Vera Institute of Justice

The Incarceration Trends Project found that over the last four decades, small counties have driven jail population growth nationwide. One reason is that many small jails now serve as overflow for overcrowded state prisons and federal immigration detention centers—while others are kept full by an oversized local justice system jailing people for unpaid financial obligations. This talk explores why small counties build large jails, who is incarcerated in them, and how these trends drive the overuse of jail in the United States.

About Jacob Kang-Brown

Jacob Kang-Brown is a senior research associate in the Center on Sentencing and Corrections at the Vera Institute of Justice. He is the lead researcher on the Incarceration Trends Project exploring the use of jail across the United States, and is conducting a National Institute of Justice funded project on improving responses to hate crime by researching current practices in Los Angeles County and New Jersey. At Vera, Jacob has conducted research on school discipline, status offense reform, policing and language access, jail populations, and solitary confinement in prisons. Jacob has also helped develop and evaluate re-entry services for people leaving prison and juvenile facilities, such as the Youth Futures Program and the NYCHA Family Re-entry Pilot Program. Prior to working at Vera, Jacob worked for the County of Los Angeles Commission on Human Relations, and was a public service intern with the City of Chicago’s Commission on Human Relations. Jacob received a BA in Sociology with an emphasis in Urban Studies from Wheaton College, and a MA in Social Ecology and PhD in Criminology, Law & Society from the University of California, Irvine.