Sentencing and Corrections
Vera's Center on Sentencing and Corrections (CSC) works to drive change in the criminal justice system through research, practice innovation, testing new ideas, and policy development assistance to criminal justice practitioners at the local, state, and national level. The Center’s work focuses on developing and supporting balanced, fair and humane sentencing and corrections policies to reduce the overall use of incarceration; to transform the in-custody experience into one that can improve the lives of those incarcerated so that they return home to support their families and communities; and to ensure that prisons and jails are safe for those incarcerated and as well as those who work there. Most recently, CSC has embarked on Reimagining Prison, an ambitious 18-month initiative that aims to drive a national conversation on the purpose of incarceration and arrive at a truly transformative vision for jails and prison in an America that uses these institutions dramatically less than we currently do.
Featured
Out of Sight
The Growth of Jails in Rural America
America’s 3,283 jails are the “front door” to mass incarceration. But for too long, county jail systems have operated and grown outside of public view. Vera’s Incarceration Trends data tool, launched in 2015, illuminated the growth in local jail populations over the last 40 years. This report and accompanying data visualization explores one of the ...
Measuring Public Safety
Responsibly Interpreting Statistics on Violent Crime
For the Record Evidence Brief Series With a few hyper-localized exceptions that require targeted attention, violent crime rates are lower today than they have been at any point over the past four decades. However, this era of public safety has been misrepresented by some media reports and public commentary concluding that violent crime increases in...
The Price of Prisons
Examining State Spending Trends, 2010 - 2015
From the early 1970s into the new millennium, the U.S. prison population experienced unprecedented growth, which had a direct influence on state budgets. In recent years, however, lawmakers in nearly every state and from across the political spectrum have enacted new laws to reduce prison populations and spending. This report, which builds upon the...
Related Work
Reimagining Prison
Reimagining Prison Webumentary
Here's How Bail Works
The criminalization of poverty in the justice system
Insha Rahman, program director for the Vera Institute of Justice, explains how the cash bail system criminalizes poverty in the United States. This video was produced in partnership with Global Citizen.
Opening Doors
Safely Increasing Access to Public Housing for People with Conviction Histories
For more than 600,000 people leaving prison and the nearly 11 million cycling through jails annually, research shows that safe, affordable housing is essential for them to succeed after they are released. While all public housing authorities (PHAs) must, by law, place lifetime exclusions on people who are lifetime-registered sex offenders or who ha...
Janetta Johnson
Transgender Advocate and Formerly Incarcerated Person
Janetta Johnson, executive director of the Transgender, Gender-Variant, and Intersex Justice Project (TGIJP) discusses the struggles transgender people face in the criminal justice system.
Gender Awareness Training for Sheriff's Deputies
Stephan Thorne teaches for the San Francisco Sheriff’s Department, where he conducts a gender awareness training for new deputies to increase respectful interactions between law enforcement and members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender plus (LGBT+) community. The training is the first of its type to be certified by the California Peace...
Women in Segregation
Many efforts to understand and reform the use of segregation—also commonly called solitary confinement or restrictive housing—focus on incarcerated men. However, what is often ignored are women’s unique pathways into segregation and the differential impact that its restrictive conditions can have on them. Through the Safe Alternatives to Segregatio...
The New Dynamics of Mass Incarceration
The rise of mass incarceration, spanning the 1970s to the early 2000s, was characterized by continuous, unified growth in both prison and jail populations across states and counties. In contrast, the past decade has given rise to what is widely recognized as an era of reform, with prison admission rates declining by 24 percent since 2006 and jail a...
Second Chance Pell Experimental Sites Initiative Update
Postsecondary education in prison has been shown to contribute to successful reentry for people who have been incarcerated, while promoting public safety. The Second Chance Pell (SCP) Experimental Sites Initiative, launched by the U.S. Department of Education in 2015, provides need-based Pell grants to people in state and federal prisons through pa...
Rethinking Restrictive Housing
People in Prison 2017
Assessing and targeting criminal justice reforms requires an up-to-date view of the number of people in state and federal prisons. The Bureau of Justice Statistics collects this data, but their reports lag prison populations by a year or more. In order to get an earlier glimpse at these numbers, Vera researchers collected information directly from ...
Rethinking Restrictive Housing
Lessons from Five U.S. Jail and Prison Systems
In recent years, the practice of restrictive housing (otherwise known as solitary confinement or segregation) in U.S. prisons and jails has been the subject of increased scrutiny from researchers, advocates, policymakers, media, and the government agencies responsible for people who are incarcerated. Originally intended to manage people who committ...