it is necessary to give an adequate response from the aspect of education and information security culture in order to preserve what is most valuable. This paper aims to present and offer some answers to the mentioned phenomenon.

Artificial Intelligence Applications in Project Scheduling: A Systematic Review, Bibliometric Analysis, and Prospects for Future Research

AbstractThe availability of digital infrastructures and the fast-paced development of accompanying revolutionary technologies have triggered an unprecedented reliance on Artificial intelligence (AI) techniques both in theory and practice. Within the AI domain, Machine Learning (ML) techniques stand out as essential facilitator largely enabling machines to possess human-like cognitive and decision making capabilities. This paper provides a focused review of the literature addressing applications of emerging ML tools to solve various Project Scheduling Problems (PSPs). In particular, it employs bibliometric and network analysis tools along with a systematic literature review to analyze a pool of 104 papers published between 1985 and August 2021. The conducted analysis unveiled the top contributing authors, the most influential papers as well as the existing research tendencies and thematic research topics within this field of study. A noticeable growth in the number of relevant studies is seen recently with a steady increase as of the year 2018. Most of the studies adopted Artificial Neural Networks, Bayesian Network and Reinforcement Learning techniques to tackle PSPs under a stochastic environment, where these techniques are frequently hybridized with classical metaheuristics. The majority of works (57%) addressed basic Resource Constrained PSPs and only 15% are devoted to the project portfolio management problem. Furthermore, this study clearly indicates that the application of AI techniques to efficiently handle PSPs is still in its infancy stage bringing out the need for further research in this area. This work also identifies current research gaps and highlights a multitude of promising avenues for future research.

Modelowanie pandemii w narracjach spekulatywnych: «„Andromeda” znaczy śmierć» (1969) Michaela Crichtona i „The Andromeda Evolution” (2019) Daniela H. Wilsona

Covid-19 pandemic has brought public attention to digital methods of modeling contagion, which have been used not only to predict the future of the infection, but also assess its scope of impact on population and the chances for achieving herd immunity. As a result new outbreak narratives come into being in which algorithmic data processing gains agency in shaping the dynamics of contagion. His unprecedented reliance on modeling tools has decidedly changed the way we think about epidemic, conceptualized now as a phenomenon which to an equal extent is shaped by natural, cultural and technological factors. He paper argues that the major outlet for these new metaphors of contagion, which Milton Singer termed syndemic, are speculative narratives combining fiction with scientific and medical data as well as insights into the functioning of the digital modeling apparatus. His aspect of the current pandemic provides a good vantage point for taking a closer look at a handful of speculative narratives which bring to the foreground the relationship between modeling and social impact of contagion. By reading Michael Crichton’s technothriller The Andromeda Strain (1969) and its sequel, Daniel H. Wilson’s The Andromeda Evolution (2019), I intend to demonstrate how speculative fabulations engages and contests methods of contagion modeling, bringing into play other forms of non-scientiIc knowledge and practices of survival.

Digital Democracy and Disinformation: The European Approach to Disinformation on Social Media in the Case of 2019 European Parliament Elections

This policy paper offers a brief overview of the hazards for digital democracy stemming from AI and digital tools and how the EU tackled online disinformation social media ahead of the 2019 European Parliament elections. The advent and introduction of social media into the political sphere has had a profound and substantial effect on Europe’s electoral processes affecting both voting behavior and the underlying factors that influence it. Whereas malicious actors often participating in disinformation have led to growing calls for reforms, this phenomenon has been most pronounced in the 2019 European parliament elections which saw an unprecedented reliance on digital media within the political process. Specifically, the European actors faced negative stemming from the scale of the vote and the algorithms and the attention-based business models used by the social media platforms. To meet these challenges, the EU not only employed legal and social means (e.g., the 2019 Action Plan Against Disinformation) but also created new initiatives focused on tackling disinformation (e.g., the Rapid Alert System). Notably, in an unprecedented manner, the EU also included the private sector in the process. As the paper argues, although its limitations, AI is an important tool for aiding the democratic process and tackling disinformation; however, a self-regulating approach favors the success of these endeavors.

Quality of Life of Informal Caregivers behind the Scene of the COVID-19 Epidemic in Serbia.

Background and objectives: The COVID-19 pandemic has had an unprecedented reliance on informal caregivers as one of the pillars of healthcare systems. The aim of this study was to assess the quality of life of informal caregivers during the COVID-19 epidemic in Serbia. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted among informal caregivers during the COVID-19 epidemic in Serbia. Physical and mental quality of life was measured by the 36-Item Short-Form Health Survey. Additional data included sociodemographic characteristics, caregiver and care recipient characteristics, and COVID-19 related concerns. The qualitative component was performed using focus groups and individual in-depth interviews. Results: Out of 112 informal caregivers enrolled, most were female (80%), and the average age was 51.1 ± 12.3 years. The majority was delivering care to one person, who was a family member, on a daily basis (86.4%, 92%, and 91.1%, respectively). In multiple regression models, significant predictors of caregivers’ physical health were delivering care to a family member and a higher level of care complexity, while significant predictors of caregivers’ mental health were a higher level of care complexity and increased concerns about self-health and the health of the person being cared for due to the COVID-19 epidemic. Conclusions: Informal caregivers are experiencing negative physical and mental health outcomes during the COVID-19 epidemic in Serbia.

Informal home care providers: the forgotten health-care workers during the COVID-19 pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic has placed pressure on many national health-care systems worldwide. Due to the rapid surge in caseloads and resource constraints in health systems, in many high-income settings, the focus has been on disease screening, with those who have severe disease prioritised for hospitalisation. But the COVID-19 pandemic has also led to an unprecedented reliance on home care as one pillar of the health-care system to support people with confirmed or suspected COVID-19. Meanwhile, informal home care provision and challenges faced by care providers, excluding those who are formal and paid, in the home context have largely been overlooked.

Integrating Materials Engineering and Design for Fusion

Fusion demonstration (DEMO) concepts are facing challenges in safety and licensing in part due to uncertainties with in-vessel components validation, which relate directly to the materials and design criteria used for assessments. These challenges come from the designed operation under unprecedented operational conditions and reliance on the performance of complex in-vessel components over time spans of years. There are key differences in the structural integrity requirements and associated design criteria for DEMOs and future fusion reactors compared to existing nuclear systems. In this paper, we highlight the justification behind developing DEMO and fusion-specific design criteria by overviewing key shortfalls in existing design codes. Importantly, the key current approaches being undertaken within the EU are described including the development of elastoplastic design rules, evaluation of probabilistic assessments, and multiscale modeling of fusion irradiation effects on materials. Finally, thoughts on potential internationalization of new fusion-specific design codes are postulated.

Fog of War: Psychopharmaceutical “Side Effects” and the United States Military

ABSTRACTThe unprecedented reliance today on psychiatric drugs to maintain mission readiness in war and to treat veterans at home has been the subject of ethical debate in the United States. While acknowledging these debates, I advocate for an ethnography of how US soldiers and veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars themselves articulate political and ethical tensions in their experiences of psychiatric drug treatment. Detailing one army veteran’s interpretations of drug effects as narrated through the lens of his current antiwar politics, I examine the radicalizing transformations of self and subjectivity that he attributes both to his witnessing drug use in Iraq and to the neurochemical effects of his own medications. Playing on the biomedical notion of “side effects,” I highlight surprising political and ethical openings that can surface when psychopharmaceuticals and war intersect. Psychotropic medication use offers a critical realm for furthering the ethnographic study of the lived tensions and contradictions of military medicine and medicalization as revealed in militarized embodied experience.

Governing by expertise: the contested politics of (accounting for) land-based mitigation in a new climate agreement

This article analyzes the contested politics of including (and accounting for) land-based mitigation in a post-2020 climate agreement. Emissions from land have been only partially included to date within the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change and its Kyoto Protocol. The Paris Agreement, adopted in December 2015 and “applicable to all” for the post-2020 period, raises the possibility of unprecedented reliance on land-based mitigation. This has significant consequences for furthering both ambition and equity in global climate mitigation efforts. Yet, what are these consequences, and how have they manifested themselves in the existing (pre-2020) multilateral climate regime? What role do accounting rules for land-based mitigation play herein? In addressing these questions, we identify key dimensions of what we term the “governance by expertise” approach taken to land-based mitigation to date, which has served to reduce the environmental integrity of existing (developed country) mitigation efforts. Specifically, we analyze land-use accounting rules as a site of politics and highlight the “technicalization of politics” underway in this realm, which obscures the political implications of how land has been included to date. We conclude by considering whether the Paris Agreement institutionalizes similar dynamics, and the environmental integrity and equity implications of doing so.

Language and Consciousness: The Perennial Relevance of Benjamin Lee Whorf

The recent emergence of multicultural and multidisciplinary studies is expanding traditional disciplines and developing new areas of inquiry. A notable beneficiary of this integrative trend is consciousness studies as it draws on several cultures and disciplines, including linguistics. In the past century, Benjamin Lee Whorf (1897–1941) uniquely foreshadowed this present trend as he explored consciousness through his studies of the interrelationship of language, culture, and mind with unprecedented reliance on multicultural and multidisciplinary research. This essay is focused on Benjamin Lee Whorf’s (1897–1941) last published work, ‘Language, Mind, and Reality’ (1942), in which he presents his final comprehensive thoughts on linguistic relativity. In light of many current studies of language, mind, and consciousness, linguistic relativity is presently enjoying resurgence. As a consequence, Whorf’s work is not only significant in the history of linguistics; but it is also relevant to contemporary scholarship in consciousness studies.

Promoting parenting to support reintegrating military families: After deployment, adaptive parenting tools.

The high operational tempo of the current conflicts and the unprecedented reliance on National Guard and Reserve forces highlights the need for services to promote reintegration efforts for those transitioning back to civilian family life. Despite evidence that parenting has significant influence on children's functioning, and that parenting may be impaired during stressful family transitions, there is a dearth of empirically supported psychological interventions tailored for military families reintegrating after deployment. This article reports on the modification of an empirically supported parenting intervention for families in which a parent has deployed to war. A theoretical rationale for addressing parenting during reintegration after deployment is discussed. We describe the intervention, After Deployment, Adaptive Parenting Tools (ADAPT), and report early feasibility and acceptability data from a randomized controlled effectiveness trial of ADAPT, a 14-week group-based, Web-enhanced parenting training program. Among the first 42 families assigned to the intervention group, participation rates were high, and equal among mothers and fathers. Satisfaction was high across all 14 sessions. Implications for psychological services to military families dealing with the deployment process are discussed.

Between Knowledge And Technology: Patenting Methods, Rethinking Materiality

How does the law construe certain things and activities as knowledge that can become the object of intellectual property? When we look at the quantitative trends in recent patenting activities—more people patenting many more things—we tend to view that, in part, as an effect of the law's ability to construe new kinds of innovation (software, genetic sequences, etc.) in ways that conform to established legal concepts of patentable invention. The assumption is that what changes is not the shape of the box called invention, but the objects that are made to fit that box. But in fact while new technologies produce new innovations, the very concept of invention has not just expanded but undergone substantial qualitative change. The wave of inventive activity associated with the industrial revolution led to an unprecedented reliance on patenting, but as the law articulated ways to protect those inventions, it also took their emblematic form—the machine—as the template for the legal concept of invention. Analogously, the recent reinterpretations of patent law to enable the protection of living organism and biological entities have challenged and modified the traditional machine-inspired concept of invention, initiating a trend toward a more developmental one. The information-based inventions discussed here may elicit a reconceptualization of invention in yet another way.

Civilian Social Work with Veterans Returning from Iraq and Afghanistan: A Call to Action

In the aftermath of the September 11, 2001, attack and tragic collapse of the World Trade Center towers in New York City, President George W. Bush promised to retaliate against the perpetrators of that national trauma. Not since the attack on Pearl Harbor seven decades earlier had our populace been so unified in its support of retaliation and so willing to make the personal sacrifices that might entail. Rather than focus a military retaliation primarily on the al-Qaeda perpetrators of the terrorist attack, however, the Bush administration persuaded the nation to support an invasion of Iraq. Rather than ask the nation as a whole to make sacrifices to support the war effort, President Bush encouraged the general public to go shopping. Rather than raise taxes to fund the costs of the war, the U.S. Congress left unchanged tax cuts that mainly benefited the affluent. Rather than reinstate a draft to supply the military personnel that would be needed for what came to be known as the Global War on Terror, the government relied exclusively on our small, all-volunteer armed forces. Doing so necessitated an unprecedented reliance on multiple deployments of National Guard and reservist personnel to provide the troops needed to carry out the longest combat engagement in our nation's history. It also necessitated an unprecedented reliance on lengthier tours of combat duty. The consequent burden experienced by the troops was compounded by the absence of front lines during these long tours of duty. Danger was ubiquitous and could come at any time from a roadside bomb or from enemies dressed as civilians. Moreover, the ubiquity of potential attack put female service members in combat situations they had not experienced in previous wars. Needless to say, all this has placed great and unprecedented strains on our military personnel and their families, who have borne the brunt of our nation's sacrifice for the war. As expressed in a New York Times commentary by Timothy Egan (2012), the yellow banners, the halftime tributes, the bloviating by politicians of both parties--it's so easy for the 99 percent of us who aren't serving in the military to act like we support them.... Those 2.3 million men and women who served in one of the two wars ... will be trying to live with the horrors they saw and felt for the rest of their lives.... Their suicide rate--38 per 100,000--is more than three times that of the population at large. [A] Pew poll found that 37 percent of the war veterans suffered from a degree of post-traumatic stress. ... If the Pew poll is accurate, more than 800,000 veterans are re-entering society with some form of psychological trauma. In light of our professional expertise and values, social work practitioners and educators have both the capability and obligation to do more than the general public to support and meet the needs of our returning troops and their families. Although military personnel, veterans, and their families have been served by social workers throughout the history of our profession, perhaps never before has the call for social workers to help this target population been as compelling as it is today. And this help is needed not just from uniformed military social workers or from social workers employed by the Veterans Administration. It is also needed from civilian social workers. As noted in the Preface of the Handbook of Military Social Work (Rubin, Weiss, & Coll, in press), Indeed, the vast numbers of service members returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan likely will exceed the capacity of the Department of Veteran Affairs and affiliated programs such as the Vet Centers to serve them all adequately. These clients will be seeking services within the civilian sector, such as in community mental health agencies, [health maintenance organizations] and private practices. …

How Valuable is “Two-Step Migration”? Labor Market Outcomes for International Student Migrants to Australia

In the past decade, Australia has developed unprecedented reliance on skilled migrants, a process intensified by a period of sustained economic boom. By 2007, two-thirds were former international students recruited in Australia rather than offshore applicants, exemplifying a transition to what is termed “two-step migration.” How acceptable, however, are such onshore applicants to employers, in a context where Australia's 2006 skilled migration review found less favorable outcomes for former international students than migrants recruited offshore? To address this question, key education enrollment, migration and employment databases were analyzed in-depth. Overall, former international students were found to achieve comparable labor market participation rates to migrants recruited offshore. However, former students qualified in two-year courses and/or in oversubscribed fields performed worse than offshore migrants. Between 2007 and 2010, Australia introduced major policy reforms to improve the outcomes for international students applying under the skilled migration program. In February 2010, the government corrected education sector abuses while significantly changing selection processes. This decade of Australian policy experimentation may be instructive to other countries which have introduced study-migration pathways designed to attract and retain former students as skilled migrants.

Rethinking the Politics of the Family: Part IV

Recently, a PBS Frontline documentary called "The New Asylum" showed how our jails and prisons have become, by default, the nation's mental hospitals. This wasn't an exposé. The prison under examination didn't seem particularly bad. The staff seemed to be trying their best to deal with an impossible situation. But what, you might ask, has the topic of prisons to do with the culture war and family values, the subject of this series? First, it shows how the culture war, with its focus on hot-button issues like gay marriage, end-of-life decisions, and obscenity on television, to name the most recent examples, crowds out discussion of serious social problems. More than that, however, the documentary illustrates the reductio ad absurdum of America's current political culture: its rhetoric of faith and family values combined with its tax-and-services-slashing policies, its deference to corporate power and accompanying sink-or-swim economy, its tolerance of growing inequality, its bread and circuses media, and the unprecedented reliance of the current administration on a strategy of lies and denial. As a result of all this, prisons have become the social policy of last resort. No longer just the place to incarcerate violent offenders, the prison has become the final common repository of the social problems we are unwilling to prevent or remedy before they grow into crises. Only when these problems deteriorate into matters of crime and punishment can "government spending" be justified.