Through the Ending Girls’ Incarceration (EGI) initiative, Vera and a coalition of government officials, community organizations, and directly impacted youth are working to zero out the country’s incarceration of girls and gender-expansive youth. Progress is being made:

• New York City entered 2022 with the girls' placement facilities having been empty for nearly a full year. The New York City Administration for Children's Services reported to Vera in October 2022 that the city had a nearly 70 percent drop in annual girls’ detention admissions since the start of Vera’s work. For the majority of 2022, New York City has not had more than two girls in long-term placement.
• This summer, Hawai`i reached zero girls incarcerated at the Hawaii Youth Correctional Facility, a long-term placement facility, for the first time in the state’s history. It has also reduced admissions to its short-term detention facility by 62 percent (from 186 to 71) since 2018.
• In June 2022, Vera and partners celebrated the one-year anniversary of Santa Clara County, California—a county of nearly two million people—with zero girls in its long-term placement facility and an average daily population of two or fewer young people in the girls’ unit of its short-term detention facility.

Vera’s EGI team and its partners have advanced these goals by implementing community-based solutions that work alongside girls and gender-expansive youth in advancing their own well-being and opportunity. Vera’s advocacy and fundraising has resulted in more than $10 million of investment in community-based programs, including gender-responsive diversion programs that promote the freedom of girls and gender-expansive youth and enable them to stay in their communities where they belong.