Reducing the Use of Jails
Conversations about mass incarceration tend to focus on prison, but local jails admit 20 times more people annually. The long-term trend is shocking: In 1982, for every 100 arrests, 51 people were booked into jail. By 2012, even after crime rates plummeted, that ratio had swelled to 95 out of 100, reflecting a knee-jerk use of jail out of step with threats to public safety. Today, jails log a staggering 12 million admissions a year—mostly poor people arrested for minor offenses who can’t post bail, and for whom even a few days behind bars exact a high toll.
It doesn’t have to be this way. Through the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge, our own office in New Orleans, and direct partnerships with jurisdictions nationwide, we’re helping officials use jails as they were intended: to protect communities from dangerous people. There’s no simple fix, so the work includes using alternatives to arrest and prosecution for minor offenses, recalibrating the use of bail, and addressing fines and fees that also trap people in jail.
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Safety and Justice Challenge
An initiative to reduce over-incarceration in America's jails
The Safety and Justice Challenge is an initiative to reduce over-incarceration by changing the way America thinks about and uses jails. The initiative—an initial five-year, $75 million investment by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation—features a competition to help jurisdictions across the country create fairer, more effective local j...
Incarceration's Front Door
The Misuse of Jails in America
Local jails exist in nearly every town and city in America. Intended to house only people deemed to be a danger to society or a flight risk, jails have become massive warehouses primarily for those too poor to post even low bail or too sick for existing community resources to help. And the burden of jail incarceration doesn’t fall on everyone equal...
Incarceration Trends
Data tool providing information on jail and prison populations in every U.S. county
The Incarceration Trends Project aims to inform the public dialogue, advance research, and help guide change by providing easily accessible information on jail and prison populations in every U.S. county. The centerpiece of the project is an interactive data tool, available at trends.vera.org, that can be used for reference and measurement by justi...
Project
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Christian Henrichson
Related Work
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...
Supporting Bail Reform Is Good Business
There is no doubt that New York’s bail system is broken. Over 16,000 New Yorkers across the state are incarcerated because they cannot afford to post bail, at a cost of over $350 million a year to taxpayers to hold them in jail. Advocates, reformers, policymakers, and legislators have long been calling for bail reform in Albany. Yesterday, another...
Blog Post
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Anton Robinson
Give Progress a Chance
Less than one year ago, Louisiana passed a historic Justice Reinvestment Package (JRI), with the goal of finally shedding its infamous title of incarceration capital of the world. With help from the analysis conducted by The Pew Charitable Trusts (Pew), the bi-partisan supported legislative package focused on decreasing prison admissions for nonvio...
Blog Post
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Jessi LaChance
An Unjust Burden
The Disparate Treatment of Black Americans in the Criminal Justice System
The evidence for racial disparities in the criminal justice system is well documented. The disproportionate racial impact of certain laws and policies, as well as biased decision making by justice system actors, leads to higher rates of arrest and incarceration in low-income communities of color. However, there is no evidence that these widely disp...
New Orleans’ Jail Population drops to its lowest point since 1979
As the City of New Orleans marks its tricentennial, Mayor Mitch Landrieu announced today that the city’s jail population has reached its lowest level in nearly 40 years. This is a remarkable accomplishment for a city that just a few years ago held more people in jail per capita than any other urban jurisdiction in the country. For the last 12 yea...
Blog Post
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Corinna Yazbek
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Mathilde Laisne
In Our Backyards Stories
United Toward Justice
Urban and Rural Communities Share Concerns about Incarceration, Fairness of the Justice System, and Public Spending Priorities
Research by the Vera Institute of Justice (Vera) has demonstrated rising incarceration rates in small, rural counties and declining rates in large, urban counties—so we wondered: is this the product of a country divided on issues of incarceration and justice? In a moment shaped by narratives of bitter partisan and geographic divisions, one might ex...
Blog Post
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Jasmine Heiss
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Jack Norton
New York City Mayor Moves Forward on Plans to Close Rikers
New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio announced today that he will move forward on plans to replace the Rikers Island jail complex with smaller, borough-based jail facilities. The mayor and the New York City Council reached an agreement to develop a single public review process for four proposed jail sites in Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx...
Blog Post
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Vera Staff
Greater Justice New York
New York State is a microcosm of the landscape of incarceration across our country. Large, urban areas like New York City carry the torch of justice reform—standing tall on a commitment to close the notorious jail complex at Rikers Island and further drive down crime. In contrast, rural, less populated parts of the state—in counties like Chautauqua...
Project
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Insha Rahman
Alaska Moves to Eliminate Cash Bail
The State of Alaska moved this year to eliminate cash bail and implement a risk-based system for pretrial incarceration. According to a new state law, which went into effect on January 1, people will no longer be held in jail simply because they’re too poor to pay their bail. Instead, the newly created Pretrial Enforcement Division—part of the Ala...
Blog Post
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Vera Staff
Can Mentoring Take the Place of Punishing?
The Choice is Yours (TCY) is a felony diversion program in Philadelphia that channels young people arrested for drug possession with intent to distribute away from jail and into education and job training services. Nigel Bowe, program director, and Miguel, program participant, discuss how TCY mentors young adults who have grown up distrusting the c...
Graduation Instead of Incarceration
The Choice is Yours (TCY) is a felony diversion program in Philadelphia that channels young people arrested for drug possession with intent to distribute away from jail and into education and job training services. Derek Riker, former ADA in the Philadelphia District Attorney's Office, and Byron Cotter, from the Defender Association of Philadelphia...