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Latest Developments
- On June 8, 2006, the Commission released "Confronting Confinement", a report on violence and abuse in U.S. jails and prisons, the broad impact of those problems on public safety and public health, and how correctional facilities nationwide can become safer and more effective. The report reflects the Commission's work over more than a year — an inquiry that featured four public hearings in cities around the country where nearly 100 people testified, visits to jails and prisons, conversations with people about their experience of life behind bars, discussions with current and former corrections officials and experts working outside the profession, and a thorough review of available research and data.
- The Youth Justice Program's newly released A Study of New York City's Family Assessment Program documents the effects of the Family Assessment Program (FAP), New York City's new mechanism for immediate social service assessments of status offender cases. The report details how FAP has reduced the number of petitions and court referrals of PINS youth in in the city.
- Although women with disabilities are more likely to experience abuse than women without disabilities, they often lack equal access to safety and other services they need to address the violence in their lives. Vera's Accessing Safety Initiative is working to foster meaningful collaboration and cross-learning among local agencies that serve people with disabilities and local agencies that serve victims of domestic and sexual violence.
- Vera's State Sentencing and Corrections Program continues to provide assistance to state officials across the nation who must grapple with the Supreme Court's recent decisions in Blakely v. Washington and United States v. Booker, which invalidated major provisions of state and federal sentencing guidelines systems and raised doubt and anxiety in many jurisdictions.
- When serving diverse populations, courts that intensively monitor batterers often face challenges in identifying culturally- appropriate batterer intervention programs. Milwaukee County asked Vera's project to enhance judicial oversight of batterers to organize training for facilitators at Project Hombre/Nunca Más, a pioneering Spanish-speaking batterer-intervention program.
- For the 600,000 prisoners released from prison annually, healthy relationships with family members are crucial for their successful reentry. African-American families disproportionately experience the stress of reunifying with an ex-prisoner because they are incarcerated at higher rates and experience higher rates of interpersonal violence. Without support and intervention for both ex-prisoners and family members, reestablishing contact can jeopardize both parties. Vera's Safe Return Initiative addresses this challenge by focusing on domestic violence among African Americans as prisoners reunite with their families.
- Federal officials will find it easier to use Vera's consulting, facilitation, and survey services now that the Institute is an approved provider of Management, Organizational, and Business Improvement Services (MOBIS). To learn more about how to contract with Vera through MOBIS, contact director of national programs .
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Overview
Across the United States, local communities face similar problems with crime and the administration of justice, but programs that appear to solve a problem in one place rarely work if their procedures are merely copied elsewhere. In part, that is because the tools needed for successful reform are often embedded in local politics rather than in operating procedures.
Instead of replicating specific programs, Vera encourages officials in every state to apply in their own jurisdictions the mix of political skill and program design that has worked elsewhere. That requires a particular type of assistance: not from technical experts, but from peers who understand how to pursue effective reform while remaining politically accountable.
Vera delivers peer-to-peer consulting through its national associates programs. The associates are not Vera staff, and they are not full-time consultants. They are practitioners, politicians, and academics from across the country who take time away from their jobs to participate as Vera associates. Some have helped make Vera's New York demonstration projects succeed, while others have pursued their own reforms in other places.
Today, associates working with Vera's State Sentencing and Corrections Program are helping state policy makers around the country reach consensus on difficult issues, such as whether to implement sentencing guidelines and how to expand the use of community corrections. To offer the most practical and valuable assistance, the program matches clients with associates who occupy similar positions in their home states: legislators consult with law makers, district attorneys with prosecutors, for example.
Peer consulting can easily go wrong. Sometimes practitioner-consultants get stuck in their own stories, their confidence can sound like bias, or they limit their assistance to a single visit. At Vera, we organize our national associates programs to harness the strength of peer-to-peer consulting while avoiding these traps. We train our associates in consulting techniques so they can do more than tell their own stories. We deploy them in small groups, so clients can learn from the interplay of their different experiences and perspectives. And our own staff members prepare for these visits and follow through after the sessions end.
Vera also offers assistance to state and local jurisdictions working to reduce domestic violence. Through our peer exchange program, associates facilitate conversations between nongovernmental victim advocates and criminal justice professionals. These practitioners meet in small groups and work through stubborn problems inherent in this complex field. In a related project, associates are giving advice and support to justice officials and community advocates in three jurisdictions that are testing the effectiveness of strong judicial supervision of people convicted of domestic violence.
Spanning the areas of child welfare, delinquency and juvenile justice, Vera associates work in New York state and throughout the U.S. In New York, the Youth Justice Program is assisting judges, probation departments and other county agencies prepare for an expansion in the population of troubled youth entering the system as a result of recent legislative action. Across the country, the program will help jurisdictions attempting to reduce the unnecessary detention of foster children.
[ last modified 6/13/2006 10:42:43 AM ]
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::: View a short film about Vera. [Go]
