The Vera Institute of Justice’s Neil A. Weiner Research Speaker Series features Johnna Christian, assistant professor at Rutgers University in the School of Criminal Justice. In this podcast, Professor Christian talks about family members’ relationships with their loved ones who are incarcerated or returning home from jail or prison. She discusses different types of support family members provide to one another—including the often overlooked contributions made by those who are involved with the juvenile or criminal justice system—and the implications for reducing recidivism.
In the aftermath of George Floyd’s murder in May 2020, nationwide calls for reallocation of law enforcement budgets forced elected leaders to consider the values underlying their budgetary choices. But discussions largely remained limited to policing. Few major U.S. cities took a hard look at the billions invested in their increasingly vacant jails ...
To understand how the United States became one of the most incarcerated nations in the world, it is critical to understand the role that excessive and harsh sentencing has played. In this report, Vera addresses a main driver of mass incarceration: our sentencing system. Dismantling our system of mass incarceration in favor of a narrowly tailored se ...
Findings from Research with Women Detained in Buncombe County and Recommendations for Reducing the Use of Jail
This report presents an analysis of women’s experiences with the local criminal legal system in Buncombe County, North Carolina: their pathways into and out of the jail, their living conditions and concerns during detention, and their perspectives on how services and systems in the county can improve. This study occurred in September 2021 at a time ...