VERA INSTITUTE OF JUSTICE INC

Vera's In Our Backyards initiative (IOB) is building a national movement to end mass incarceration and the criminalization of poverty and race in our nation's smaller cities and rural communities. For decades, smaller communities have been investing in jails and incarceration with devastating consequences. This quiet jail boom is consuming hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars that might otherwise be invested in services and infrastructure that can make people healthy and safe. Our goal is to end this quiet jail boom by decriminalizing poverty and public health, centering racial equity, and shifting power and resources to local communities (including public investments in housing, job training, education, and mental health programs).

IOB aims to achieve this goal through the following core strategies:

• Partnering closely with local organizers and advocates to support their efforts to reduce the use of arrest and jail, stop investments in new and bigger jails, and blueprint new solutions that advance racial equity and investments in communities (via community grants, research support, and capacity-building).

• Advancing local, state-level, and federal policy changes that decriminalize poverty, improve pretrial justice, and reinvest in communities (including policy models designed to limit over-policing and arrest, reduce pretrial detention, expand public investments in community-based services and infrastructure, and increase accountability to communities.

• Publishing research and analysis to promote and generate support for local, state, and national efforts to end mass incarceration in smaller cities and rural communities.

Greater Justice New York seeks to advance policies and practice that will make New York a model for ending mass incarceration and advancing racial justice in our country. Through data and policy analysis, research, training, and strategic communications, GJNY is working to:

• Shrink the footprint of policing, jails, and prisons in New York State.
• Support the work of our community partners to hold local and state leaders accountable for rectifying the harms caused by the criminal legal system, especially against Black people and communities of color.
• Advocate against jail expansion or construction, and for re-investing in services and infrastructure that truly build resilient communities.
• Reduce racial disparities in arrests, pre-trial detention, prosecutorial decision-making, and case outcomes.
• Model the impact of specific policy reforms—including bail, pre-trial detention, sentencing, and parole—on ending mass incarceration and advancing racial equity in New York State.

Vera's Initiative to End Girls' Incarceration is working to ensure that girls and gender-expansive youth are no longer criminalized and are instead supported in their efforts to advance their own lives and freedom. Our goal is to achieve zero youth incarcerated on the girls’ side of the country’s juvenile justice systems in less than 10 years. We aim to achieve this ambitious goal through the following core strategies:

• Target the top incarcerators: We are targeting the “Top Eight” states that together account for more than 50 percent of the nation’s incarceration of girls. They include California, Florida, Indiana, Michigan, New York, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Texas. Zeroing out girls’ incarceration in these states would cut numbers in half nationwide. Vera is currently working with cities and counties in five of these “Top Eight” states.
• Target the lowest incarcerators: We are targeting states with exceptionally low numbers of girls that can get to zero quickly. By successfully achieving zero in these states, we seek to demonstrate that this goal is achievable and sustainable, and to encourage other communities and states to join the movement.
• Generate, implement, and scale up new solutions: We work closely with local government leaders, grassroots advocacy groups, and system-impacted young people to create and implement community-based programs that equip girls and gender-expansive youth to access resources they need to heal and grow (including healthcare, housing, and education), navigate and avoid justice system involvement, and become leaders and advocates for themselves and their communities.

Vera’s Redefining Public Safety Program is working to promote true public safety, as defined by communities most impacted by our criminal legal system. This includes driving systemic change that minimizes the use of policing to address social issues; ends police violence and unnecessary enforcement that disproportionately harms Black people and communities of color; and advances data transparency to promote accountability, trust, and racial justice.

Our work includes the following core elements:

• Partnering with community-based organizations and advocates, elected officials, and practitioners to build their capacity for advancing systemic change in public safety policy and practice.

• Collecting and making accessible data and information about police budgets, operations, discipline and training, misconduct complaints, and unnecessary enforcement that disproportionately harms Black people and communities of color.

• Conducting research to advance crisis response programs that connect people in crisis to community services, while minimizing involvement with the criminal legal system and centering race equity.

Vera’s Reshaping Prosecution program is equipping progressive prosecutors to use the power of their offices to:

• Examine the historic roots and impacts of mass incarceration and systemic racial inequities in the criminal legal system, and how the policies and practices of their offices are related to and exacerbate those systemic inequities.
• Implement data-driven policies and practices that reduce incarceration and center racial equity.
• Become more transparent and accountable to the communities they serve, particularly with those most impacted by the criminal legal system.
• Ensure that changes in policy and practice are sustainable and institutionalized in each office by involving staff at all levels in their development and implementation.

To achieve these goals, Vera uses in-depth engagements of up to 18 months with prosecutors, rigorous data analysis, relationship building with community advocates, and training for line staff with “real-world” examples of how prosecutors can drive change. Vera collaborates with each office to develop and implement concrete, data-informed changes in policy and practice designed to reduce mass incarceration and promote racial equity.

Restoring Promise, an initiative of the Vera Institute of Justice and MILPA, works with prisons and jails to address the root causes and consequences of mass incarceration in how it manifests in prisons and jails. We work directly with prisons and jails to transform the culture, climate, rhythms and routines that define the prison system, starting with young adults. Young adults are “mentees” who participate in meaningful daily activities, deepen their connection to their culture and healing, cultivate an ideology of self-determination, and restore relationships with family and community. Mentors (people over the age of 25) support them in their personal growth. Staff undergo intensive training to become agents of change in support of this mission.

Vera launched our California-focused work in 2019, partnering closely with communities and government to reduce the use of incarceration, combat racial injustice, and increase investments in community-based systems of care in the state. Vera California shares our partners’ ambitious vision of wellness, safety, and racial equity for all Californians. We will leverage our access to data, policy analysis, best practices, and relationships to:

• Dramatically reduce incarceration in Los Angeles, close Men’s Central Jail, and secure investments for a robust system of community-based care so that the county can serve as a model for similar ‘care first’ approaches statewide and nationally.
• Support local organizers, advocates, and government partners across the state in decarceration and divest/reinvest efforts that deliver real community safety.
• Harness the power of advocacy to win durable and impactful local and state policy reforms.

In partnership with local government and advocacy partners, the goal of Vera—New Orleans is to advance policies and practices that disrupt over-policing and mass incarceration, center racial justice, and invest in solutions that truly build thriving communities in New Orleans and Louisiana. In order to achieve our long-term goal, the Vera New Orleans team will seek to:

• Reduce the jail incarceration rates in Orleans and Baton Rouge parishes so that they are among the lowest in the country.
• Transform the approach of criminal legal reform in New Orleans and Louisiana so that it is centered on public health and safety rather than punishment.
• Increase public investments in community-based services and infrastructure, including crisis response models that minimize involvement with the criminal legal system.
• Pursue a robust communications strategy that lifts up the accomplishments of our community and government partners, centers the experiences of people impacted by the criminal legal system, and shapes public discussion of and support for systemic change.

For nearly a decade, Vera's work to expand access to quality postsecondary education in prison has been a cornerstone of our commitment to affirming human dignity behind bars and advancing racial equity. Reflecting our commitment to changing this dynamic and building on strong bipartisan support, Vera and our allies partnered on a four-year campaign that culminated at the end of 2020 with Congress lifting the 26-year-old ban on Pell Grants for people in prison. Once implemented, this change will empower tens of thousands of people in prison to access higher education. To achieve this historic victory, we worked in close partnership with advocates, corrections officials, college administrators, policymakers, and formerly incarcerated students who stepped forward to share their stories.

With the reversal of the ban, our focus now shifts to implementation and ensuring that all incarcerated students have the opportunity to access quality higher education, the support they need to complete their programs, and the ability to secure well-paying jobs when they leave prison. Over the next three years, Vera will assist colleges and prisons in designing and implementing high-quality college-in-prison programs. There are four key areas that we are focusing on.

• Vera is launching a Corrections Education Leadership Academy (CELA) to support current and future corrections education leaders with creating statewide education systems for incarcerated people.
• Vera will assist colleges and prisons new to working together to design their college-in-prison programs, including processes for recruitment, enrollment, class selection, discipline, and staff training.
• Vera will pilot and advance strategies that colleges and corrections departments can adopt to reduce racial disparities for incarcerated students, the majority of whom are Black or brown people, and improve enrollment and completion rates for students of color.
• Vera will engage and cultivate relationships with college accrediting agencies, which are critical to ensuring the quality and success of large-scale college in prison programs (which will include assisting them with updating their policies to support expansion of high-quality college-in-prison programs, connecting them with education directors in state corrections facilities, organizing site visits to prison classrooms, and creating a training series to help them understand what quality college-in-prison programs look like).

Vera is uniquely qualified and positioned to provide leadership and support for this work. Since 2016, Vera has served as the designated technical assistance provider for the Second Chance Pell Experimental Sites Initiative (Second Chance Pell)—a pilot program launched by the U.S. Department of Education to test the return of federal Pell Grants to people in prison.