Reducing the Use of Jails
Conversations about mass incarceration tend to focus on prison, but local jails admit almost 20 times more people annually. The long-term trend is shocking: Twenty-five years ago, for every 100 arrests, 70 people were booked into jail. By 2016, even after crime rates plummeted, that ratio had swelled to 99 out of 100, reflecting a knee-jerk use of jail out of step with public safety. Today, jails log a staggering 10.7 million admissions a year—mostly poor people arrested on minor charges who can’t post bail and for whom even a few days behind bars exact a high and harmful toll.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Through the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge, Vera’s offices in New Orleans and Los Angeles, and direct partnerships with jurisdictions nationwide, we’re helping officials rethink their use of jails as a means to keep communities safe. There’s no simple fix, so the work includes using alternatives to arrest and prosecution for minor charges, ending the use of money bail, eliminating fines and fees that trap people in jail and, most importantly, investing in resources and partnerships that build healthier and safer communities.
Issue
Spotlights
Featured
Empire State of Incarceration
February 18, 2021
In Our Backyards
Ending Mass Incarceration Where It Begins
Coronavirus Guidance for the Criminal and Immigration Legal Systems
The coronavirus, or COVID-19, has been declared by the World Health Organization to be a global pandemic. As the number of people infected in the United States grows exponentially, we must focus on prevention and containment in the criminal and immigration legal systems. Vera and Community Oriented Correctional Health Services have created a series ...
Related Work
Close the Atlanta City Detention Center and Deliver Long-term Public Safety
In September 2020, the City of Atlanta engaged the Vera Institute of Justice (Vera) to chart a path to close the Atlanta City Detention Center (ACDC). Vera met with key justice system stakeholders, service providers, and community advocates; analyzed data; and brought to bear evidence and examples from across the country to develop a strategy to re ...
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 ...
Coalition to End Money Bond with the Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice
Black and Grassroots Advocates Help Illinois Make History with Bill to End Money Bail
Images Courtesy of the Coalition to End Money Bond with the Illinois Network for Pretrial Justice.
Blog Post
Insha Rahman
Alison Shih
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
People in Jail and Prison in 2020
Vera Institute of Justice researchers collected data on the number of people in local jails and state and federal prisons at both midyear and fall 2020 to provide timely information on how incarceration is changing in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic. Researchers estimated the national jail population using a sample of 1,558 jail juri ...
The Cost of Incarceration in New York State
How Counties Outside New York City Can Reduce Jail Spending and Invest in Communities
Jail populations have fallen significantly across New York State, and crime has dropped as well. But spending on jails continues to climb. In 2019, the 57 counties outside New York City collectively spent more than $1.3 billion to staff and run their jails. Counties must cut jail spending and reinvest those savings in communities most impacted by ...
People Need Relief from Court Fines and Fees—Even Beyond the Current Recession
Vera’s new research briefs show that in Florida and New York, the typical cost of fines and fees on a misdemeanor charge can easily surpass a month’s pay for someone making minimum wage. Yet these revenues are relatively modest to the governments that collect them, typically accounting for 1 percent or less of city and county budgets. We know that ...
Blog Post
Chris Mai
The High Price of Using Justice Fines and Fees to Fund Government
Fines and fees imposed by state, county, and municipal justice systems place an enormous financial burden on the people who are charged and pay them—disproportionately Black and brown people and people with low incomes. People who cannot pay risk a spiraling set of consequences—such as losing their driver’s licenses—and ultimately owing even more m ...
The Cost of Incarceration in New York State
Reshaping Prosecution in St. Louis
Lessons from the Field
Prosecutors wield tremendous power. They decide whom to charge—and with what offense—whether to ask for bail, when to provide evidence to the defense, and what plea offer to make. For decades, prosecutors have used their discretion in ways that contribute to mass incarceration and racial disparities in the criminal legal system. However, communiti ...
Understanding Police Enforcement
A Multicity 911 Analysis
With more than 240 million 911 calls each year, a sizable proportion of police officers’ time consists of responding to calls for service. Despite the importance of the 911 call system, little information exists on the nature of calls for service, how they are handled, and how police respond. The Vera Institute of Justice partnered with two police ...