Empire State of Incarceration
February 18, 2021
All Research & Analysis
The Impacts of Solitary Confinement
Advocacy and human rights groups, policymakers, health care professionals, faith-based organizations, and leaders in the field of corrections have condemned the widespread use of solitary confinement in U.S. prisons, jails, and immigration detention centers. Research shows the serious detrimental effects of spending 22 to 24 hours per day alone and ...
Why Are People Sent to Solitary Confinement? The Reasons Might Surprise You.
Solitary confinement, a widespread practice in U.S. prisons and jails, has been shown by an extensive body of research to have harmful and long-lasting negative effects on people held there, without evidence of improved safety for the correctional facilities or the community. Many people assume that solitary confinement is used only for serious and ...
What Jails Cost: Cities
Artwork by Emilio (Massachusetts)
Unseen and Unheard
Art and Writing from Inside Prison Walls during COVID-19
A Monumental Shift: Restoring Access to Pell Grants for Incarcerated Students
After 26-year ban lifts, incarcerated students can once again receive this federal financial aid
In December 2020, Congress lifted a 26-year ban on Pell Grants for incarcerated students. The ban, enacted amid a slew of “tough-on-crime” policies in the 1990s, stripped people in prison of access to this federal financial aid. Incarcerated people earn pennies per hour for the work they do in prison, making it next to impossible for them to afford ...
What Jails Cost
Close the Atlanta City Detention Center and Deliver Long-term Public Safety
In September 2020, the City of Atlanta engaged the Vera Institute of Justice (Vera) to chart a path to close the Atlanta City Detention Center (ACDC). Vera met with key justice system stakeholders, service providers, and community advocates; analyzed data; and brought to bear evidence and examples from across the country to develop a strategy to re ...
The Impact of New York Bail Reform on Statewide Jail Populations
A First Look
New York’s recent bail reform law, which was passed in April 2019 and amended on July 2, 2020, was expected to reduce the footprint of jail incarceration by limiting the use of money bail. The new law mandated pretrial release for the vast majority of nonviolent charges and required that judges consider a person’s ability to pay bail. A comprehensi ...
A Federal Defender Service for Immigrants
Why We Need a Universal, Zealous, and Person-Centered Model
The Vera Institute of Justice (Vera) recommends that the Biden administration draw from time-tested models, data, and knowledge to build a federally funded, universal legal defense service that provides universal, zealous, and person-centered defense to all immigrants. This federal defender service should be modeled on the criminal federal defender ...
Brooklyn Public Library’s TeleStory Video Visitation Program
A Process Evaluation
The Brooklyn Public Library (BPL) has taken on a number of functions adjacent to the formal criminal justice system, including reentry services and programs for the families of incarcerated people. One of those programs is TeleStory, an initiative by which families can use video equipment in the library to virtually visit a loved one who is incarce ...
Overdose Deaths and Jail Incarceration
People in Jail and Prison in 2020
Vera Institute of Justice researchers collected data on the number of people in local jails and state and federal prisons at both midyear and fall 2020 to provide timely information on how incarceration is changing in the United States during the COVID-19 pandemic. Researchers estimated the national jail population using a sample of 1,558 jail juri ...
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