Greater Justice New York
New York State is a microcosm of the landscape of incarceration across our country. Large, urban areas like New York City carry the torch of justice reform—with a commitment to close the notorious jail complex at Rikers Island and further drive down crime. In contrast, rural, less populated parts of the state—in counties like Chautauqua and Clinton—are overlooked as potential sites for criminal justice innovation, despite having the highest rates of jail incarceration and the most pressing need for reform.
New York is experiencing a unique moment. Pretrial reform, declining crime rates, and policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic have dramatically decreased the state’s jail population—dropping in June 2020 to the lowest point at any time since at least 1997. In partnership with stakeholders and advocates, Vera is working across the state to help transform the criminal legal system. By targeting counties with the highest rates of incarceration—and those already well on their way to meaningful reform—Vera seeks to shape a statewide policy agenda and drive local conversations about decarceration and public safety in New York. By strengthening our partnerships and building on recent victories, Greater Justice New York will continue to invest in the policies and practices that promote fair and equal justice for all New Yorkers.
Featured
The Cost of Incarceration in New York State
Empire State of Incarceration
February 18, 2021
The Impact of New York Bail Reform on Statewide Jail Populations
A First Look
New York’s recent bail reform law, which was passed in April 2019 and amended on July 2, 2020, was expected to reduce the footprint of jail incarceration by limiting the use of money bail. The new law mandated pretrial release for the vast majority of nonviolent charges and required that judges consider a person’s ability to pay bail. A comprehensi ...
Related Work
Empire State of Incarceration
For decades, thousands of New Yorkers, primarily people of color, were held in jail pretrial—sometimes for years—simply because they could not afford to pay bail. Bail reform ushered in a period of considerable decarceration across New York State, and the number of people in jail dropped even further as authorities responded to the COVID-19 pandemi ...
Closing Rikers Island
For generations, New York City has maintained a notoriously violent and inhumane jail complex on Rikers Island. Activists, elected officials, legal aid organizations, and formerly incarcerated New Yorkers and their families fought for decades to shutter the island's jails and invest in communities most harmed by mass incarceration. In 2019, the New ...
Project
Jullian Harris-Calvin
New York State Bail Reform Evaluation Study
Since it was passed in April 2019, New York State’s bail reform law has received enormous attention from both its supporters and critics. Vera’s 3.5-year NYBRE study will provide comprehensive impact evaluations of the reform utilizing multiple research methods including administrative data analysis, court observations, interviews with system actor ...
Project
Jaeok Kim
Overdose Deaths and Jail Incarceration
A Look Inside the New York City Police Department Budget
The New York City Police Department (NYPD) is by far the biggest and most expensive police department in the country: The overall cost of the NYPD is actually more than $11 billion annually. In recent weeks, the call to defund the NYPD has reached fever pitch, with calls to pass a budget on July 1, 2020, that includes $1 billion less for policing. ...
Two Ways to Show Up for Black Lives in the Wake of George Floyd’s Murder
Bail fund donations and overhauling the money bail system
As police respond to the current protests with more violence and arrests, bail funds have seen an outpouring of support—collectively raising upwards of $30 million from tens of thousands of donors across the country in a matter of days. Some bail funds, like the Brooklyn Community Bail Fund and the Minneapolis Freedom Fund, have received so many do ...
Blog Post
Insha Rahman
On Bail Reform We Need Less Fear-Based Speculation—and More Data
Bail reform is working. But in a moment when many are questioning the impact of the new law, a lack of publicly available data in real time about other critical metrics—including crime and arrest rates—leaves open the door for bail reform opponents to highlight outlier cases and anecdotal information to claim that bail reform makes us less safe. We ...
Blog Post
Lauren Jones
Don't Let Fearmongering Drive Bail Policy
Crime in New York is at historic lows. Yet critics of bail reform, which went into effect on January 1, 2020, have been hard at work warning that bail reform endangers public safety—claiming that the law has led to a surge in crime. But, as these fact sheets demonstrates, it is far too early to reach any conclusion about the impact of bail reform.
Sticking with Bail Reform in New York
On January 1, 2020, New York ushered in a new bail law that delivers justice, fairness, and public safety. As a result, thousands of New Yorkers who otherwise would not have been able to afford bail, or only do so at great personal expense, have been able to keep their jobs, stay with their families, remain in school, and return to their communitie ...
Bail Assessment Pilot
A primary goal of the bail reform movement is to eliminate money bail—a practice that is fundamentally unfair and disproportionately burdens people of color and those with low incomes. But before this goal is reached—and while the vast majority of courts across the country still use money bail—what can be done to mitigate the harm it causes? In ...
Project
Insha Rahman
Closing Rikers Island
In support of a yes vote on October 17
These five commitments, along with a vote to move forward with new construction, give us a fighting chance to seize the opportunity to end mass incarceration in New York City. This is not a moment to be squandered or to be taken for granted. New York City has tried to close Rikers Island twice before—once in the late 1970s, and once again in the mi ...
Blog Post
Insha Rahman
New York, New York
Highlights of the 2019 Bail Reform Law
In April 2019, New York passed legislation on bail reform to update a set of state pretrial laws that had remained largely untouched since 1971. The relative lack of fanfare over the passage of New York’s new bail law belies its historic and transformative potential to end mass incarceration at the local level. What exactly comprises New York’s new ...