Think Justice Blog

American Jail

On Sunday evening, CNN will premiere American Jail, a documentary film by Roger Ross Williams that explores the modern tragedy of mass incarceration from both a very personal and a political angle.  Williams, who grew up in and then fled Easton, PA, a small ci...

Vera’s Policing Program Releases a Special Edition of “Emerging Issues in American Policing” Quarterly Digest

Recent efforts to develop and expand alternatives to enforcement highlight research-informed strategies to more effectively promote public safety and decrease police agencies’ reliance on arrests.

Beyond Money Bail

A sign for Free Me Bail Bonds Connection in New Orleans. Photo: William Widmer for The New York Times. | See, When Bail Feels Less Like Freedom, More Like Extortion.

Supporting Bail Reform Is Good Business

There is no doubt that New York’s bail system is broken.  Over 16,000 New Yorkers across the state are incarcerated because they cannot afford to post bail, at a cost of over $350 million a year to taxpayers to hold them in jail. Advocates, reformers, policyma...

Give Progress a Chance

Less than one year ago, Louisiana passed a historic Justice Reinvestment Package (JRI), with the goal of finally shedding its infamous title of incarceration capital of the world. With help from the analysis conducted by The Pew Charitable Trusts (Pew), the bi...

For Mental Health Month, a New Initiative Focused on Serving Safely

In their role as first responders, police officers interact frequently with people with mental illnesses and/or intellectual and developmental disabilities.  It is conservatively estimated that up to 10 percent of calls to police involve persons with a serious...

Common Justice launches new digital series “Ever After: Stories of Violence, Accountability, and Healing”

Common Justice has launched the digital series “Ever After: Stories of Violence, Accountability, and Healing”. This project is a series of short videos with people who have survived or committed violence in order to elevate new and more complete stories about ...

Series: Two Societies

Education: The Key to Equality

In 1968, the Kerner Commission’s landmark report acknowledged that black Americans faced persistent “economic and educational barriers.”  It revealed that, on average, black Americans completed fewer years of education and were twice as likely to be unemployed...

Prison Education Saved My Life and Stopped an Environmental Cycle of Incarceration

Studies have shown that expanding access to postsecondary education for people in prison improves their chances of securing a job upon release.  This in turn decreases the likelihood they will reoffend and equips them to become productive, tax-paying members o...

Reckoning with America’s History of Lynching and Racial Terrorism

As I was weaving through a six-acre field recognizing over 4,500 black people who were lynched and tortured in America from 1877 to 1950, I realized, as a person of color, that I was more indebted to the black Americans that came before me than I ever imagined...

Series: Two Societies

Contemporary Models of Equal Access to Housing

A key area of focus of the Kerner Commission was equal and high quality access to housing.  The authors of the Kerner Report saw clearly how the huge shift in American culture from city dwelling to suburban homeownership left behind many Americans—mostly peopl...

Dignity for All

As I sat in the lobby at the Vera Institute of Justice last November, awaiting my interview for a communications internship, I felt horribly unprepared.  My hair was combed, I had arrived 15 minutes early, and I was even wearing a tie. But there was still one ...