Bringing Dignity to Life Behind Bars
With few exceptions, American jails and prisons are dehumanizing environments. For incarcerated men and women—95% of whom will return home—the possibility of rehabilitation is undermined by the brutality and monotony of life behind bars. High recidivism rates suggest the model isn’t working. The environments are punishing for staff as well.
Downsizing prisons and jails is not enough. They must be healthy places to live and work, places that affirm fundamental human rights, and where the possibility for personal transformation is a reality. Getting there requires commitment, imagination, and close partnerships with corrections administrators and others eager for change. Our work includes ending the widespread use of solitary confinement, protecting people from sexual assault, exploring ways to better connect people who are incarcerated with their families, and expanding access to higher education in prison. It also draws on lessons from countries that take a much less punitive approach to confinement with far better results.
Issue
Spotlights
Featured
Coronavirus Guidance for the Criminal and Immigration Legal Systems
The coronavirus, or COVID-19, has been declared by the World Health Organization to be a global pandemic. As the number of people infected in the United States grows exponentially, we must focus on prevention and containment in the criminal and immigration legal systems. Vera and Community Oriented Correctional Health Services have created a series ...
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 ...
Related Work
Government Leaders Must Meet Voters’ Demands for Justice with Meaningful Change
Black voters played a pivotal role in this election, which President-elect Biden acknowledged during his acceptance speech, promising to have their backs. There is no doubt that these voters see justice reform as a top priority. The Vera Institute of Justice—in partnership with Latino Decisions, the African American Research Collaborative, Asian ...
Blog Post
Nicholas Turner
First Class
Starting a Postsecondary Education Program in Prison
In April 2020, the U.S. Department of Education expanded the Second Chance Pell Experimental Sites Initiative, adding 67 new higher education institutions to the program’s already operating 63 colleges offering postsecondary education programs in prison. Starting a college program in prison is a significant undertaking that will profoundly affect t ...
Series: Addressing the Overuse of Segregation in U.S. Prisons and Jails
Women Face Unique Harms from Solitary Confinement
Related Resources Becoming Trauma Informed: A Core Value in Servicing Women and Girls Becoming Trauma Informed: A Training for Correctional Professionals Gender-Responsive Strategies: Research, Practice, and Guiding Principle for Women Offenders Gender Responsive Interventions in the Era of Evidence-Based Practice: A Consumer’s Guide to Understa ...
Blog Post
Barbara Owen
Series: Target 2020
Voters in Battleground States Favor Restoring Pell Grants for People in Prison
These battleground state voters seem to understand that reinstating Pell eligibility for the greatest number of people in prison is a sound investment in our future. Plenty of other influential voices agree. Bipartisan momentum to get rid of the Pell ban for people in prison has been growing steadily: Since early 2019, the Association of State Cor ...
Blog Post
Margaret diZerega
Series: Unlocking Potential
Transformed by Access to College in Prison
Twenty-eight years ago, I was sentenced to life without parole and began serving time in California. Around that same time, after the 1994 Crime Bill was enacted—ending Pell Grant eligibility for incarcerated students—I saw cuts to all kinds of programs, including educational ones. Going to school and getting a college degree seemed out of the ques ...
Election 2020
Justice Is on the Ballot
Series: Target 2020
The Party Platforms Must Address the Urgent Need to Transform American Criminal Justice
America’s justice system is rooted in the nation’s history of slavery and racial oppression and applying a human dignity lens is necessary to achieve transformational change. This perspective values the intrinsic worth of human life and a person’s ability to grow and change. In that spirit, the Vera Institute of Justice (Vera) urges important party ...
Blog Post
Hayne Yoon
Logan Schmidt
New Data: Second Chance Pell Continues to Open Doors for More Students
This means that students participating in Second Chance Pell programs are learning the skills necessary to play all types of roles in their communities when they return home. For example, Milwaukee Area Technical College is offering career-specific training in areas like welding. Glenville State College in West Virginia offers an array of programs, ...
Blog Post
Margaret diZerega
Ruth Delaney
Second Chance Pell
A Snapshot of the First Three Years
The Second Chance Pell Experimental Sites Initiative, launched by the U.S. Department of Education in 2015, provides need-based Pell Grants to people in state and federal prisons. Second Chance Pell has active partnerships with 64 colleges that teach in 28 states. The schools were selected in June 2016 for the initiative, which examines whether exp ...
Lessons from Second Chance Pell
A Toolkit for Helping Incarcerated Students Complete the Free Application for Federal Student Aid
In 2015, the U.S. Department of Education announced the Second Chance Pell (SCP) experiment under the Experimental Sites Initiative, which allows incarcerated students who would be eligible for Pell Grants—a form of federal financial aid—if they were not incarcerated to access them while attending an eligible academic program offered by one of the ...
COVID-19 and Prisons Webinar
Centering Human Dignity Across Decarceration, Reentry, and Operations
During this webinar, former and current corrections and legislative leaders grapple with strategies for releasing people who are in prison, including pathways that currently exist for directors of departments of correction and those that will require gubernatorial or legislative action. Panelists also discuss what types of reentry supports will be ...
Advancing Transgender Justice
Illuminating Trans Lives Behind and Beyond Bars
While transgender and gender non conforming (TGNC) people are extremely vulnerable to heightened policing, surveillance, and targeted victimization by the state, there is little research on the experiences of incarcerated TGNC people, and almost no policy explicitly protecting them. Upon release from prison, transgender individuals often find thems ...
Project
David Pitts