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History
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Since its inception in 1961, Vera's innovative work with government officials has interested reformers in other countries, prompting many to invite Vera to share its experiences in their jurisdictions.
In 1974, at the invitation of the British government, Vera adapted its successful Manhattan Bail Project to the legal system in the United Kingdom. Between 1964 and 1974, the pretrial detention population in England's prisons had risen 157 percent, bringing the number of detainees to crisis levels. To address the problem, in one of the city's criminal courts Vera launched a project that verified prisoners' ties to their communities—information on which magistrates could safely base release decisions. The results of the program were cited in the press and Parliament during the passage of the Bail Act of 1976. Based on this work, in 1976 the French Ministry of Justice's Division of Criminal Affairs asked Vera to collaborate on a pilot program of pretrial services in France's largest court, the Tribunal de Grande Instance in Paris. For two years Vera maintained an office in Paris, working closely with the French government on this and other projects.
In the mid-1980s, the British Home Office asked Vera to help shape the way its Crown Prosecution Service worked with other parts of the criminal justice system. Until that time, prosecutions had been conducted under the authority of the police, but expansions in police powers led the government to create the country's first independent public prosecutors. In collaboration with the Crown Prosecution Service, Vera's London office organized two demonstration projects. The first developed the service's role in making bail recommendations. The second helped frame its authority to halt prosecutions when the prosecutors decided that a criminal conviction was not in the public interest, even where evidence of guilt was strong.
Vera's rich knowledge of pretrial services was called upon again in 1997 when it partnered with the Ministry of Justice in South Africa. Together, Vera and the ministry established the Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA) in Cape Town to help design, implement, and evaluate projects intended to improve the effectiveness of the new South African justice system. The BJA's first project helped develop a system of pretrial services to increase access to bail and ensure the safety of witnesses. More than 19,000 defendants were interviewed over the course of two years. The success of this pilot project convinced the Ministry of Justice to integrate the reforms into the daily functions of courts throughout the country. Since then the BJA has implemented projects on investigating and prosecuting car-hijacking cases; developing service centers for survivors of rape; and improving access to justice by evaluating and improving plea bargaining practices among legal aid lawyers.
Building on the BJA's success in South Africa, Vera began working with the Moscow-based Indem Foundation, an organization that focuses on democratic development and institution building in Russia, to create the Center for Justice Assistance (CJA) within the well-established think-tank. Since 2000, CJA has worked on evaluating a Vera-designed pilot project in Nizhny Novgorod to reduce pretrial detention. Other CJA projects include an initiative to improve police-citizen relations by making the process of reporting a crime simple and less unpleasant, and original, empirical research on police operations and the justice system.
In 1997 Vera began working on the issue of democratic policing. Hoping to interest, foster, and support an emerging international community of police reformers, with support from the Ford Foundation Vera hosted an international conference on public safety and police accountability in democratic societies. A Vera publication, Democratic Policing: A Framework for Action, layed out for the conference common principles of accountability and entry points for reform—through courts, legislatures, or computer technology, among others. Vera has also assisted Ford's own work by producing Democratic Policing Exchange, an internal newsletter for Ford program officers and grantees working to improve police practices around the world.
Ford's support has allowed Vera to build a strong body of research. In late 1999, Vera published a volume of three reports on the accountability of private police forces in New York, Johannesburg, and Mexico City, The Public Accountability of Private Police.
Recently, Vera published
The Use of Citizen Surveys as a Tool for Police Reform, which explores how surveys of local residents can create more accountable and effective police forces. The international programs department has also compiled a bibliography of approximately 500 books and other resources on policing.
[ last modified 11/7/2003 ]
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