Local Models
Solutions to the problem of bloated jails are within reach. Indeed, a vanguard of reform-minded officials are implementing reforms that others can follow and adapt. We’re working hand-in-hand with many of them.
In New Orleans, where Vera has had a local office since 2008, we’ve helped to expand alternatives to arrest, speed case processing, create pretrial services that change how courts make bail decisions, and most recently, begun to scope alternatives to the web of user fines and fees that in effect criminalize poverty. Our work with individual counties and cities (such as Oklahoma County and Tulsa County, OK and Whatcom County, WA) focuses on more targeted needs and problems and involves partnerships with a wide range of stakeholders, from the judiciary, to criminal justice policy bodies to chambers of commerce. And through the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge, we’re assisting officials in five sites who are committed to downsizing their jails.
Featured
Safety and Justice Challenge
Reducing the Overuse of Jails
The Safety and Justice Challenge is an initiative of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to reduce mass incarceration by changing the way America thinks about and uses jails. As part of the initiative, a network of competitively selected local jurisdictions are developing and modeling effective ways to reduce the misuse of jail. Vera ...
Project
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Elizabeth Swavola
Incarceration Trends
Data tool on jail and prison populations in every U.S. county
In 2014, the nationwide jail incarceration rate of 326 per 100,000 county residents exceeded the highest county rates registered in the 1970s, which rarely exceeded 300 per 100,000.
In Our Backyards Stories
Related Work
Incarceration in Local Jails and State Prisons
Broken Ground
Why America Keeps Building More Jails and What It Can Do Instead
Jail construction has vastly expanded America’s capacity to incarcerate people. In 1970, there were 243,000 jail beds in the United States, but by 2017, there were 915,100. This report explores the persistence of jail expansion by examining a convenience sample of 77 counties in 31 states that considered or pursued jail expansion between 2000 and 2 ...
New York, New York
Highlights of the 2019 Bail Reform Law
In April 2019, New York passed legislation on bail reform to update a set of state pretrial laws that had remained largely untouched since 1971. The relative lack of fanfare over the passage of New York’s new bail law belies its historic and transformative potential to end mass incarceration at the local level. What exactly comprises New York’s new ...
A Better Way
Global Citizen sat down with Vera’s New Orleans director, Will Snowden, to discuss ending money injustice in New Orleans. The short video that came of that discussion describes how money bail and conviction fines and fees are unnecessary, unlawful, and undermine safety and equity. It points to a better way, set out in Vera’s report, Paid in Full: A ...
Paid in Full
12 New Orleans Neighbors on Ending Money Injustice
Series: Eliminating Money Injustice in New Orleans
New Orleans's Road Map to Eliminate Money Injustice
A conversation with Paid in Full co-author Alison Shih
7. We can’t wait! Any closing words? This work is pretty amazing, because not only does it have the potential to completely change the community that I live in right now, but as the rest of the nation is really gearing up and moving in this direction, it has the potential to influence other cities and states. Historically the issue of money injust ...
Blog Post
Vera Institute of Justice
New Orleans Tricentennial
Visions of Justice
What should justice look like in New Orleans for the next three hundred years? The criminal justice system in New Orleans absorbs the lion’s share of the city’s operating budget. With new and renewed leadership in this important year in our city’s history, it is time to dig deep into what it means to build a system that delivers on the promise of ...
Report to Whatcom County Stakeholders on Jail Reduction Strategies
Between 1970 and 2014, the number of people in jail in Whatcom County grew almost ninefold—from 45 to 391 on any given day—while the overall county population only grew two-and-a-half times. With the county’s jail population surging, local government leaders, justice system practitioners, and community members became increasingly concerned about th ...
In Our Backyards
Ending Mass Incarceration Where It Begins
A little known fact imperils our nation’s collective efforts to end mass incarceration: Major cities such as New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles are no longer bearing the heaviest burden. Instead, thousands of smaller cities and towns are now grappling with the nation’s highest incarceration rates. It is time for criminal justice reformers to take n ...
Project
Jasmine Heiss
Politics, Ambition, and the Hard Work of Making the Closure of Rikers Island a Reality
Last month, Mayor de Blasio released “Smaller, Safer, Fairer: A Roadmap to Closing Rikers Island,” a report that laid out several concrete steps on the path to closure of the ten jails on the Island. In the preface to the report, the mayor acknowledged that the recommendations within are not a “quick fix.” Nobody is under the impression that closin ...
Blog Post
Insha Rahman
Out of Sight
The Growth of Jails in Rural America
America’s 3,283 jails are the “front door” to mass incarceration. But for too long, county jail systems have operated and grown outside of public view. Vera’s Incarceration Trends data tool, launched in 2015, illuminated the growth in local jail populations over the last 40 years. This report and accompanying data visualization explores one of the ...
Jail in New York City
Evidence-Based Opportunities for Reform
Jail in New York City: Evidence-Based Opportunities for Reform examines the key decision points within New York City’s criminal justice system that drive people into the jail. The report uses rich data on case processing, pretrial decision-making, bail decisions, and case disposition to understand how decision makers can impact the size of the jail ...