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
How New Orleans Funds Justice
The principal agencies of the New Orleans local criminal justice system—the state and municipal criminal courts, the district attorney’s office, the public defender’s office, and the sheriff’s office—rely significantly on revenues from fees imposed on people who are arrested. This funding structure is the product of state law, state and local budge...
Vera President Nick Turner Speaks at the 2018 Global Citizen Festival
Vera President Nick Turner speaks to thousands of Global Citizens at the 2018 Global Citizen Festival about ending mass incarceration and the criminalization of poverty.
Here's How Bail Works
The criminalization of poverty in the justice system
Insha Rahman, program director for the Vera Institute of Justice, explains how the cash bail system criminalizes poverty in the United States. This video was produced in partnership with Global Citizen.
Beyond Money Bail
Looking Back to Move Ahead
Check out the Data Center’s complete New Orleans Prosperity Index: Tricentennial Collection and read more on our report on the history of money bail.
Blog Post
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Benjamin Weber
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...
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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...
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Jessi LaChance
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—including “alternative” forms that require lit...
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