Sentencing and Corrections

Criminal Justice Responses to the Coronavirus Pandemic

America has become a global epicenter in the COVID-19 pandemic, and some of the country’s most vulnerable people are in jails, prisons, and detention centers—places where they are at extreme risk of infection and have no ability to protect themselves. This moment highlights the vital need to shift away from punitive practices that funnel people int ...

Illuminating Trans Lives Behind and Beyond Bars

While transgender and gender non conforming (TGNC) people are extremely vulnerable to heightened policing, surveillance, and targeted victimization by the state, there is little research on the experiences of incarcerated TGNC people, and almost no policy explicitly protecting them. Upon release from prison, transgender individuals often find thems ...

People trapped in the criminal justice system are typically poor and struggling to provide basic necessities for themselves and their families. Yet an arrest can lead to many and varied fines, fees, and court costs resulting in a bill of hundreds or even thousands of dollars. Vera’s Justice Fines and Fees Project will explore just how much fine and ...

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 ...

Since 2017, the Vera Institute of Justice has documented a surprising and dramatic shift in the geography of mass incarceration: while big cities and urban areas have started to curb the number of people entering their local jails, rural counties and small cities are experiencing a staggering rise in their jail populations. Although research on the ...

Ending Mass Incarceration Where It Begins

A little known fact imperils our nation’s collective efforts to end mass incarceration: Major cities such as New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles are no longer bearing the heaviest burden. Instead, thousands of smaller cities and towns are now grappling with the nation’s highest incarceration rates. It is time for criminal justice reformers to take n ...

While research is growing on the effects of restrictive housing—more commonly known as solitary confinement—there are still many questions about who is housed in these units and why they are there. Moreover, while many studies have investigated the impact of placement in restrictive housing on incarcerated people, there is very little research on t ...

Vera is helping cities and counties around the country end their overreliance on jails and create new pathways to community safety and health that prioritize racial equity and repairing harm caused by mass incarceration. Vera works collaboratively with local governments and communities to study jail use and jail population trends and to provide rec ...

Expanding Access for People with Conviction Histories

Access to safe, affordable housing is essential to the success of people in reentry and their families. For people leaving prison or jail or those with conviction histories who want to reunify with their family members in public housing or apply for housing themselves, admissions criteria can be a serious barrier. Federal guidelines leave many poli ...

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. Vera ...