The Substance Use and Mental Health Program (SUMH) is studying the impact of recent changes to New York State drug laws that allow shorter sentences and alternatives to incarceration for certain felony drug charges. The reform is a shift from mandatory sentencing guidelines limiting judicial discretion that came into effect in 1973 during the tenure of then-governor Nelson A. Rockefeller and were popularly known as the Rockefeller drug laws. The study will describe the reform’s implementation and explore its implications for public safety and criminal-justice-system costs.

This two-year research project, funded by the National Institute of Justice, seeks to identify and gauge the influence of legal, quasi-legal, and extra-legal factors on the decisions that criminal prosecutors make over the lifetime of a case. Measuring the impact of these decisions on case outcomes is expected to yield practical guidelines for system decision makers committed to the principled use of prosecutorial discretion.

Close to Home seeks to improve reentry outcomes when people return to the community from jail. Program staff will partner with jails, community-corrections agencies, and community-based organizations in two jurisdictions to help them apply a family-focused approach to reentry planning. The project's lessons are expected to be applicable to jurisdictions throughout the country.

Common Justice offers an alternative to the traditional court process for youth charged with felonies such as assault, robbery, and burglary. Project staff bring together people immediately affected by a crime to acknowledge the harm done, address the needs of the harmed party, and agree on sanctions other than incarceration to hold the responsible party accountable. The project, based in Brooklyn, New York, seeks to repair harm, break cycles of violence, and decrease the system’s heavy reliance on incarceration.

Vera’s Washington DC Office is partnering with five jurisdictions around the country—two states and three large counties—to help them improve oversight of their jails and prisons. The project draws on lessons from the Commission on Safety and Abuse in America’s Prisons regarding the importance of strong oversight of correctional facilities.

Vera's Cost-Benefit Analysis Unit (CBAU), in conjunction with the Center on Youth Justice, is working with the North Carolina Youth Accountability Planning Task Force to estimate the costs and benefits associated with raising the age of juvenile jurisdiction.

Vera is helping the Ohio Department of Youth Services (DYS) develop and refine tools to establish and implement a family-oriented approach in its policies and practices. The partnership will enhance Ohio’s ability to serve young people in its juvenile justice system as well as their families. It will also advance an approach other jurisdictions can use to work more closely with youth and their social networks. The project is supported by the Public Welfare Foundation.

Justice reinvestment is a data-driven approach to corrections policy that seeks to cut spending and reinvest savings in practices that have been empirically shown to improve safety and hold offenders accountable. As part of the Justice Reinvestment Initiative, Vera provides technical assistance to states seeking to apply the approach to their local prison and supervision systems.

The Los Angeles Jail to Community Reentry Project seeks to inform improvements to reentry services for people returning to the community. This project expands upon the Substance Use and Mental Health Program's work on jail reentry in New York City using empirical data to assess the existing range of reentry interventions, with a particular focus on meeting the needs of L.A.’s racially and ethnically diverse jail population.

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 the 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.

Vera’s New Orleans Office is collaborating with government, community, and civic organizations to develop the city’s first comprehensive pretrial services system. The demonstration project, launched with funding from the U.S. Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Assistance (BJA), is integrating good practices into the criminal justice system, with the goal of yielding greater public safety and fairness. New Orleans Pretrial Services is Vera’s first demonstration project outside of New York City.

Vera’s Center on Sentencing and Corrections (CSC) is working with the New York State Division of Parole to provide supervision officers with additional tools to help people complete conditional releases from prison. The project seeks to improve parole oversight so that fewer people return to prison solely for violating the conditions of their release.

The Ohio Green Prison Project designs and implements green vocational training and reentry programs that benefit incarcerated individuals and reduce the environmental impact and operating costs of prison systems.

Vera is working with the Pew Center on the States and the Chicago-based civic organization Metropolis Strategies to publish a report about the benefits and challenges of performance incentive funding (PIF), a fiscal innovation that rewards adult and juvenile corrections agencies for improving public safety by reducing recidivism.

Vera's Center on Sentencing and Corrections is working to help Alabama officials meet their goals of reducing the prison population and controlling corrections costs, while ensuring public safety.

Los Angeles County asked the Vera Institute to study its criminal justice system, identify inefficiencies, and recommend strategies to make better use of jail space. Vera staff analyzed the county’s jail data, examined policies and processes that affect the jail’s population size, and recommended steps the county can take to alleviate jail overcrowding.

The Family Justice Program’s Reentry Is Relational project trained participating staff at two prisons in New Mexico and Oklahoma, and at their corresponding probation and parole offices, to help incarcerated people draw on their social networks as they transition from prison to parole. By enhancing case management practices at the facilities and promoting more collaboration between prison and parole staff, the project had the goal of improving reentry outcomes for people coming home from prison. To sustain changes in practices and policies, the initiative also provided these institutions with technical assistance and evaluation support.

Many corrections systems isolate certain prisoners from the general prison population—a practice also known as segregation. Vera's Segregation Reduction Project (SRP) is helping states decrease the number of people they hold in segregation, transition prisoners out of segregation, and improve conditions for those who remain. The project draws on methods Ohio and Mississippi used to reduce their segregated populations by 85 to 89 percent.

Staff from the Center on Sentencing & Corrections (CSC) are working with a Chicago-based nonprofit, Chicago Metropolis 2020 (CM2020), and the independent, bipartisan Criminal Law Edit, Alignment and Reform (CLEAR) Commission, to improve criminal justice policies in Illinois. This is part of ongoing work funded by the Public Safety Performance Project of the Pew Center on the States.

Vera’s Cost-Benefit Analysis Unit and Center on Sentencing and Corrections, in collaboration with the Public Safety Performance Project of the Pew Center on the States, have developed a methodology to guide a complete accounting of the cost of prisons.