There are better ways than incarceration to make young people in need feel safe.

Too often, young people who are unsafe at home end up entangled in the juvenile legal system. This is particularly true for girls and gender expansive youth, who are often criminalized due to family conflict, abuse, and housing instability. Bresha Meadows endured years of verbal and physical abuse from her father. She repeatedly reached out to fa ...

Seventy-two people have died in LA County jails since the start of 2023.

How are people dying? Los Angeles County has not yet publicly issued causes of death for everyone who has died in county jails in recent months. However, even once autopsy reports are finalized, they don’t tell the whole story: when the coroner rules that a death is the result of “natural causes,” jail conditions can still be to blame. Researchers ...

New Vera research raises the alarm about stalling progress and warns that recent gains can’t be taken for granted.

The number of people held in jails and prisons has fallen by approximately 250,000 over the past five years, thanks in part to dramatic drops in the incarcerated population during the COVID pandemic. Yet recent trends indicate some backsliding on that number, suggesting that progress can’t be taken for granted. People in Jail and Prison in 2024, ...