Andrew Harnik/AP

President Trump threw his support behind the First Step Act Wednesday, which would reform America’s criminal justice system.

Two years ago it looked like criminal justice reform was doomed.

For years a glimmer of bipartisan hope amid congressional gridlock, lawmakers from both parties worked on legislation to reform a justice system riven with issues that can begin at the moment of arrest and can continue through the moment a former prisoner re-enters society. But nothing ever reached the desk of a supportive President Barack Obama, and when Donald Trump won the election to replace him after a campaign marked by tough-on-crime rhetoric, for many advocates the window of opportunity seemed to slam shut.

Yesterday, President Trump threw his support behind a bipartisan criminal justice reform bill called the First Step Act.

The bill “will make our communities safer and give former inmates a second chance at life after they have served their time,” Trump said at a press conference. “It’s a first step, but it’s a very big first step.”

The bill still needs to be voted on by Congress, but if passed – and then signed into law – it would represent the most significant revision of American criminal justice laws since the mid-1990s, when the federal government enacted a host of new tough-on-crime measures. Crafted by a diverse coalition of lawmakers and interest groups, and championed by Jared Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and adviser, the bill would revise sentencing laws and improve conditions of confinement for prisoners, among other things.

Among its supporters, however, there is widespread agreement that the bill both contains some problems and leaves many issues unaddressed. While they are heartened by the commitment to this legislation from a Trump administration premised on “restoring law and order,” the question now becomes how enduring that commitment will be.

“I was really thinking about this moment and how truly remarkable it is that, during an unlikely time, with this unlikely president, that we’re going to pass this unlikely piece of legislation,” says Holly Harris, executive director of the bipartisan Justice Action Network.

“The effort has been under way to turn away from the [punitive] ’94 crime bill for decades,” she adds, and “when this president was elected on a ‘lock ’em up and throw away the key’ platform very few people had hope.”

Kushner’s role

Many of Trump’s actions in office hadn’t given much cause for hope either.

One of his first acts was to nominate Jeff Sessions, an Alabama senator described as “the No. 1 opponent” of bipartisan criminal justice reform in Congress, as Attorney General. The president has also regularly, and falsely, decried violent crime rates as spiraling out of control around the country. (Crime remains at or near historic lows.)

Yet in a matter of days, criminal justice reform legislation has catapulted from near the bottom of the congressional to-do list to the brink of becoming law.

Mr. Sessions’ forced resignation last week undoubtedly helped, experts and advocates say. As a senator he had helped derail a bipartisan bill, the Sentencing Reform and Corrections Act, in 2015. So too did a number of endorsements from law enforcement unions, including the Fraternal Order of Police and the International Association of Chiefs of Police.   

Mr. Kushner’s behind-the-scenes advocacy also seems to have played a major role in winning Trump’s support. Earlier this year, along with celebrity Kim Kardashian-West, he persuaded the president to commute the life sentence of Alice Marie Johnson, a nonviolent drug offender who had become a grandmother and great-grandmother during her 21 years in prison.

Prison reform has been Kushner’s priority, however, based in large part on his personal experiences. In 2004, his father pled guilty to 18 counts of white collar crimes, and Kushner visited him nearly every weekend of his 14-month imprisonment.

“I just never wanted to be on the other side of that and cause pain to the families I was doing that to,” he said in 2014, according to The Washington Post, of his decision to not be a prosecutor.

That personal experience is likely to continue to motivate Kushner, says Clark Neily, vice president of criminal justice at the libertarian Cato Institute.

“To understand how the American criminal justice system works is to be both horrified and wildly motivated, because it’s horribly unjust across the board,” he adds. Kushner “probably understands the problems in these areas more clearly and on a deeper level than perhaps anybody else within that close circle around the president.”

Eliminating ‘three strikes’

The reforms in the First Step Act, Ms. Harris says, are shallow but broad. At first the bill, crafted by Sens. Chuck Grassley (R) of Iowa and Dick Durbin (D) of Illinois, had focused on reforms to prison conditions and re-entry services for former prisoners. In order to win more Democratic support it now also includes changes to sentencing laws that had been part of a failed 2015 bill (which Senators Grassley and Durbin had also co-authored).

The bill prohibits the shackling of pregnant female prisoners and expands the early-release credits for prisoners. It provides new funding for anti-recidivism programs and makes a number of significant sentencing changes, including:

• Eliminating “three strikes” laws that mandate a life sentence for three-time offenders
• Expanding the “safety valve” for judges to grant exemptions from mandatory minimum sentences for nonviolent drug offenders
• Make retroactive the 2010 Fair Sentencing Act, which reduced the sentencing disparity for crack and powder cocaine offenses
• Eliminating the “924 stacking” regulation which enhanced sentences between five years and life for possessing or using a firearm in connection with certain federal crimes.

Sentencing reform has long been a sticking point in debates over criminal justice reform, and it was the case with the First Step Act as well.

“The bill has always been a victim of election year politics and the debate within the Republican Party ... [that] showing any leniency to a drug offender would lead to massive crimewave,” says Ames Grawert, a senior counsel at the Brennan Center for Justice in New York.

When early versions of the First Step Act didn’t include sentencing reforms, the Brennan Center, among other groups and lawmakers, opposed it. “Now we’re cautiously optimistic,” Mr. Grawert says.

Making the crack and powder cocaine sentencing disparity retroactive, in particular, is “the final nail in the coffin of one of most discriminatory sentencing provisions in American history.” But he does still have some issues with the bill – the fact that eliminating 924 stacking won’t be applied retroactively, for example.

Others are concerned that it requires the use of a risk assessment system to evaluate prisoners’ recidivism risk since research suggests such systems could exacerbate racial and socioeconomic disparities in the justice system.

“It’s still the First Step Act, it’s not going to end mass incarceration, it’s not going to end unfair sentences in the federal system,” says Grawert. “There’s a lot this bill leaves untouched that we’d like to see done.”

Will the first step be the last?

Some experts and advocates are concerned that there could be a flip side to Trump’s unlikely support for the bill – that the first step could be the last step.

“The fact this has taken so much wrangling to make happen, it makes me kind of doubtful there’s going to be a Second and Third and Fourth Step Act,” says Matthew Epperson, co-director of the Smart Decarceration Initiative at the University of Chicago.

The speed with which the First Step Act has risen to prominence is part of what gives him pause, along with an apparent fixation in the White House on personal or exceptional cases, such as Ms. Johnson.

“You can [support pardoning Johnson] and also be blind to, or totally resistant to, the idea this is a much more systematic thing,” says Dr. Epperson.

Lawmakers like Durbin and Grassley who have spent years researching criminal justice reforms understand the nuances and complexities of it, he adds, but “when you come to the table quickly I’m concerned there could be this sense of, ‘OK we’ve done this now,’ and move onto the next thing.”

Others are more optimistic. A broad base of support for criminal justice reform has built up over the years, a base that experts say is unlikely to dissipate quickly. Faith groups are interested in a justice system that emphasizes compassion and second chances. Business groups want a justice system that is more financially efficient. Law enforcement groups want better rehabilitation of offenders and to be able to focus their resources on violent crimes.

“I think it’s also increasingly evident there’s public support for criminal justice reform,” says Carrie Pettus-Davis, director of the Institute for Justice Research & Development at Florida State University.

A survey released by the Charles Koch Institute after Trump’s first 100 days in office found that for 81 percent of his supporters criminal justice reform was either “very important” or “somewhat important,” and 63 percent of his supporters agreed that “judges should have more freedom to assign forms of punishment other than prisons.”

The midterm elections Nov. 6 also brought a number of victories for criminal justice reform supporters: Nearly two-thirds of voters in Florida approved automatically restoring voting rights for people with felony convictions, except in the cases of murder and sexual offenses. Voters in Michigan, Missouri, and Utah voted to liberalize marijuana laws. And Louisianans voted to eliminate a state law dating to the Jim Crow era that allowed split decision jury verdicts.

“There’s a vast sea of issues that still have yet to be addressed,” says Ms. Harris. “I think we’re going into a renaissance period for criminal justice reform.”

It’s news that has an eerie sense of déjà vu: For a second straight fall, multiple, devastating wildfires have broken out in California, fueled by hot, dry conditions and strong winds.

Last fall’s Tubb’s Fire held the record for most destructive wildfire in California’s history for only a year. That distinction now goes to the Camp Fire, which at this point has claimed at least 56 lives, with dozens more still unaccounted for; 8,800 homes; and most of the town of Paradise.

Over the same weekend, fires also raged in Malibu and Ventura County, and California Gov. Jerry Brown referred to them as California’s “new abnormal.” “Unfortunately, the best science is telling us that dryness, warmth, drought, all those things, they’re going to intensify," Governor Brown said at a press conference this past weekend.

Of course, wildfires are nothing new. But the trends are indeed toward longer fire seasons and bigger and more destructive fires, for a variety of reasons, including climate change and where and how people live.

The good news, say wildfire experts, is that while some of those underlying trends are unlikely to change, there are significant steps that communities can take to adapt to an increasing threat of wildfire. What may be required is a shift in perception: Instead of focusing solely on fire prevention, how do we learn to live with fire, and mitigate the chances that it comes with big costs in property or lives?

“These are flammable places, and fire is a natural part of the system, but people are making this situation worse by both building into those landscapes, and because they’re building in those landscapes, they’re also providing the ignitions that are burning our houses,” says Jennifer Balch, a fire ecologist at the University of Colorado in Boulder. “That’s the piece that I think is tractable. With climate change we can throw our hands up in the air and say, wow, that’s a really complex challenge and we’re not going to solve it anytime soon. But we do play a huge role right now in where those fires are starting and what’s vulnerable. And that’s the hopeful part, I think – that we can do something about that.”

There are no guarantees that fire adaptation will make a community safe, especially with the sort of huge, rapidly moving, wind-driven fires that California saw last week. But experts agree that certain steps can go a long way toward mitigating risk. Building with fire-resistant materials and replacing decks, fences, and gutters with non-flammable materials can limit structural damage. Managing vegetation around homes, strategically thinning forested areas near communities, and building in natural fire breaks around where people live can help slow or even halt the spread of wildfire. And implementing and testing good warning and evacuation systems can save lives when fires do get out of control.

A detailed Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI) Code exists, often used by communities to supplement or inform more local codes. But implementation is often patchwork and voluntary, and experts say a more concerted approach is needed to really make a difference.

“There’s a lot that’s known to increase our chances of surviving a fire,” says Ray Rasker, executive director of Headwaters Economics, a nonprofit research group that has done extensive work on wildfire issues. The key, he says, is getting it done on a broad enough scale to make a difference – which is challenging with the sort of voluntary programs currently in place.

“The biggest danger to your home is when your neighbor’s home goes up in flames,” says Mr. Rasker. “The shift that needs to happen is a shift toward mandatory adherence to regulations – passing regulations that are enforced and done at a landscape scale. That’s still very rare in the West.”

Where mitigation has paid off

One Western community is a notable exception, Rasker notes. San Diego conducts inspections every two years of the more than 42,000 properties that it has deemed at risk from fire and requires property owners to manage vegetation within 100 feet of their homes.

Another is Flagstaff, Ariz., which decided the entire city is in the WUI zone, and therefore needs to adhere to the WUI code – including requiring homes to use flame-retardant materials. The town also approved a $10 million bond to do targeted fuel reduction around the city. A few years later, when a fire broke out and was headed toward Flagstaff, it hit the thinned-out understory and burned out, says Rasker. “They were able to protect the community.”

As a state, California is already at the forefront of wildfire adaptation.

“I look at California as the gold standard for planning and regulation,” says Molly Mowery, the founder of Wildfire Planning International, which, along with Headwaters Economics, started Community Planning Assistance for Wildfire, an effort to help communities plan better.

California, she notes, adopted the WUI code for new buildings built in fire-prone areas, and CalFire does a lot of work to help residents mitigate risks.

“I think the biggest challenge is that we’re playing catch up with a lot of existing development that was not subject to any kind of regulatory code,” says Ms. Mowery. “And historical fire data is now becoming limited in its usefulness when we’re looking ahead at a different pattern of fire in terms of size and severity.”

Events like this past week’s fires in California, which were largely wind-driven, may owe a portion of their severity to hotter, drier conditions, says Max Moritz, a cooperative extension wildfire specialist at the Bren School at the University of California in Santa Barbara. But whether or not they would have occurred in a more normal year, Professor Moritz sees a clear need for communities to focus on how to adapt to fire threats – both with existing housing stock and with land-use and building decisions going forward.

“We have tens of thousands of existing homes that need to be retrofitted,” notes Moritz. “We could have a public campaign to address all the ways homes catch on fire. We do this for earthquakes and flood hazards. It’s not technologically that challenging.”

Designing future communities in fire-safe ways is even clearer – except that the political will to do so is rarely there.

With more fires – like California’s most recent ones – burning in denser areas, and coming with a massive cost in both life and property, Moritz says he wonders if the issue could be reframed as a public safety and public health issue, with people more willing to accept certain guidance and regulation as a result.

Similarly, Rasker notes that as a society, we’ve largely solved the fire threat at an urban level, through complex fire codes. “Somehow, if you build in a very flammable area out in the woods a lot of those regulations don’t apply,” he says. “Why not think about the wildland-urban interface the same way? It’s an urban development in a flammable environment.”

Building ‘cumulative change’

Doing fire-adaptation right can be resource intensive: It can be expensive to retrofit homes, manage vegetation, do targeted thinning, and create good fire-risk maps and land-use planning processes. And research shows that getting people to take the necessary steps to mitigate risk requires more than just education, says Hannah Brenkert-Smith, an environmental sociologist at the University of Colorado in Boulder. The best results come from repeated engagement and personal interactions with trusted local experts.

But doing that work is also one of the best investments we can make, notes Professor Brenkert-Smith, especially when the high cost of wildfires is taken into account. According to one study, wildfire mitigation saves about $3 for every $1 spent, and about $4 for every $1 when it’s focused on exceeding the code requirements.

“Taking action isn’t a small feat” for many people, says Brenkert-Smith. “But incremental steps make cumulative change.”

Communities looking to become better adapted to fire have a number of existing tools, including some federal mitigation grants – which experts say aren’t taken advantage of as much as they could be for wildfire work – and resources like the Fire Adapted Communities Learning Network, which launched in 2012 to help communities network and learn from each other. One recent blog entry on the site looked at more than a dozen examples from 2017 and 2018 when mitigation work paid off, from individual homes that were spared thanks to taking the right action, to an entire Utah town that was spared due to 10 acres of targeted fuel treatment.

Of course, sometimes fires move so rapidly, and with such intensity, that few adaptation efforts can help. Part of what made the Camp Fire so costly in terms of lives lost was the lack of warning time and adequate evacuation routes, and experts say that points to one more clear need for land-use planning: better warning systems, local refuges, and, when possible, more evacuation routes.

“These are our Black Saturday events,” says Moritz, referring to the 2009 bushfires in Australia that killed 180 people. “And we need to take a step back and really learn from them.”

Vikiana Petit-Homme tried to get the Boston University student to look her in the eye.

“I can’t vote,” implored Vikiana, the youth leader of March For Our Lives Boston, on the eve of the election. “But maybe you could vote for me?”

The bubbly 17-year-old wasn’t running for office. She wasn’t even advocating a particular candidate. She just wanted to make as many youth voices heard as possible in the most important midterm of her life. 

The BU student insisted he just didn’t have the time. But despite such resistance, Vikiana and thousands of others like her across the country persisted in urging their peers to vote.

The effort appears to have paid off.

Young people turned out on Election Day in the highest numbers the United States has seen in a midterm in at least 25 years – a double-digit improvement over 2014, according to an early analysis by the Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE).

They still have a ways to go – their elders vote at far higher rates, and youth turnout was lower in 2014 than other recent midterms, so improving on that was not terribly hard. But the significant uptick this year encouraged many activists, who are already looking ahead to 2020 and planning to build on this year’s success.

SOURCE:

United States Election Project, CIRCLE

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Jacob Turcotte and Rebecca Asoulin/Staff

The surge in youth turnout stems in part from fear – about school shootings, the state of politics, and the direction of the country. But it also comes from a collective desire to support each other and make positive change at a time when many feel their lives are quite literally on the line.

“This is a sea change [in political engagement]…. They’re the most diverse generation in history so they don’t point their finger at the other,” says Alan Solomont, dean of the Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University in Medford, Mass. “They’re used to growing up as a generation of others.... This generation is about ‘us’ more than about ‘me.’ ”

‘Generation Columbine’

Parents, teachers, and civic leaders have long urged young people to vote, but their approach has often come across as condescending and failed to produce a substantial change in turnout.

This cycle proved different thanks in large part to two events: Donald Trump’s ascent to the White House, and the school shooting in Parkland, Fla. Parkland in particular catalyzed a new generation of get-out-the-vote activists who, as students themselves, proved  more effective at persuading their peers that their vote mattered.

Young people are more progressive politically than older generations – particularly when it comes to issues such as race and gender. Many saw President Trump’s election as an affront to their values, and a threat to the country.

“The president is unpopular among young voters – and that’s true among young Democrats and young Republicans,” says George Behrakis, president of the Tufts University College Republicans, though he acknowledges that his Democratic peers may feel greater urgency about putting a check on Mr. Trump’s presidency.

“There’s this environment of fear and worry about the future, and people are beginning to realize that they don’t have a choice but to get involved,” agrees Jaya Khetarpal, vice president of the school’s College Democrats.

First-time voters, dubbed “Generation Columbine,” have never known a world free of school shootings.

And while they’re not monolithic when it comes to gun control, two-thirds favor stricter gun laws, according to a Harvard Kennedy Institute of Politics (IOP) youth poll.

Like the generation that came of age protesting the war in Vietnam, many students see guns as an issue that threatens not only their lives, but the country’s values.

Joe Cavaretta/South Florida Sun-Sentinel/AP

Sara Chadwick of the March For Our Lives movement checks her texts, Tuesday, Nov. 6, 2018, at a phone bank get-out-the-vote event in Parkland, Fla.

Parkland: It’s not just about guns

The March For Our Lives movement sprung to life after an expelled student killed 17 of his peers and several teachers at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in February.

In a closet, with fellow classmates calling their parents in hushed tones, David Hogg took out his phone and began recording in the darkness.

“If we all die, the camera survives, and that’s how we get the message out there, about how we want change to be brought about,” he told Time magazine.

On a living room floor the weekend after the shooting, Mr. Hogg and about two dozen other students began to plan a march on Washington. At least 1.2 million people took to the streets of Washington and other cities and towns across the United States on March 24.

Parkland activists have been on the road since June registering young people to vote in more than 20 states with BBQs, dance parties, speeches, and town halls. They ended their tour back home in their “war room” in Parkland, Fla., calling and texting more than 1,000 friends and other young people until polls closed.

They also sent out automated texts to anyone who had texted “CHANGE” to 977-79.

“Y’all!! 2 days until Election Day!!” read one.

“Hey – yes, there have been lots of messages. Just ... don’t give up now!” read another.

The midterm election was the first major test of whether that movement would translate from marches to ballots, and early analysis suggests that while they didn’t ace the test, they certainly passed.

The results show a country still divided over gun control. A statewide recount is under way, but it appears that activists did not secure Democratic, anti-NRA seats in their home state of Florida.

But the Parkland movement goes beyond any one issue, says Kei Kawashima-Ginsberg, director of CIRCLE at Tufts. “It normalized political engagement and young people leading the way.”

A post-election video selfie message from Parkland students Hogg andEmma Gonzalez thanks voters for “helping to save our generation.”

While the national spotlight has shined most brightly on the Parkland activists, they were building off of and working with often-ignored movements led largely by people of color.

As a Haitian-American, Vikiana sees the movement as a platform to highlight the more prevalent issue of everyday gun violence. While her civic engagement predates March For Our Lives, she admires its power to activate many of her peers – some for the first time.

“Young people are so used to being looked over… that when you have someone finally tell you that you are smart, you are powerful, and you can make change, it stirs up something in you,” she says.

Record youth tilt toward Democratic candidates

The midterms laid bare a growing ideological divide between younger and older generations that will play out in 2020 and beyond. That divide barely existed in the early 2000s. Young people voted for Democratic House candidates by a more than 2 to 1 margin, the widest divide ever for voters under 30.

This year’s 4 million increase in turnout came almost entirely from those voting for Democrats, which most likely played a key role in flipping the House, according to the IOP.

If youth turnout on Tuesday had been at usual midterm rates, districts such as Texas’s 32nd and Georgia’s 6th would not have been turned by Democrats. Young voters also helped Democrats win a Nevada Senate seat and made the Texas Senate race, with Democratic darling Beto O’Rourke, a tight race rather than the typical blowout.

Those results are likely due in part to Democratic campaigns and get-out-the-vote groups increasing their social media spending while outside liberal groups zeroed in on the youth vote. NextGen America, for example, spent $33 million.

Social media platforms, companies, and celebrities stepped up get-out-the-vote efforts as well.

On Election Day, Instagram collected every post from a user’s friends into a user-unique “We Voted” story. And on the dating app Tinder, a pop-up message greeted users with “Tinder can wait. Go vote.”

"Honestly, social media has been blasting it for so long, I feel like I need to vote,” said Julie Lin, an 18-year-old first time voter at Tufts on her way to a polling station in Somerville, Mass.

Next step: Holding lawmakers accountable

Now the question is: Where does it go from here? As this generation of fervent young activists matures into adults, will the movement grow more powerful? Or will it dissipate?

This year’s election is most likely just the beginning, says Peter de Guzman, student outreach coordinator for JumboVote, Tufts’ campus-wide voting initiative. After all, many of those students inspired by March For Our Lives, like Vikiana, are still too young to vote.

“My 16-year-old sister called me crying when Parkland happened,” says Mr. de Guzman. “It was a big moment in [high schoolers’] lives and we will see the impact even more in two years.”

While young activists are looking to boost turnout further next time around, they are also looking beyond the ballot box.

“Voting is the new hip thing that young people are doing – which is great because we do need young people to vote,” says Vikiana. “But a lot of people forget that there’s accountability afterward.”

Ints Kalnins/Reuters

Sweden’s Air Force specialists gather near the Saab JAS 39 Gripen fighter during the AFX 18 exercise in Amari military air base, Estonia May 25, 2018. Mandatory military service for began for 4,000 young Swedish men and women this year.

When Russia annexed Crimea in 2014 and began acting aggressively toward its immediate neighbors, perhaps none of the countries in the Nordic and Baltic region was more taken aback than neutral, pacifistic Sweden.

After the end of the cold war, by 2004 Sweden had radically downsized its armed forces, adjusting their traditional territorial defense role in order to focus on select expeditionary missions. But “Russia’s provocative behavior towards Sweden and in the Baltic Sea ended the Swedish ‘strategic time-out’ in which the military’s role in society was hidden,” says Oscar Jonsson, the incoming director of Stockholm Free World Forum, a leading Swedish security think tank.

Since then, Sweden has worked to gear up its defense against Russia by various means, including the reintroduction of conscription and bringing military preparedness back into the public mindset, for example by circulating a pamphlet instructing the population about what to do in case of war.

However, as the country waits to see what kind of government emerges from September’s inconclusive parliamentary election, some say that it still is not doing enough.

“Sweden has been quick to react to Russia’s aggressive behavior in Europe as well as in our neighborhood,” says Robert Dalsjö, deputy director for research of FOI, another Swedish defense think tank. “The country is definitely more aware of the potential threat that Russia poses.... But awareness doesn’t necessarily translate into readiness.”

The principal reason why Swedes are more reluctant to go to battle stations than their neighbors, Mr. Dalsjö and other experts say, is that after two centuries of peace they are less conditioned to do so. As Dalsjö puts it, “Swedish neutrality dies hard.”

Enough money or troops?   

That is not to gainsay the significant steps the government has taken to get the country up to speed militarily.

The first came in 2015 when the Social Democratic-led government proposed and the Swedish parliament approved an increase in defense spending of $1.1 billion, or 11 percent for the 2016-20 period.

Then last May the Swedish government issued a pamphlet to all 4.8 million Swedish households illuminating the dangers of war, including – implicitly – war with Russia. The booklet, titled “If Crisis or War Comes,” compiled by the Swedish Civil Contingencies Agency, instructed the population on what to do “if their everyday [lives] were turned upside down.” That attracted considerable attention.

So did the government’s decision to reinstitute conscription. Sweden had had mandatory military service since 1901 before deciding to abolish it in favor of an all-volunteer system in 2010. Other European countries have also been debating a draft or the requirement of national service. 

“The all-volunteer recruitment hasn’t provided the armed forces with enough personnel,” stated Peter Hultqvist, the defense minister, by way of explaining the return of the draft last year. “The reactivation of conscription is necessary for military readiness.” According to Mr. Hultqvist, the new system would take in 4,000 conscripts in 2018 from the larger eligible cohort of 100,000 Swedish men and women born in 1999.

Even with conscription, the total number of full-time active military personnel, both volunteers and conscripts, in the Swedish armed forces is about 22,500 – fractionally more than that of neighboring Denmark, which is one-tenth of Sweden’s size. “The force structure needs to be doubled – at least,” says Dalsjö. “And we need to be spending 2 percent of our GDP on defense.” It appears that neither of those things will happen soon.

“Unfortunately, attitudes aren’t changing fast enough,” Mr. Jonsson agrees. “Defense and security questions are still not a priority with politicians and the public.” Immigration was the leading topic during the most recent election for parliament in September. Defense was considerably down the list.

NATO, or not

Some of the public’s lack of concern may be due to a conviction that “that if Sweden is attacked, others will come to our aid,” says Dalsjö. Like neighboring Finland, Sweden is a member of NATO’s Partnership for Peace program, but is not a full member of the alliance. Nevertheless a recent survey shows that 46 percent of ordinary Swedes feel that NATO would still come to the country’s assistance. Recent polls indicate that just under half of the Swedish population favors joining NATO, while the rest are opposed or undecided.

Polling also suggests that Sweden’s attitude toward defense is split among the generations, with under-25s less concerned about war, while middle-aged and elderly Swedes are more anxious.

“Young people have not been confronted with an existential threat to themselves or to Sweden, except for a few terrorist attacks,” says Mikael Holmström, security correspondent for Dagens Nyheter, a leading Stockholm daily. “By contrast the older generations remember the time when Sweden still had a large army and almost every man and also many women had mobilization orders.”

“People my age – 25 or under – are more concerned about defense and security than they were before Crimea,” according to Carl Larsson, who works at the Hotel Skeppsholmen on the beatific island of Skeppsholmen in the Stockholm archipelago. “But it’s more a matter of degree than of kind. Most young Swedes still look out at the world as if they were living on an island – like this one.”

Sweden’s conflicted attitude about defense is reflected by the conflicted attitude of the outgoing government of Prime Minister Stefan Löfven. Defense Minister Hultqvist urges more money to be allocated to defense, but the minister of finance, Magdalena Andersson, has rebuffed his requests. At the same time, Hultqvist remains opposed to joining NATO, like Ms. Andersson and their other cabinet colleagues.

Whether the government that emerges from Sweden’s current electoral quagmire is less conflicted on defense matters remains to be seen.

Jonsson for one, remains worried. “The opposition parties have vowed to work towards bringing defense spending up to 2 percent of the GDP” – or about double the current rate – “but given the 10-year lag it takes to get from investment to capability, that is not enough.”

“Sweden is sobering up from its dream of eternal peace,” says Dalsjö.

A soldier’s perspective

In the meantime, the revamped conscription system seems to be working well. “These are early days of course,” says Col. Jan Demarkesse, who heads the armed forces’ Department of Personnel and Manpower. “However our initial impression is that things are going smoothly.”

That impression was reinforced by Linus Thunholm, one of the 19-year-olds in the first class of draftees. “Of course, it was a little strange to be one of only 4,000 who were called up from my cohort,” says Mr. Thunholm, who is now stationed at an airfield in western Sweden. “Nevertheless, I am very happy with the way things are going. I have made friends in my platoon and our officers are nice.”

Thunholm adds that the experience has altered his perspective on life, as well as geopolitics. “Before being conscripted, like most of my peers I was afraid to look out at the larger world. Now I’m not. I realize that the threat is real. And I am proud to be amongst the few – perhaps too few – to have been called to meet it.”

“Also,” he adds, “the food is good.”

Editor’s note: This story was changed to reflect the correct title of the Swedish government's pamphlet, “If Crisis or War Comes.”

Courtesy of Dartmouth Tiltfactor

College students play Mindflock, a trivia game created to help teach bystander intervention skills in situations of sexual and relationship violence and stalking. Games are viewed as one way to widen the audience for more-comprehensive prevention strategies.

What do these three actions have in common?

• Starting a conversation about football.
• Offering a friend a feminine hygiene product.
• Responding to someone’s request for an “angel shot” at a bar.

They’re all ways that everyday people have intervened in situations that they worried could have led to a sexual assault.

The first one happened when a student noticed a man plying her friend with vodka; she started a conversation about the NFL, prompting the man to get bored and leave. In the second, a student offered a creative excuse so a friend could escape sexual pressure at a party. The third, asking for an “angel shot,” is a tactic some phone apps and bartenders are promoting, to help patrons signal that they need assistance. 

Sexual assault and dating violence seem so intractable that it can be tempting to wonder how they’ll ever be stamped out. It’s not always easy to spot the red flags, let alone know what to do about them. But there’s growing recognition that people don’t need to wait for an emergency to consider how they can make a difference.

“It’s really reframing it – that this is not a male problem or female problem, it’s a community problem,” says Sharyn Potter, executive director of the University of New Hampshire’s Prevention Innovations Research Center. 

The need for people to become more empowered – and the potential for change when they do – is clear. In a survey of 27 campuses, 44 percent of students said they had witnessed a drunk person heading for a sexual encounter, but 77 percent of them did nothing, the Association of American Universities reported in 2017. 

Among students who witnessed sexual harassment or violence, 55 percent did nothing. About a quarter of them said it was because they didn’t know what to do. 

“Without competence, fear will run the show,” says Mike Domitrz, founder and executive director of the DATE SAFE Project. The key, he says, is to “give them skills that they realistically believe they can implement.” 

More tech options

Young people are also at the forefront of developing bystander-intervention tools that resonate with their peers.

Two video game prototypes have shown promise, for instance, after Professor Potter’s UNH team collaborated with students and with Dartmouth College’s Tiltfactor Laboratory.  

Courtesy of UNH/Dartmouth Tiltfactor

A screen image shows a scenario presented in Ship Happens, a prototype space adventure game that presents options for how to respond when witnessing sexual harassment, dating abuse, or violence. The game was developed by students and researchers at the University of New Hampshire and Dartmouth College.

One is a team trivia game that mixes campus information and pop culture with items related to preventing sexual assault. The other is a space adventure game that presents scenarios and options for how to respond.

“By inserting yourself in these situations and playing through them, you’re getting a much clearer understanding of what you can do in real life,” says Hannah Hodges, who helped create the games during her senior year at UNH. 

In one scenario, the player has the option to offer someone in an abusive relationship information about a hotline. Another has the player overhearing sexist insults and choosing ways to step in.

Sexual violence is on a continuum, and when people make “sexist comments and they’re not called out,... it’s easier for the more severe violence to occur,” Potter says.

In a study of 300 college men and women who played the games, the men’s knowledge about bystander intervention went up, as did their willingness and confidence to intervene. Those elevated levels were statistically significant and lasted at least four weeks.

Video games on their own won’t shift a campus culture, but they are one way to widen the audience for more-comprehensive prevention strategies.

A growing number of students are also using phone apps that address sexual assault. The uSafeUS app  developed by Potter’s team includes features for everyday use – one, called “time to leave,” can be set for an excuse to leave an uncomfortable date, for instance. Students in focus groups said that without such features, they wouldn’t keep the apps with sexual assault resources, because most don’t believe it will ever happen to them.

Phone apps help open up conversations and “make the problem more salient in students’ minds,” says Amanda Fusting, a student at the University of Maryland, in College Park, who’s helping to spread the word about the UASK DMV app at campuses in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.. 

During the hearings leading up to the appointment of Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh, one of Ms. Fusting’s family members asserted that sexual assault is always a repetitive behavior, so if he had lived such an upstanding life, he was unlikely to have committed an assault in high school. Fusting offered a different perspective, informed by her participation in several campus groups. There are many serial offenders, but “it is not necessarily true that it will be repeated,” she says.

To some degree, the politically polarized hearings “locked people into their personal beliefs,” Mr. Domitrz says. But by using gender-neutral examples, he tries to avoid stereotypical assumptions about survivors and perpetrators, and that helps engage people who hold a spectrum of views.

Starting early 

Before college isn’t too soon to start, prevention researchers say. The boys on a high school basketball team in Los Angeles came up with a way to challenge each other when they were halfway into A Call to Men’s LIVERESPECT curriculum, says trainer Jay Taylor. Any time they heard someone put a teammate down with a comment derogatory to women, they would call out “Man Box.” It was a friendly reminder to shed some of the negative ways society pressures men to show dominance.

Ms. Hodges, who has since graduated from UNH, once walked up to a drunk stranger in a bar and directly confronted him after he grabbed a woman’s arm. Just as society shifted to stop behaviors like drunken driving, she and others say they hope the culture is now shifting toward a greater willingness to put up roadblocks to sexual assault.

Hodges felt comfortable being direct, but “you don’t have to put on your superhero cape,” Potter says. “Turning down music or turning on lights at a party can go a long way.”

Confidential help is available by calling 800-656-4673, the National Sexual Assault Hotline, operated by RAINN.

Reuters

Two women vape outside the shop they work at, Cloud99 Vapes, in Manhattan.

One of the great reliefs of the past half-century is that cigarette smoking in adults dropped by 67 percent. One of the great shocks in the past year is that a new generation of smokers may be in the making. The use of electronic cigarettes (“vaping”) among high school students rose an alarming 78 percent from 2017 to 2018. Among middle-schoolers, the jump was 48 percent. Many could end up using combustible cigarettes.

“These increases must stop,” announced Scott Gottlieb, commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), on Thursday as he proposed tough new rules on the sale of vaping devices to minors, especially the pod refills that come with kid-friendly flavors. “And the bottom line is this: I will not allow a generation of children to become addicted to nicotine through e-cigarettes.”

The FDA is not wasting time in safeguarding past successes in reducing tobacco-related habits. One in 5 high-schoolers today has used e-cigs in the past month, according to FDA data. More than a quarter have vaped at least 20 of the last 30 days. Some even vape while in school classrooms.

But this is the federal agency’s big target: More than two-thirds of students have used flavored versions, such as cherry or mango. Its proposed rules would restrict the sale of flavored e-cigs in retail stores and ban online marketing to kids by the makers of these battery-powered devices. If the increase in use does not go down, the FDA plans further regulations.

The agency decided that the potential of nicotine addiction among youth who vape outweighs the purported benefits of the devices in helping adult smokers quit combustible cigarettes. As with many government actions aimed at protecting children from harm, the move reflects a recognition that youth should be able to retain their innocence as they enhance their capacity to self-regulate. 

Keeping young people free of addiction is in society’s interest. “A babe in a house,” wrote English poet Martin Tupper, is “a resting place for innocence on earth; a link between angels and men.” The FDA is right to shield youth from those who market nicotine to them.