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.
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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 ...
In Our Backyards
Ending Mass Incarceration Where It Begins
Series: Covid-19
Law Enforcement Best Practices Can Help Halt the Spread of COVID-19 by Keeping People Out of Jail
Jurisdictions adopt best practices A few jurisdictions, including several of the largest police forces in the country, have already adopted some of these best practices. These departments provide examples for law enforcement agencies nationwide. Some jurisdictions are taking steps to change enforcement patterns. Miami-Dade Police Department has ...
Blog Post
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Aaron Stagoff-Belfort
Related Work
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 ...
Voter Tools: Questions for Candidates for New Orleans District Attorney
To be an informed voter, it is important to understand the role of a district attorney (DA) and the impact of the DA’s choices. The Vera Institute of Justice’s New Orleans office developed this tool as a guide for residents participating in DA candidate forums and debates or performing research on the candidates. Voters can use this tool to familia ...
Election 2020
Justice Is on the Ballot
No Access to Justice
Breaking the Cycle of Homelessness and Jail
On any given night in the United States, more than 550,000 people experience homelessness. The U.S. legal system criminalizes survival behaviors associated with homelessness and fails to acknowledge that people who are homeless face impossible odds within the legal process. Black people, who already face a disproportionate risk of homelessness, are ...
The Scale of the COVID-19-Related Jail Population Decline
From mid-March to mid-April 2020—the first month of rapid spread of COVID-19 in the United States—there was an unprecedented reduction in the number of people held in local jails. Vera’s analysis of the most comprehensive jail data available shows that the number of people in jail in the United States fell by one quarter, mainly over the course of ...
Series: Covid-19
A New Vision for Justice in New Orleans
Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, 25 percent of the people in jail have been safely released in Orleans Parish without an increase in crime. Before the coronavirus crisis, the criminal legal system assumed these people had to be locked up—despite being incarcerated on low bail amounts and nonviolent charges. But we’ve seen these assumptions—long c ...
Blog Post
William Snowden
A First Step in Mississippi toward Sentencing Reform and Fewer People in Prison
Under Mississippi’s current parole eligibility laws, two-thirds of people in prison cannot be released early; instead, they must serve every day of their long sentences behind bars. Not coincidentally, most people serving these inhumane sentences are Black Mississippians—disproportionately impacted by sentencing laws put into place at the height of ...
Blog Post
Marta Nelson