Court Systems

In September 2008, New York Governor David Paterson created the Task Force on Transforming Juvenile Justice to establish a statewide process to improve the juvenile justice system. The task force was charged with creating a blueprint to strengthen alternatives to institutional placement for young offenders, improve residential care, and enhance reentry programming. It also addressed the disproportionate number of minority youth in the system. The task force was chaired by Jeremy Travis, president of New York City’s John Jay College of Criminal Justice. Members included representatives from the Office of Children and Family Services, law enforcement, advocacy organizations, county and state agencies, academia, and the judiciary. Vera’s Center for Youth Justice provided technical assistance by gathering data and facilitating discussion on ways to implement systemic changes.

The Legal Orientation Program (LOP) was created to inform immigrant detainees about their rights, immigration court, and the detention process. On behalf of the federal government’s Executive Office of Immigration Review, program staff work with nonprofit legal service agencies to provide the program at 25 detention facilities across the country.

Vera works collaboratively with reformers in China to facilitate justice innovations and policy changes in China that are rooted in experience, guided by empirical methods, and consistent with international human rights standards.

In 2007, Vera was awarded a grant by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to participate in the Models for Change initiative, an effort to create successful and replicable models of juvenile justice reform through targeted investments in key states. The initiative seeks to accelerate progress toward a fairer, more effective, and more developmentally sound juvenile justice system that holds young people accountable for their actions, provides for their rehabilitation, protects them from harm, increases their life chances, and manages the risk they pose to themselves and to the public.

Vera’s Center on Youth Justice (CYJ) is working with New York City’s Office of the Criminal Justice Coordinator and juvenile justice stakeholders to change juvenile detention policy in the city so that youth who do not pose a high risk of flight or re-arrest before trial can remain connected to their families and communities.

CYJ has been working with four New York Counties—Erie (Buffalo), Onondaga (Syracuse), Monroe (Rochester), and Albany County—to develop a reliable way for judges to decide whether arrested youth should be released, referred to community-based programs under supervision, or detained before trial. CYJ staff are also helping these counties develop a continuum of community-based supervision options for arrested youth. This reform is intended to reserve juvenile detention for youth who pose a risk of re-offending or failing to appear in court and keep youth who do not pose these risks connected to their communities, without compromising public safety.

Vera’s Prosecution and Racial Justice Program (PRJ) has partnered with district attorneys in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin; Mecklenburg County, North Carolina; and San Diego County, California, to pilot an internal assessment and management procedure that is helping supervisors identify evidence of possible racial or ethnic bias in their staff’s aggregate decision making and respond appropriately when it is found. The procedure seeks to buttress the integrity of judicial outcomes and build public confidence in the criminal justice process.

In 2007, the general assembly in the State of Connecticut passed a law raising the age of juvenile jurisdiction from 16 to 18, effective July 2009. Prior to this legislation, Connecticut was one of only three states that continued to try 16- and 17-year-olds in an adult criminal justice system. CYJ staff provided technical assistance to help state officials develop a viable implementation plan that was a key element of the legislation's passage.

The Guardianship Project provides guardianship services for elderly and disabled people in New York City who have been determined by a judge to be unable to care for themselves. Project staff include lawyers, social workers, and bookkeepers, who oversee an array of services—including health care, home care, and money management—and help clients to remain independent and engaged in their communities. Our services currently save the state more than $2.5 million annually in Medicaid costs, and as it grows those savings will increase significantly.

Vera staff are working with the New Orleans City Council, local criminal justice agencies, judiciary, civic and community organizations, and foundation partners to address long-standing problems in that city’s criminal justice system. These stakeholders are working together as the Criminal Justice Leadership Alliance (CJLA), an unprecedented coalition focused on resolving systemic justice challenges.

Through the United Nations Rule of Law Indicators Project, implemented in collaboration with fellow members of the Altus Global Alliance, Vera seeks to advance the rule of law by providing national authorities with a practical way to identify the strengths of, and challenges to, their nation’s law enforcement agencies, judicial system, and prisons.

The Unaccompanied Children Program coordinates a nationwide effort to increase volunteer, or pro bono, legal representation for immigrant children with no parents or adult guardians to assist them as they undergo removal (deportation) proceedings. These children may be fleeing poverty, war, or other dangerous circumstances on their own, or they may have lost contact with an adult along the way. They are held in shelters or detention centers across the United States which are run by the Division of Unaccompanied Children’s Services, part of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ Office of Refugee Resettlement (ORR).