Think Justice Blog

Stronger Together: Vera’s Policing Program Works to Bridge the Divide between Police and Community

The Vera Institute of Justice (Vera) has a longstanding history of collaboratively working to improve policing practices, policies, and police-community relations.  Since pioneering several early innovations in American policing, including one of the first com...

Using Diversion to Leverage Justice System Reform

In New Orleans, people arrested for prostitution should have the opportunity to be diverted.  Until recently, however, most were arrested and charged with state misdemeanor or felony prostitution, making them unable to access social services and other assistan...

Developing Reentry Programs

Access to safe and affordable housing is a human right.  It provides a foundation for everyday tasks such as employment, offers a place to spend time with family, and can offer a place of sanctuary and reprieve. However, this right is often not afforded to for...

Video Visits in Prisons Enhance Connections, But at a Cost

It’s easy to take for granted the million ways in which technology makes our lives easier.  Many of us can access and share information at lightning speeds and talk with family and friends across the globe at a moment’s notice—a fact that almost feels unremark...

New White House Report Outlines Recommendations to Stem the Tide of Drug Overdose Deaths

Last week, the president’s Commission on Combating Drug Addiction and the Opioid Crisis released an interim report outlining a series of preliminary recommendations that are intended to stem the tide of the growing public health crisis around drug overdose dea...

Closing the Courthouse Door to Kids Who Misbehave

Every day in this country, kids are arrested and locked up for behaviors like running away and skipping school (also referred to as “status offenses”).  Unless their family has been personally affected, most people outside the youth justice field don’t even kn...

ACA Cuts Would Endanger Justice-Involved People with Disabilities, Behavioral Health Needs

In 2010, aiming to provide affordable and comprehensive healthcare to people who otherwise would not have access to essential services, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) was signed into law. But in an effort to “repeal and replace” the ACA, federal lawmakers are c...

Politics, Ambition, and the Hard Work of Making the Closure of Rikers Island a Reality

Last month, Mayor de Blasio released “Smaller, Safer, Fairer: A Roadmap to Closing Rikers Island,” a report that laid out several concrete steps on the path to closure of the ten jails on the Island. In the preface to the report, the mayor acknowledged that th...

Helping People with Prior Convictions Access NYC Public Housing

Finding housing is hard for people with conviction histories, especially in public housing. Most housing authorities in the country have policies that temporarily or permanently bar people with conviction histories, even though studies have shown that when peo...

Series: Dispatches from T.R.U.E.

My Old Friends

This post was written by Michael, a mentor in the T.R.U.E. unit at Cheshire Correctional Institution. T.R.U.E unit mentors are people serving life without parole sentences at the Connecticut Department of Corrections. Through a competitive application process,...

Series: Addressing the Overuse of Segregation in U.S. Prisons and Jails

Mental Health Units as Alternatives to Segregation

“For [the already mentally ill], placing them in [segregation] is the mental equivalent of putting an asthmatic in a place with little air to breathe.” —Federal District Court Judge Thelton Henderson, Madrid v Gomez, 1995 Since Madrid v Gomez in 1995, the plac...

Understanding Jail Growth in Rural America

National public discourse has turned to the problem of mass incarceration in recent years, and certain places tend to capture most of the headlines, bubbling up to the forefront: overcrowded state prison systems, private facilities run by profit-seeking corpor...