Treatment not Jail

Series: Addressing the Overuse of Segregation in U.S. Prisons and Jails

Ironically, prisons began as 19th century reforms—a movement away from the barbarism of public humiliation, corporal punishment, and executions. Practices like solitary confinement—pioneered at Eastern State Penitentiary and in Auburn Prison’s regime of silent, forced labor—were meant to rehabilitate incarcerated people. They reflected moralistic a ...

Series: Target 2020

Vera has committed to a 10-year strategy to end the incarceration of girls. To accomplish this by 2029, we have created a three-pronged approach: Target the top incarcerators. Together, the top eight states—California, Florida, Indiana, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas—account for more than 50 percent of the nation’s incarceration ...

People with mental illnesses and developmental disabilities are more likely to encounter police than get medical help when they’re in crisis. Lapses in communication—an individual in crisis struggling to understand an officer’s command, an officer misinterpreting that struggle as willful noncompliance and countering more aggressively, exacerbating ...

We’re in the middle of a public health crisis: overdose deaths have overtaken motor-vehicle accidents as the leading cause of injury-related death in our country.  Research shows that a public health response is in order—something that’s already successfully practiced in many places around the country where the justice system coordinates with the c ...

The millions of people who cycle through our nation’s courts, jails, and prisons every year experience far higher rates of chronic health problems, infectious diseases, substance use, and serious mental illness than the general population. Justice Reform for Healthy Communities is a year-long initiative that aims to improve the health and well-bein ...