Vera works with government and community partners across the country to advance research, analyze policy, pilot programs, and implement solutions on the ground. Working on nearly 60 projects in 40 states, Vera is committed to developing solutions to the most pressing injustices of our day. This page encompasses all of Vera’s work in Michigan, and any related news coverage.
For years, Wayne County has been working to resolve longstanding problems of overcrowding and poor conditions in the Wayne County Jail. Vera was engaged by the Hudson-Webber Foundation to conduct a study of Wayne County’s jail population in partnership with a working group of local justice-system stakeholders. The study involved analyzing quantitat ...
Findings and Recommendations
See our updated report, "People in Jail and Prison in 2020," here. 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 u ...
State Financial Aid for Incarcerated Students
Postsecondary education in prison puts people on a path toward a brighter future by disrupting the cycle of poverty and incarceration. But it has not been offered at scale due to the numerous barriers—including the 1994 ban on Pell Grants to people in prison—that prevent students and postsecondary institutions from accessing state and federal fundi ...
A key goal of the Policing Program at Vera is to elevate innovative approaches to policing that employ alternatives to enforcement. The Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Office (WCSO) in Michigan is doing just that in its community outreach program employing formerly incarcerated people, which isspearheaded by Sheriff Jerry L. Clayton and Derrick Jackson ...
Sheriff’s Office Hires Formerly Incarcerated Community Members to Promote Alternatives to Enforcement
Since 2009, the Washtenaw County Sheriff’s Office (WCSO) in Michigan has been successfully implementing an innovative community outreach program that employs formerly incarcerated individuals as outreach workers (OWs). OWs assist with proactive policing strategies such as referring community members to resources, applying system expertise to help i ...
The Immigration Court Helpdesk (ICH) program educates non-detained respondents in removal (deportation) proceedings about the court process. The goal of ICH is to help individuals make informed decisions about their legal cases and, in doing so, improve the efficiency and effectiveness of immigration court proceedings. Vera works with thirteen nonp ...
Providing zealous, independent, person-centered representation to immigrants with mental health conditions
The National Qualified Representative Program (NQRP) provides appointed legal representation for immigrants who are detained by the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), unrepresented by counsel, and who have been found by an Immigration Judge or the Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) to be incompetent to represent themselves in their immigration ...
