Youth Justice
Vera’s Center on Youth Justice (CYJ) works with policymakers and practitioners who want juvenile justice to be rooted in the community, more effective, and smaller in scale, touching the lives of fewer children.
Featured
Restoring Promise
A Young Adult Reform Initiative
Young people ages 18 to 24 make up 10 percent of the U.S. population but comprise 21 percent of people admitted into adult prison every year. Neuroscience shows that young adults in this age group are still developing in important ways. When mistakes they make lead to prison, we should ensure they are housed safely and that they’re given the tools ...
Project
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Alex Frank
The Initiative to End Girls’ Incarceration
The end of girls’ incarceration in the United States is within reach, and Vera is leading a national initiative to make it happen in 10 years. The number of youth in the girls’ side of the juvenile justice system is small, most girls are unjustly locked up to protect their safety or to address unmet needs, and jurisdictions across the country are f...
Project
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Lindsay Rosenthal
Girls Matter
Centering Gender in Status Offense Reform Efforts
Related Work
Vera's 10-Year Strategy to End Girls' Incarceration
To ensure freedom and justice for all kids, systems must be responsive to how gender and sexism intersect with racism to drive youth incarceration. The Vera Institute of Justice (Vera) believes that we can end the incarceration of youth on the girls’ side of the juvenile justice system by building stronger, safer, and more equitable communities w...
Cultivating Change
How the Middlesex Sheriff’s Office and the Restoring Promise Initiative Are Transforming Incarceration for Young Men
Traditional criminal justice responses have fallen short on meeting the needs of young adults involved in the justice system. Across the country, policymakers are starting to address the legacy of unbalanced policies and practices that have resulted in the uniquely American phenomenon of 2.2 million people being incarcerated—a legacy that dispropor...
Embracing Human Dignity
Annual Report 2018
The Vera Institute of Justice is working to radically transform incarceration in America by replacing punishing practices with an approach that prioritizes compassion, true accountability, healing, restoration, opportunity, and hope. Learn more about our commitment to human dignity in our annual report 2018.
Series: Dispatches from T.R.U.E.
Dream Chasers
Former TRUE mentee reflects on life behind and beyond bars
I’ve never seen a correctional officer who loved coming to work and interacting with incarcerated people. That’s different—I don’t care what anybody says. That alone speaks volumes about his character; In general population, it always seemed dull and full of bad energy. A lot of the times the officers came off miserable and took their frustrations ...
Blog Post
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Shyquinn Dix
Reimagining Prison Event
On October 10, 2018, the Vera Institute of Justice and staff and residents of the T.R.U.E. unit at Cheshire Correctional Institution in Connecticut convened to Reimagine Prison in the United States. The event, and coinciding report release, culminated the work of Vera’s Reimagining Prison project, launched in June 2016 at historic Eastern State Pe...
Reimagining Prison in Germany and Norway
Reimagining Prison
Series: Dispatches from Germany
Can We Learn from Our Past?
The Holocaust forced Germany to fundamentally change how it incarcerates people. In America, slavery morphed into mass incarceration.
The 13th amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishes slavery and involuntary servitude except as punishment for a crime—a loophole that has continued the wide-scale persecution of black and brown people through the criminal justice system. The result is a U.S. prison system designed to warehouse and dehumanize people. From the length of sentences ...
Blog Post
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Alex Frank
Series: Dispatches from W.O.R.T.H.
How Young Women are Building Promise in a Connecticut Prison
Every aspect of W.O.R.T.H.’s design intentionally embodies the spirit of the “human dignity principle”—the concept that every human being possesses an intrinsic worth, merely by being human. From its culture to its physical environment to its daily routine, W.O.R.T.H. was re-purposed, designed, and transformed from a vacant, old unit inside the pri...
Blog Post
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Ryan Shanahan
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Alex Frank
Girls Matter
Ending girls’ incarceration requires communities to treat girls fairly and with respect—that means eliminating reliance on law enforcement and the courts when girls run away, skip school, or disobey a parent.
Can Mentoring Take the Place of Punishing?
The Choice is Yours (TCY) is a felony diversion program in Philadelphia that channels young people arrested for drug possession with intent to distribute away from jail and into education and job training services. Nigel Bowe, program director, and Miguel, program participant, discuss how TCY mentors young adults who have grown up distrusting the c...
Graduation Instead of Incarceration
The Choice is Yours (TCY) is a felony diversion program in Philadelphia that channels young people arrested for drug possession with intent to distribute away from jail and into education and job training services. Derek Riker, former ADA in the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office, and Byron Cotter, from the Defender Association of Philadelphia...