District attorneys wield enormous power in the criminal legal system. They have the power to decide the fate of people accused of crimes at every stage of a criminal case. They have tremendous sway over other actors throughout the criminal legal system, including policing practices and enforcement. We, the people, have the power to influence how they operate. On July 15, 2020 the Vera Institute of Justice was joined by Big Freedia, prosecutors, public defenders, advocates, organizers, and others for an interactive virtual event with music, art, and discussion.
To understand how the United States became one of the most incarcerated nations in the world, it is critical to understand the role that excessive and harsh sentencing has played. In this report, Vera addresses a main driver of mass incarceration: our sentencing system. Dismantling our system of mass incarceration in favor of a narrowly tailored se ...
A laundry list of minor traffic violations can lead to tickets and even jail time. In the worst cases, police stops for trivial infractions turn deadly. But stops for those offenses—tinted windows, a missing inspection sticker, an air freshener dangling from the rearview mirror—don’t make us safer. They do, however, drive racial disparities: study ...
Decades of these policies failed our communities and our nation. From 1970 onward, decisions made to sharply increase the use of jail and prison throughout the country—and to impose harsher sentences for many criminal convictions—are now commonly referred to as the era of mass incarceration. Today, nearly 2.3 million people are behind bars. Mass in ...
