Lessons from Abroad
For decades as the U.S. prisoner population swelled, officials here eschewed comparisons with their counterparts in Europe. That’s no longer true. Curiosity and genuine openness to new ideas are spreading.
Two delegations of corrections administrators and lawmakers joined us to visit prisons in Europe, with the second trip featured on 60 Minutes. What they saw firsthand—the focus on rehabilitation over retribution and an underlying commitment to human dignity—is finding a foothold in the facilities they oversee. The visits are part of a larger effort to promote cross-cultural learning in an area of social policy where America hasn’t been on the leading edge.
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Sentencing and Prison Practices in Germany and the Netherlands
Implications for the United States
The U.S. prison population has increased 700 percent in the last 40 years, and state corrections expenditures reached $53.5 billion in 2012. Despite this massive investment in incarceration, the national recidivism rate remains at a stubborn 40 percent—meaning that four in 10 incarcerated people will return to prison within three years of release. ...
Crime and Punishment
New op-ed co-authored by Vera President Nick Turner
It sounds like the first line of a joke: "Three state corrections teams and some experts who are old hands at visiting prisons go to meet their warden counterparts in Germany and the Netherlands in mid-January to see what they could learn." But it's a true story—and what high-level delegations from Colorado, Georgia, and Pennsylvania learned throu ...
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Vera Institute of Justice
Related Work
A Producer's Notebook: The story behind 'Justice For All'
So what have we been doing wrong? Why is reform so important? And what are the solutions? One organization focused on answering those questions is the Vera Institute for Justice — a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization focused on criminal justice reform. Because of Lester’s leadership and ongoing commitment to shining a light on the justice-relate ...
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Dan Slepian
Vera mourns the loss of our colleague and justice champion Fred Patrick, and honors his life and legacy
We lost a good man this weekend. It is with profound sadness that we share news of the passing of our beloved colleague and friend Fred Patrick, director of our Center on Sentencing and Corrections (CSC). A mentor to many staff at Vera, Fred was a passionate and tireless advocate for a more just and humane criminal justice system. A son of Baton R ...
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Vera Institute of Justice
Restoring Promise
An initiative to disrupt the American prison system.
Embracing Human Dignity
Gala 2019 event video
Vera Institute of Justice's 13th Annual Gala event video, featuring Restoring Promise, SAFE Network, and College in Prison initiatives.
Embracing Human Dignity
Annual Report 2018
The Vera Institute of Justice is working to radically transform incarceration in America by replacing punishing practices with an approach that prioritizes compassion, true accountability, healing, restoration, opportunity, and hope. Learn more about our commitment to human dignity in our annual report 2018.
Nick Turner Interview: Pod Save the People
Vera president with Deray McKesson of Pod Save the People
Reflecting upon lessons learned from a study tour of prison systems abroad, Vera President Nicholas Turner and Deray McKesson of Pod Save the People discuss the possibilities and realities of transforming America's prison system.
To Ensure a Bright Future for LGBTQ Germans, Germany Acknowledges its Dark Past
We also know that queer individuals are especially vulnerable to hate crimes, targeting by law enforcement, mental illness, substance use disorders, and lack of access to health care—but this is especially true for queer people of color. When it comes to believing the justice system will treat them fairly, queer people of color report the lowest le ...
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Kindred Motes
Reimagining Prison in Germany and Norway
Reimagining Prison
Reimagining Prison Webumentary
Series: Dispatches from Germany
Can We Learn from Our Past?
The Holocaust forced Germany to fundamentally change how it incarcerates people. In America, slavery morphed into mass incarceration.
The 13th amendment to the U.S. Constitution abolishes slavery and involuntary servitude except as punishment for a crime—a loophole that has continued the wide-scale persecution of black and brown people through the criminal justice system. The result is a U.S. prison system designed to warehouse and dehumanize people. From the length of sentences ...
Blog Post
Alex Frank
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.