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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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
Series: Addressing the Overuse of Segregation in U.S. Prisons and Jails
Looking to Norway for Inspiration on Reducing the Use of Solitary Confinement
Recognized as a leader in progressive incarceration, Norway’s system is based on the idea that courts are for punishment and correctional facilities are for creating better neighbors. Correctional policies and practices center around respect for the human dignity of incarcerated people and staff. They focus primarily on rehabilitation, resocializat ...
Series: Addressing the Overuse of Segregation in U.S. Prisons and Jails
Corrections at a Crossroads
Ironically, prisons began as 19th century reforms—a movement away from the barbarism of public humiliation, corporal punishment, and executions. Practices like solitary confinement—pioneered at Eastern State Penitentiary and in Auburn Prison’s regime of silent, forced labor—were meant to rehabilitate incarcerated people. They reflected moralistic a ...
Blog Post
Sebastian Johnson
On Bail Reform We Need Less Fear-Based Speculation—and More Data
Bail reform is working. But in a moment when many are questioning the impact of the new law, a lack of publicly available data in real time about other critical metrics—including crime and arrest rates—leaves open the door for bail reform opponents to highlight outlier cases and anecdotal information to claim that bail reform makes us less safe. We ...
Blog Post
Lauren Jones
Don't Let Fearmongering Drive Bail Policy
Crime in New York is at historic lows. Yet critics of bail reform, which went into effect on January 1, 2020, have been hard at work warning that bail reform endangers public safety—claiming that the law has led to a surge in crime. But, as these fact sheets demonstrates, it is far too early to reach any conclusion about the impact of bail reform.
Sticking with Bail Reform in New York
On January 1, 2020, New York ushered in a new bail law that delivers justice, fairness, and public safety. As a result, thousands of New Yorkers who otherwise would not have been able to afford bail, or only do so at great personal expense, have been able to keep their jobs, stay with their families, remain in school, and return to their communitie ...
Series: Target 2020
Getting Rid of Private Prisons Isn’t Enough
Vera has committed to a 10-year strategy to end the incarceration of girls. To accomplish this by 2029, we have created a three-pronged approach: Target the top incarcerators. Together, the top eight states—California, Florida, Indiana, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas—account for more than 50 percent of the nation’s incarceration ...
Blog Post
Logan Schmidt
In Our Backyards
The geography of mass incarceration has shifted dramatically. Small counties across the country now account for more than half of America's jail population. This untold story calls for ending mass incarceration where it begins–in all our backyards.
Annual Report 2019
A Vision for Change
Series: Target 2020
Time for a New Federal Commitment on Rural Jail Incarceration
Decades of disinvestment from health, education, and other services have coincided with higher incarceration rates, resulting in additional public resources devoted to law enforcement and incarceration. This has created a vicious cycle, with the increased need to fund carceral systems seemingly self-evident. Then, when local jails fill their beds, ...
Blog Post
Micah Haskell-Hoehl
A Means to an End
Assessing the Ability to Pay Bail
Research shows that money bail is unfair, ineffective, and disproportionately burdens people of color and those with low incomes; jurisdictions that no longer rely on money bail have excellent court appearance rates, fewer people in jail, and strong public safety outcomes. In April 2018, the Vera Institute of Justice (Vera) developed and launched t ...
People in Jail in 2019
Researchers from the Vera Institute of Justice, with support from Google.org Fellows, collected data on the number of people in local jails at midyear in both 2018 and 2019 to provide timely information on how incarceration is changing in the United States. This report fills a gap until the Bureau of Justice Statistics releases its report on jail p ...
Bail Assessment Pilot
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 ...
Project
Insha Rahman