Criminal Justice Responses to the Coronavirus Pandemic
America has become a global epicenter in the COVID-19 pandemic, and some of the country’s most vulnerable people are in jails, prisons, and detention centers—places where they are at extreme risk of infection and have no ability to protect themselves. This moment highlights the vital need to shift away from punitive practices that funnel people int ...
Alternatives to Police-Based Approaches
Police are ill-equipped to safely and effectively serve people in behavioral health crisis. Even when officers receive training in crisis intervention and de-escalation, the mere presence of armed, uniformed police whose core function is criminal enforcement can exacerbate distress and escalate mental health-related situations. This threat is compo ...
Adolescent Behavioral Learning Experience Program at Rikers Island
In 2012, the City of New York launched the nation’s first social impact bond—an innovative form of pay-for-success contracting that leverages private funding to finance public services—to fund the Adolescent Behavioral Learning Experience (ABLE) program, a large-scale initiative serving 16- to 18-year-old youth detained in New York City’s Rikers Is ...
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 ...
Suicides and self-harm are endemic to our nation’s jails, with suicide the leading cause of mortality for jail inmates. Given the high incidence of suicide and serious self-harm in corrections facilities, it is important for corrections agencies, including staff, to understand the causes of these incidents and improve policies and practices to mini ...
The Pre-Arraignment Screening Initiative
For people with complex health conditions in need of timely access to medical services, the time between arrest, arraignment, and admission to jail is particularly dangerous and represents a missed opportunity to connect this population with much needed services and support. The Vera Institute of Justice is working with the New York City Department ...
Furthering Innovation Through Information Sharing
Bridging the Justice-Health Divide, an expansion of the DC Forensic Health Project, uses data from several Washington, DC agencies to provide government and community-based organizations with the information they need to gauge rates of mental health problems among the people arrested and improve the effectiveness and reach of mental health services ...
Vera’s Substance Use and Mental Health Program launched this project in January 2013 to study the role of indigent defense, also known as public defense, for defendants with mental health disorders. This work aims to describe the needs and priorities of clients with mental health disorders as well as the challenges faced by their attorneys when rep ...
Vera’s Substance Use and Mental Health Program launched the Justice and Health Connect (JH Connect) initiative in 2011 with support from the Bureau of Justice Assistance. JH Connect aims to increase agencies’ capacities to share data across behavioral health and justice systems in confidential, legal, and ethical ways to better serve people with be ...
The Los Angeles Jail to Community Reentry Project sought to inform improvements to reentry services for people returning to the community. This project expanded upon the Substance Use and Mental Health Program's work on jail reentry in New York City using empirical data to assess the existing range of reentry interventions, with a particular focus ...