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 misdemeanor crimes or lesser offenses. 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
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...
Blog Post
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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...
Blog Post
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Insha Rahman
New Orleans: Who's in Jail and Why?
Until recently, New Orleans was the longtime nationwide leader in urban jail incarceration rate, which today remains at nearly double the national average. Although the population of the city’s jail has been declining since 2009, there is still much room for improvement, including addressing the considerable and persistent racial disparities in arr...
Bail, Fines, and Fees
A look at how bail, fines, and fees in the criminal justice system impact poor communities in New Orleans
The New Orleans criminal justice system, like many other local systems across the country, operates significantly on funding generated from the people cycling through it—from bail and associated fees before trial, to fines and fees levied after conviction. These practices come with hidden costs to defendants—the majority of whom are poor and black—...
Safety and Justice Challenge
Reducing the Overuse of Jails
The Safety and Justice Challenge is an initiative of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to reduce mass incarceration by changing the way America thinks about and uses jails. As part of the initiative, a network of competitively selected local jurisdictions are developing and modeling effective ways to reduce the misuse of jail. Vera...
Project
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Nancy Fishman
Past Due
Examining the True Costs of the User-Pay Justice System in New Orleans
Past Due investigates a significant, widespread matter of injustice in New Orleans and throughout the country: the routine imposition of financial bail and sentencing fines and fees on mostly indigent criminal defendants. These practices come with hidden costs to defendants and taxpayers alike, from collections costs to jail time. We will measure t...
Project
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Mathilde Laisne