Bail and Pretrial
Nationwide, 62 percent of people in jail are not serving time, they’re waiting for justice to be served in cases that typically involve nonviolent charges. In one county jail over the course of a week, fully a third of people admitted were charged with traffic violations. America spends an estimated $22.2 billion annually to detain people in jails.
What if judges set bail amounts people could afford, or released them with no up-front payment? Bail shouldn’t function as punishment or coerce people to plead guilty, but these and other injustices are baked into the process. We’re working in New York City and nationally to address them once and for all.
Related Work
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...
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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...
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Vera Staff
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 ...
Against the Odds
Experimenting with Alternative Forms of Bail in New York City’s Criminal Courts
Statistics show that money bail is unaffordable and out of reach for many New Yorkers. On any given day, 7,000 people are detained pretrial at Rikers Island and other New York City jails because they cannot make bail. While judges in New York can choose up to nine different forms of bail at arraignment—include “alternative” forms that require littl...
Understanding Jail Growth in Rural America
If You Build It, They Will Come
Private prisons—which hold fewer than 9 percent of state and federal prisoners—are economically incentivized to fill their jail beds, a fact that has understandably fueled public outrage, investigative journalism, and even airtime in last year’s presidential debates. But jails confront similar financial incentives when they are reimbursed for peopl...
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Scarlet Neath
Reimagine Justice
Vera Institute Eleventh Annual Gala
On Thursday, April 20, 2017, justice reform leaders and supporters joined the Vera Institute of Justice for Vera’s 11th Annual Gala, Reimagine Justice. Honorees discussed approaches to criminal justice reform and the future of the movement in a very different federal climate. Samuel David Flores Murillo, a client of Vera’s recently expanded New Yo...
New York City's Pretrial Supervised Release Program
An Alternative to Bail
Policymakers and practitioners are increasingly raising concerns about the large number of people being held in jails pretrial across the US. The supervised release program (SR) in NYC is an example of a new approach to handling cases pretrial. SR gives judges the option to release some defendants who would otherwise be detained due to their inabil...
Past Due
Examining the Costs and Consequences of Charging for Justice in New Orleans
In New Orleans, as in many cities around the country, nearly every phase of the criminal justice system imposes a financial cost on the “users” of that system, even before they are convicted of a crime. These bail, fines, and fees take a steep toll on the people who face them and their families. They also affect taxpayers, who bear the cost of exc...
Past Due
Examining the Costs and Consequences of Charging for Justice in New Orleans
In 2015, government agencies in New Orleans collected $4.5 million in the form of bail, fines and fees from people involved in the criminal justice system and, by extension, from their families. Another $4.7 million was transferred from the pockets of residents to for-profit bail bond agents. These costs have become the subject of considerable publ...
Greater Oklahoma City Chamber Criminal Justice Reform Task Force
Report and Recommendations
For years, Oklahoma County has been grappling with an overcrowded and run-down jail. With discussions abounding about whether to replace it with a larger facility, the Greater Oklahoma City Chamber of Commerce convened a task force to examine the county’s local justice system and needs. Chaired by Clayton Bennett, chairman of the Oklahoma City Thun...
There is no magic bullet to fixing bail
The belief that bail reform needs to happen in New York City is no longer a fringe position. Most New Yorkers agree that someone should not sit in jail simply because he or she lacks $500 to pay bail. But what that reform should look like is up for much debate: How should bail work? What works and what doesn’t? On May 11th, Vera and the Mayor’s Of...
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Insha Rahman