From escalating attacks on immigrant communities to long-standing conflicts between police and communities of color, the promise of justice for all appeared to be in grave danger in 2017. At Vera, we renewed our commitment to fight for justice, one built on the bedrock American values of fairness and human dignity. As always, our success in driving change was built on our strong partnerships with government and community leaders, particularly at the state and local levels. We continued to make great progress in our work to close mass incarceration’s front door, transform life behind bars, and deliver safety, trust, and justice to a more diverse America.

At a time when the promise of justice for all appears to be in grave danger—from escalating attacks on immigrant communities to long-standing conflicts between police and communities of color—we are fighting to protect and restore core American ideals that are the hallmark of our democratic society: safeguarding justice for everyone, protecting vulnerable families and communities, and building a more diverse and inclusive America. 

Detentions and deportations are condemning hundreds of thousands of immigrant residents to face a life sentence of separation from their loved ones, their livelihoods, and their communities. These injustices strike at the principles upon which the American legal system is based: rights of due process, equal treatment, and access to legal counsel. Our immigrant communities are justifiably afraid. By launching the SAFE (Safety and Fairness for Everyone) Cities Network, we are working to ensure that immigrants will not be detained and permanently separated from their families solely because of their inability to afford a lawyer.

More than a dozen cities and counties across the nation—including Atlanta, Baltimore, Chicago, San Antonio, and Oakland—joined us to provide universal, high-quality legal representation for people facing immigration detention and deportation. In the last year, we have worked closely with participating Network cities to set up their programs, and select and provide training for their legal service providers. SAFE Cities builds on the pioneering New York Immigrant Family Unity Project (NYIFUP), which Vera co-founded in 2014. NYIFUP began in New York City and has since expanded to offer legal counsel for all indigent immigrants detained and facing deportation in New York State. Our new, groundbreaking analysis of the NYIFUP program revealed that immigrants provided with an attorney can increase their odds of a successful case outcome by 1,100 percent—and that allowing immigrants to remain with their families has significant social and economic benefits.

Recent calls for increased “law and order” are adding to the already high levels of alienation, anger, and mistrust between police and communities. In response to urgent calls for help from community advocates and police professionals, we developed and launched PEACE (Police Enhancing Accountability through Community Engagement). This innovative initiative was successfully piloted in Asheville, North Carolina, where we worked closely with the Asheville Police Department (APD) and 16 community groups (including Black Lives Matter and the Racial Justice Coalition) to carefully navigate several difficult questions about policing in the wake of a fatal, officer-involved shooting. Our facilitation led to a renewed level of understanding and trust between the APD and the communities it serves, as well as revised use of force and de-escalation policies designed to avoid tragic interactions in the future. Over the next two years, PEACE will actively assist police and community members in several cities and counties to cooperatively take a thoughtful, but critical look at police policies that could be strengthened with community input and the expertise of national policing experts. PEACE will help bolster police-community partnerships, build a foundation for further collaboration, and cultivate a strong narrative about policing based on public accountability and trust.

We passionately believe in building justice systems that advance restoration and hope instead of retribution. As part of our commitment to reimagining and transforming life behind bars, we’re working to ensure that incarcerated people are given the opportunities and tools they need to learn from their mistakes, return to their families and communities, and succeed in their lives.

Over the past year, we launched a new initiative—Restoring Promise—that works with corrections agencies to revolutionize the way young adults are treated in adult prison. Our work began by partnering with the Connecticut Department of Corrections to open an innovative housing unit (now known as the TRUE—Truthfulness, Respectfulness, Understanding, and Elevating—Community) for incarcerated young adults, one that centers on family partnership, healing, peer support, accountability, and career readiness. Mentors (men serving life without parole) were selected to work in partnership with staff to support young adults at TRUE in achieving success. Staff received intensive training in key areas such as young adult development, healing-informed care, conflict resolution, coaching, and family engagement. To date, our work has achieved promising results. Before we began our work, a quarter of prison incidents like fights across Connecticut involved a young adult, but there has not been a single physical fight in the TRUE unit since it opened in January 2017. Corrections staff report greater job satisfaction, and nearly all young adults report that their time in the unit is preparing them to succeed. In the coming year, Vera will work with Connecticut to scale this new approach to all incarcerated young adults throughout the state—beginning with young adults in Connecticut’s only prison for women—and in other states.

For more than a decade, Vera has worked with many states and cities to reduce the use of solitary confinement. Our efforts are grounded in our commitment to improving human dignity behind bars. Our accomplishments illustrate how the success of the reforms we implement with an initial set of partners can be replicated across many communities. For example, starting in 2015, we partnered with Middlesex County, New Jersey; New York City; Nebraska; Oregon; and North Carolina. Through our assistance and support, these partners have achieved impressive results, with some systems safely decreasing the number of people held in solitary by more than 50 percent over the last two years. Other sites have eliminated solitary for incarcerated young people, sharply reduced the number of offenses that are punishable by solitary, and reduced the maximum time allowed in solitary.

At the same time, we’re working to dramatically expand access to education beyond high school to more incarcerated students. We’re doing so with 66 colleges and 100 prisons in 27 states. Evidence overwhelmingly points to the transformative benefits of offering postsecondary education to people who are incarcerated, from decreased recidivism rates to increased economic prospects and improved community safety and well-being. People who receive educational programming in prison are 43 percent less likely to be re-incarcerated and 13 percent more likely to find a job, and education programs in prisons provide savings of up to $5 for every $1 spent on incarceration. In the last year, as a result of our assistance, our partner sites were able to enroll more than 4,000 students in courses, enable nearly 500 students to graduate with a degree or credential, and assist students with enrolling in college post-release.

Education offers important opportunities to people who have been incarcerated, as well as to the communities they return to. But more doors need to be opened. Too often, criminal histories and convictions create insurmountable barriers to securing housing for hundreds of thousands of formerly incarcerated individuals at the very moment when they need it most to stabilize their lives. Building on our successful work in New York City, we launched a national project to assist public housing authorities, community supervision agencies, and reentry service providers to work together to safely increase access to public housing along with providing a rich array of community-based support services for formerly incarcerated individuals. As we learned from our work in New York City, stable housing and strong support networks are critical to helping formerly incarcerated individuals reunite with their families, re-enter their communities, and rebuild their lives after release, all of which helps make our communities safer and stronger. Chosen through a competitive selection process, the six participating jurisdictions for our national initiative include Providence, Rhode Island; Springfield, Massachusetts; and the state of Colorado.

We are proud of the progress that we have made that has the potential to improve the lives of so many, but we also know that there is so much more to be done. In 2018, we’re committed to pursuing innovative initiatives that include: 

•  Expanding our work to spread the word about the growing use of jails in small and rural counties and provide concrete, local solutions to this problem ;
• Working to create a fairer, more humane, and more effective criminal justice system in New York City through bail reform, changing prosecutorial practice, reimagining health interventions for people right after arrest, and the closing of Rikers Island;
• Partnering with Connecticut to deliver the Restoring Promise model to all incarcerated young adults throughout the state, working with the Middlesex Jail and House of Corrections in Massachusetts to implement the model in that county, and announcing an additional partner site for this initiative;
• Partnering with New York City to end girls’ incarceration locally and create a model for ending girls’ incarceration across the nation;
• Significantly expanding our efforts to provide legal representation for immigrant residents facing deportation, helping ensure that immigrant families stay together and that their communities remain strong and stable;
• Helping newly elected, reform-minded prosecutors across the nation to transform their roles by developing and implementing new strategies to reduce over-incarceration and racial disparities;
• Facilitating local police-community partnerships that constructively address conflict and racism, promote greater trust and accountability, and re-shape key police policies and practices in a way that is genuinely informed by the community; and
• Improving the justice system’s responses to marginalized victims of crime, including people with disabilities, LGBTQ people, and victims of domestic violence.

Your continued support is crucial to strengthen us as we go forward and address difficult challenges—and great opportunities.