Featured
All Research & Analysis
Building on Family Strengths for Better Outcomes
Juvenile justice agencies are increasingly aware of the benefits to partnering with families whose youth are in their care and custody. The research, albeit limited, is conclusive: youth who have more family support are more likely to succeed. In 2015, the Sedgwick County, Kansas Division of Corrections (DOC) turned their attention to family partne...
Reimagining Prison Report
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 Model Police Officer
Recruitment, Training, and Community Engagement
This report—jointly published by the International City/ County Management Association (ICMA) and the Vera Institute of Justice (Vera)—presents research conducted by ICMA on the views of police departments and communities regarding police officer recruitment, training, and community engagement. The survey targeted communities of varying sizes and r...
Vera President Nick Turner Speaks at the 2018 Global Citizen Festival
Vera President Nick Turner speaks to thousands of Global Citizens at the 2018 Global Citizen Festival about ending mass incarceration and the criminalization of poverty.
New York State Senate Guardianship Roundtable 2018
An Exploration of the Current Guardianship System in New York
The New York State Senate held a roundtable in January 2018 to explore how to improve the state’s Article 81 guardianship system, which safeguards the interests and well-being of vulnerable adults with physical and mental disabilities (including dementia and Alzheimer’s) who are unable to care for themselves. The roundtable explored whether the gua...
Here's How Bail Works
The criminalization of poverty in the justice system
Insha Rahman, program director for the Vera Institute of Justice, explains how the cash bail system criminalizes poverty in the United States. This video was produced in partnership with Global Citizen.
Opening Doors
Safely Increasing Access to Public Housing for People with Conviction Histories
For more than 600,000 people leaving prison and the nearly 11 million cycling through jails annually, research shows that safe, affordable housing is essential for them to succeed after they are released. While all public housing authorities (PHAs) must, by law, place lifetime exclusions on people who are lifetime-registered sex offenders or who ha...
Supervised Visitation and Exchange
Keeping Survivors of Domestic Violence and Their Children Safe
Ending an intimate relationship, particularly when children are involved, is difficult. When the relationship has been affected by domestic violence, risks to the safety of the adult victim and the children compound the difficulties. Despite the risks involved in granting violent parents contact with their children, some courts and legislatures are...
What German Prisons Do Differently
We toured German prisons in Hameln and Berlin, Germany and what we saw was incredible. This is what a prison system looks like when it is centered around treating people humanely. It showed us that we can do things a different way in the U.S.
Serving Safely
Fact Sheet on the National Initiative to Enhance Policing for Persons with Mental Illnesses and Developmental Disabilities
People living with mental illnesses and developmental disabilities are disproportionately represented in contacts with the police, and these interactions can lead to stress and dangerous conditions for everyone involved. Law enforcement agencies can now request the tools they need to serve safely and effectively.
Proactive policing
Prof. David Weisburd on the findings of The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report
In this interview Prof. David Weisburd (George Mason University) summarizes the findings of The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report on proactive policing—focusing on the practice’s impacts on crime, and the reactions of communities. David Weisburd is distinguished professor of criminology, law and society at George Mas...
Policing Program Brochure
American policing is at a difficult crossroads. Ruptured relations between police and many of the communities they serve represents one of the greatest challenges facing contemporary American society. To bridge this gulf, the Vera Institute of Justice seeks to advance alternatives to enforcement that maximize public safety and enhance community rel...
Select a State
Publication