The coronavirus, or COVID-19, has been declared by the World Health Organization to be a global pandemic. As the number of people infected in the United States grows exponentially, we must focus on prevention and containment in the criminal and immigration legal systems. Vera and Community Oriented Correctional Health Services have created a series ...
Estimating the Spread of COVID-19 among People in ICE Detention
The SAFE Initiative is a unique collaboration among governments, immigration legal service providers, and advocates building a movement for universal representation for people facing detention and deportation. Universal representation advances a public defender system for people facing deportation, one in which every person facing deportation is re ...
Lessons from the Field
Prosecutors wield tremendous power. They decide whom to charge—and with what offense—whether to ask for bail, when to provide evidence to the defense, and what plea offer to make. For decades, prosecutors have used their discretion in ways that contribute to mass incarceration and racial disparities in the criminal legal system. However, communiti ...
Personal stories about COVID-19 and incarceration
A Multicity 911 Analysis
With more than 240 million 911 calls each year, a sizable proportion of police officers’ time consists of responding to calls for service. Despite the importance of the 911 call system, little information exists on the nature of calls for service, how they are handled, and how police respond. The Vera Institute of Justice partnered with two police ...
Year 2 Evaluation
Although people accused of crimes in the United States are entitled to government-funded counsel for their defense, immigrants facing deportation are not. It is nearly impossible to prevail in immigration court without the assistance of counsel. Representation for everyone facing deportation is, therefore, a last line of defense to keep families an ...
An initiative focused on centering racial equity in prosecution reform
Motion for Justice is a product of the Dignity, Racial Justice, and Prosecution Initiative led by the Vera Institute of Justice’s Reshaping Prosecution program and John Jay College of Criminal Justice’s Institute for Innovation in Prosecution.
To be an informed voter, it is important to understand the role of a district attorney (DA) and the impact of the DA’s choices. The Vera Institute of Justice’s New Orleans office developed this tool as a guide for residents participating in DA candidate forums and debates or performing research on the candidates. Voters can use this tool to familia ...
The United States detained 486,190 immigrants in prison-like conditions in 2019, inflicting unnecessary physical and emotional harm on vulnerable people at a $3.1 billion cost to American taxpayers. The government justifies this mass detention by assuming that immigrants will fail to show up to deportation proceedings unless they are confined. The ...
August is Black Philanthropy Month, a time to celebrate our rich history of communal giving and highlight the need for funding to help address community needs. On Wednesday, August 26, 2020, Vera New Orleans hosted an important conversation with partner organizations about the ways that philanthropy can take bold action to support social and crimi ...
A Review of the Research on Plea Bargaining
Most criminal cases that result in conviction—97 percent in large urban state courts in 2009, and 90 percent in federal court in 2014—are adjudicated through guilty pleas. Of these, researchers estimate that more than 90 percent are the result of plea bargaining—an informal and unregulated process by which prosecutors and defense counsel negotiate ...
Breaking the Cycle of Homelessness and Jail
On any given night in the United States, more than 550,000 people experience homelessness. The U.S. legal system criminalizes survival behaviors associated with homelessness and fails to acknowledge that people who are homeless face impossible odds within the legal process. Black people, who already face a disproportionate risk of homelessness, are ...