See our updated report, "People in Jail and Prison in 2020," here. 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 u ...

California voters passed Proposition 36 in 2024 in response to concerns about homelessness, public substance use, and retail theft. Proponents promised: “Proposition 36 is NOT about going back to an era of mass incarceration. This is about creating a new era of mass treatment.” However, the Vera Institute of Justice (Vera)'s analysis shows that in ...