Policing and Immigrants
In the majority of U.S. states over last decade the number of foreign-born residents increased by 30 percent or more, with many of these new arrivals settling in suburban areas once virtually untouched by immigration. Local police agencies are challenged to serve sometimes-vulnerable residents whose culture and language don’t match that of their line officers. Meeting obligations related to homeland security adds yet another layer of complexity.
To address these challenges, we pioneered the growing field of language access and led the way in building bridges between police and Arab, Middle Eastern, Muslim, and South Asian communities. We’ve also trained police in using the U-visa, a safety net for immigrant crime victims that cooperate with police, and published guidebooks written by police for police in how to build trusting relationships with diverse communities.
Related Work
Three Advocates on the Lasting Legacy and Hopeful Future of the Criminal Justice Reform Movement
“A generation from now, what kind of American society we live in will turn, in part, on reducing the populations of jails and prisons, and successfully reintegrating formerly jailed people into the community and the economy.” Learn more about Vera’s work to end overincarceration in rural communities.
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Damien Dwin
On Independence Day, Whose “Freedom” Do We Celebrate?
In 1852, Frederick Douglass delivered an address in which he asked: What, to the American slave, is your 4th of July? I answer; a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. Sadly, 245 years after the United States declared its independence, “freedom” remains ina ...
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Insha Rahman
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What Prosecution Costs
Fifty Years Ago Today, President Nixon Declared the War on Drugs
Today, police make more than 1.5 million drug arrests each year, and about 550,000 of those are for cannabis offenses alone. Almost 500,000 people are incarcerated for nothing more than a drug law violation, and Black and brown people are disproportionately impacted by drug enforcement and sentencing practices. Rates of drug use and sales are simil ...
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Jamila Hodge
The Chains of Slavery Still Exist in Mass Incarceration
The 13th Amendment may have outlawed the enslavement of Black people, but the United States continues to devise new ways to uphold the racist hierarchies that slavery was founded on and to restrict the freedom of the descendants of enslaved people. Today, we see alarming echoes of the Reconstruction Era, when unjust laws prevented emancipated ensl ...
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Compassion, Not Confinement
How States and Localities Can Help Ensure Humane Housing for Unaccompanied Immigrant Children Awaiting Family Reunification
In the first five months of 2021, about 65,000 children were apprehended by U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) after arriving in the United States unaccompanied by a parent or legal guardian. These children come to the United States seeking protection, stability, and a chance to reunite with their families, but are instead processed at federa ...
"There Is No Other Like You": Remembering Herb Sturz
Herb’s Vera story may be familiar to many here. In 1961, he was asked by Louis Schweitzer—the philanthropist who started this eponymous organization and the son of Vera Schweitzer—to find a solution to New York City’s overcrowded jails. Herb visited the Tombs, the notorious jail in downtown Manhattan, and went cell by cell asking people why they we ...
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Nicholas Turner
In Memoriam: Herb Sturz, A Modest Giant Among Advocates
Herb was a listener. He spent time with people incarcerated on Rikers Island and advocated for what they actually needed—aid and access to employment, education, and housing—to keep them out of the system. Even in his last few years, he continued to attend monthly meetings to close Rikers, leading to the historic city council vote in 2019 to do jus ...
Blog Post
Vera Institute of Justice
Four Ways the Pandemic Made Us Rethink Our Criminal Legal System
As state and local governments scrambled to contain the virus, the punitive policies and practices that have characterized the nation’s criminal legal system became untenable. And as a result, some policymakers enacted measures that advocates have long urged. They released people from jails and prisons, reduced admissions, and took steps to make fa ...
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Photo by Lucy Nicholson (REUTERS)
People in Jail and Prison in Spring 2021
Vera Institute of Justice (Vera) researchers collected data on the number of people in local jails and state and federal prisons throughout 2020 and into spring 2021. Vera researchers estimated the incarcerated population using a sample of approximately 1,600 jail jurisdictions, 50 states, the Federal Bureau of Prisons, the U.S. Marshals Service (U ...
The Vera Institute of Justice celebrates the life and mourns the death of Michael E. Smith.
Mr. Smith spent two decades of his professional life at Vera, serving as director of the London office, deputy director, and then as president from 1978 to 1994. Known to be intellectually creative, unusually persuasive, and a skilled teacher, Mr. Smith took the helm of Vera from our founder, Herb Sturz, and solidified the Institute’s reputation fo ...
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Nicholas Turner
What Happens When We Send Mental Health Providers Instead of Police
For Daniel Prude, Patrick Warren Sr., and Ricardo Muñoz, 911 calls led to tragedy. They are three of at least 97 people killed just last year after police responded to reports of someone behaving erratically or having a mental health crisis, according to Mapping Police Violence. A person experiencing a mental health crisis is more likely to have co ...
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Nazish Dholakia
Daniela Gilbert