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 ...
Driving the Movement for Universal Representation
How Counties Outside New York City Can Reduce Jail Spending and Invest in Communities
Jail populations have fallen significantly across New York State, and crime has dropped as well. But spending on jails continues to climb. In 2019, the 57 counties outside New York City collectively spent more than $1.3 billion to staff and run their jails. Counties must cut jail spending and reinvest those savings in communities most impacted by ...
Advancing Universal Representation: A Toolkit for Advocates, Organizers, Legal Service Providers, and Policymakers
The movement for universal representation—the idea that every immigrant facing detention and deportation should have the right to a publicly funded lawyer if they cannot afford one—continues to gain significant momentum. As a result of local and state campaigns, more than 40 jurisdictions across the country now fund deportation defense programs. Wi ...
Fines and fees imposed by state, county, and municipal justice systems place an enormous financial burden on the people who are charged and pay them—disproportionately Black and brown people and people with low incomes. People who cannot pay risk a spiraling set of consequences—such as losing their driver’s licenses—and ultimately owing even more m ...
Reckoning with Justice
Years 1-3 of the SAFE Initiative
In 2017, the Vera Institute of Justice launched the Safety and Fairness for Everyone Network—now known as the SAFE Initiative or “SAFE”—to counter the fundamental and urgent injustices facing immigrants caught up in the nation’s immigration enforcement system. With roots in Vera's work for the past 15 years building the government-funded removal de ...
A Review of the Literature
As a movement across the country has begun demanding changes to policing and public safety, the need to revisit 911 call-taking and dispatching methods has become urgent. The scope of 911 has expanded and technological infrastructure has evolved, but there have been few advances in the call-taking and dispatching aspects of the system over the last ...
Across America, there are 2.3 million people incarcerated today, and correctional facilities are consistently the site of some of the worst COVID-19 outbreaks. Correctional medical facilities are understaffed and under-resourced, resulting in incarcerated people either suffering without adequate care or occupying the limited beds and ventilators at ...
Consistently among the biggest COVID-19 clusters in the United States, correctional facilities are seeing record high surges in coronavirus infections. The crowded and congregate nature of jails, prisons, and detention centers—where 2.3 million people are incarcerated and tens of thousands of staff work each day—pose a unique threat for the infecti ...
A Dashboard of ICE Data
Starting a Postsecondary Education Program in Prison
In April 2020, the U.S. Department of Education expanded the Second Chance Pell Experimental Sites Initiative, adding 67 new higher education institutions to the program’s already operating 63 colleges offering postsecondary education programs in prison. Starting a college program in prison is a significant undertaking that will profoundly affect t ...
Shifting from Police to Community Responses
Restorative justice is a framework that views crime, conflict, and wrongdoing as harm to relationships and not merely violation of the law by focusing on people who have been harmed and their needs, while also holding people who have caused harm directly accountable for those needs. Restorative justice successes include reduced recidivism, high sat ...