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
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...
Learning How to Ask for Help
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. Alberta LLoyd, TCY career training and life skills instructor, and Marta Buechler, TCY case manager, discuss some of the numerous life ...
Empire State of Incarceration
Correcting the Overuse of Jail
New Orleans Tricentennial
Visions of Justice
What should justice look like in New Orleans for the next three hundred years? The criminal justice system in New Orleans absorbs the lion’s share of the city’s operating budget. With new and renewed leadership in this important year in our city’s history, it is time to dig deep into what it means to build a system that delivers on the promise of ...
In Our Backyards
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...
Project
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Christian Henrichson
A Path to Recovery
Treating Opioid Use in West Virginia's Criminal Justice System
In the United States, a disproportionate number of people who come into contact with the criminal justice system suffer from opioid use disorder. Key to confronting the opioid epidemic and related deaths is expanding access to a range of treatment options, including all forms of medication-assisted treatment (MAT). This report looks at how one stat...