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.
Related Work
Overlooked: Women in Jails
Interview with Elizabeth Swavola
Women in jail are the fastest growing correctional population in the country—increasing 14-fold between 1970 and 2014. Yet there is surprisingly little research on why so many more women wind up in jail today. To learn more, read the report and see what's happening in your community using the Incarceration Trends data tool.
Series: Gender and Justice in America
Mass incarceration and its impact are devastating to women
9to5, National Association of Working Women—of which I am the Georgia chapter director—understands the devastating impact mass incarceration has on women. The rate of growth for female imprisonment has outpaced men by more than 50 percent between 1980 and 2014. Now there are more than 1 million women behind bars or under some form of correctional...
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Charmaine Davis
Overlooked: Women and Jails in an Era of Reform
Opening Doors to Public Housing
Expanding Access for People with Conviction Histories
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Margaret diZerega
Observations from Rikers: A German’s first visit to the island
This blog post reflects the author's own opinion and is not an official statement.
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Dr. Gero Meinen
Series: Addressing the Overuse of Segregation in U.S. Prisons and Jails
Gardner Fellow Danny Murillo on life after solitary
Regardless of how much time and space I put in between myself and the Security Housing Unit (SHU) in Pelican Bay State Prison, the effects of isolation will always linger. My spirit resists, resiliently, the social pathologies known to “develop in prisoners who struggle to adapt to the rigors” of isolation. The symptoms I cannot resist seem to stem...
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Danny Murillo
Bringing College Back to Prison
Second Chance Pell Convening
Second Chance Pell Convening event in Washington, DC, July 19, 2016
Improving Responses to Hate Crime
Validating a Bias-Crime Victim Assessment Tool
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Laura Simich
Safety and Justice Challenge
Reducing the Overuse of Jails
The Safety and Justice Challenge is an initiative of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to reduce mass incarceration by changing the way America thinks about and uses jails. As part of the initiative, a network of competitively selected local jurisdictions are developing and modeling effective ways to reduce the misuse of jail. Ver...
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Nancy Fishman
Examining Medical Parole in New York State
Medical parole is an option for releasing the increasing number of incarcerated people who are seriously ill or incapacitated. It can be granted to somebody with a medical condition so debilitating that there is a reasonable probability that they no longer present a danger to society. The number granted release through this policy in New York State...
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Léon Digard
Reimagining Prison: The Journey Begins
Launch event at Eastern State Penitentiary