Pathways from Prison to Postsecondary Education
College in prison communicates a simple, transformative idea: people leaving prison have futures we should value and great potential we should encourage and tap. The Vera Institute of Justice launched Unlocking Potential: Pathways from Prison to Postsecondary Education in 2012. Supported by five national foundations, the demonstration project gave ...
12 New Orleans Neighbors on Ending Money Injustice
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...
Why America Keeps Building More Jails and What It Can Do Instead
Jail construction has vastly expanded America’s capacity to incarcerate people. In 1970, there were 243,000 jail beds in the United States, but by 2017, there were 915,100. This report explores the persistence of jail expansion by examining a convenience sample of 77 counties in 31 states that considered or pursued jail expansion between 2000 and 2...
Evidence from Year 2 of the SAFE Network
The SAFE (Safety and Fairness for Everyone) Network has grown to a total of 18 jurisdictions in 11 states. Network members have committed public taxpayer dollars toward legal representation for immigrants in their communities facing deportation. During its first two years, the SAFE Network has represented 744 clients with deep roots in the United S...
Supporting universal representation for immigrants facing deportation.
(Para Español: Haga clic aquí.) In immigration court, there is no legal right to a public defender for an immigrant who can’t afford a lawyer, even though deportation often threatens one’s life and freedom. That’s why now more than ever, communities across America support universal representation—a public defender system for immigrants facing depor...
Apoyando la representación universal para inmigrantes que enfrentan la deportación.
(For English, click here.) En la corte de inmigración, no existe el derecho legal a un defensor público para un inmigrante quien no tenga dinero suficiente para contratar un abogado, aunque en muchos casos la deportación pone la libertad y la vida de une en riesgo. Por eso, ahora más que nunca, comunidades a través de los Estados Unidos apoyan lo q...
A Review of the Literature on Police-based and Other First Response Models
The Vera Institute of Justice (Vera) launched Serving Safely in May 2018 as a national initiative to improve police responses to people with serious mental illnesses (SMI) and intellectual/developmental disabilities (I/DD). The initiative’s Research and Evaluation Committee developed this literature review as a first step toward creating a research...
The Next 25 Years
Marking the 25th anniversary of the federal 1994 Crime Bill, this video offers a consideration of the visionary work, big ideas, and fundamental values that can guide the next 25 years of justice policy.
The Role of Police in Ending Mass Incarceration
Police in America arrest millions of people each year, and the likelihood that arrest will lead to jail incarceration has increased steadily. Ending mass incarceration and repairing its extensive collateral consequences thus must begin by focusing on the front end of the system: police work. Recognizing the roughly 18,000 police agencies around the...
Meeting Guardianship and Decision Support Needs in New York
In 2005, the Vera Institute of Justice and New York State’s Office of Court Administration initiated The Guardianship Project (TGP) to serve as court-appointed agency guardian to a vulnerable, largely indigent population—elders and persons with disabilities lacking family or other supports—thus enabling them to live as independently as possible. Th...
A Review of the Literature as it Relates to Policing
Police spend an inordinate amount of time responding to 911 calls for service. While most of these calls are unrelated to crimes in progress, police often respond with the tool that is most familiar and expedient to them: enforcement. This exhausts police resources and exposes countless people to avoidable criminal justice system contacts. There i...
Highlights of the 2019 Bail Reform Law
In April 2019, New York passed legislation on bail reform to update a set of state pretrial laws that had remained largely untouched since 1971. The relative lack of fanfare over the passage of New York’s new bail law belies its historic and transformative potential to end mass incarceration at the local level. What exactly comprises New York’s new...