Vera Institute of Justice

Overview

There are more than 3,000 jails in the United States, holding 731,000 people on any given day—more than the population of Detroit and nearly as many people as live in San Francisco. But there’s more to the story of jail incarceration than just the numbers. In collaboration with media publisher Narratively as part of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation’s Safety and Justice Challenge, Vera’s The Human Toll of Jail project aims to shed light on the everyday experiences of those caught up in local justice systems and those tasked with administering them, illustrating not only what’s going wrong, but also how we can do better.