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...
The geography of mass incarceration has shifted dramatically. Small counties across the country now account for more than half of America's jail population. This untold story calls for ending mass incarceration where it begins–in all our backyards.
A Vision for Change
Assessing the Ability to Pay Bail
Research shows that money bail is unfair, ineffective, and disproportionately burdens people of color and those with low incomes; jurisdictions that no longer rely on money bail have excellent court appearance rates, fewer people in jail, and strong public safety outcomes. In April 2018, the Vera Institute of Justice (Vera) developed and launched t...
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 until the Bureau of Justice Statistics releases its report on jail p...
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.