On October 10, 2018, the Vera Institute of Justice and staff and residents of the T.R.U.E. unit at Cheshire Correctional Institution in Connecticut convened to Reimagine Prison in the United States. The event, and coinciding report release, culminated the work of Vera’s Reimagining Prison project, launched in June 2016 at historic Eastern State Pe...
Prison in America causes individual, community, and generational pain and deprivation. Built on a system of racist policies and practices that has disproportionately impacted people of color, mass incarceration has decimated communities and families. But the harsh conditions within prisons neither ensure safety behind the walls nor prevent crime an...
In serious cases, overheating can lead to death. In 2011, ten people incarcerated in Texas prisons died from heat-related causes—setting off a series of lawsuits that ended with the state agreeing to place permanent air conditioning amenities inside units. In the last week of July 2018, as temperatures in the South reached over 100 degrees, nearly ...
Judging a person’s reentry success based on recidivism highlights their failures, but what about their successes?
Fewer people are going back to prison, according to a new study from Pew Trusts. The number of people sent back to state prison three years after being released dropped by nearly a quarter over a seven-year period. The study, which analyzed short-term and long-term recidivism rates, found that 48 percent of incarcerated people released in 2005 ret...
Vera @ Chicago Ideas - Part III
The Vera Institute of Justice teamed up with Chicago Ideas to reenvision the American prison system and imagine a society in which prisons serve as rehabilitation facilities for communities and citizens, rather than as crippling institutions. The conversations combined performance, first-person testimony, and compelling dialogue that looked into no...
Vera @ Chicago Ideas - Part II
The Vera Institute of Justice teamed up with Chicago Ideas to reenvision the American prison system, and imagine a society in which prisons serve as rehabilitation facilities for communities and citizens, rather than as crippling institutions. The conversation combined performance, first-person testimony, and compelling dialogue that all looked int...
Vera @ Chicago Ideas - Part I
The Vera Institute of Justice teamed up with Chicago Ideas to reenvision the American prison system, and imagine a society in which prisons serve as rehabilitation facilities for communities and citizens, rather than as crippling institutions. The event combined performance, first-person testimony, and compelling dialogue that all looked into not o...
The Health Consequences of Mass Imprisonment for (Black) Women
Prof. Hedy Lee discusses how mass incarceration affects the health and wellbeing of the predominantly poor and minority women who routinely deal with the absence of their husbands, fathers, and brothers. Poor and minority women, particularly African American women, face markedly higher rates of chronic diseases, such as obesity and diabetes, and po...
Launched as part of Prison Visiting Week for Vera’s Reimagining Prison initiative, this explainer video focuses on alternative approaches to incarceration in use by countries such as Germany. Comparatively, “tough on crime” practices in the U.S. have been ineffective. We spend $80 billion on incarceration per year, yet more than half the people who...
