Vera Institute of Justice: Making justice systems fairer and more effective through research and innovation

On Sunday, families around the country will celebrate Mother’s Day. For people like me who are far away from home, we will likely use low-cost, convenient technology to call our mothers, say hello, and wish them a happy Mother’s Day. Unfortunately, for more than 65,000 incarcerated mothers, a low-cost phone call is not possible. As a recent news article describes, a local phone call made from prison or jail has connection fees and high per-minute costs.

April marked the national rollout of the Family-Youth Initiative (FYI). FYI is a joint project of the Vera Institute of Justice and the Performance-based Standards Learning Institute (PbSLi) that sets standards for juvenile justice agencies on engaging and including families in the lives of children under the agencies’ care. 

Last week I blogged about how men incarcerated at one prison in Ohio celebrated Earth Day. They asked me to share examples of what other institutions are doing to go green. The correctional system in Ohio recognizes the substantial environmental impact of its 28 prison communities, and is taking impressive and holistic steps to reduce its footprint—so there was plenty to share:

According to the Earth Day Network, “over 1 billion people participate in Earth Day activities each year, making it the largest civic observance in the world.” Earth Day is a time for communities to come together and pay special attention to their local environment. But for the thousands of individuals incarcerated in the U.S., opportunities for this kind of civic engagement are much harder to come by.

Julie James, Ram Subramanian, and Lauren-Brooke Eisen of Vera’s Center on Sentencing and Corrections recently published an article