In 2016, Vera and The Graduate Center launched the Applied Justice Research (AJR) pre-doctoral fellowship. This fellowship is an opportunity to spend time at the Vera Institute and work with Vera research staff on ongoing projects related to the institute’s core areas of focus. There are a number of opportunities to join ongoing projects, listed below. Fellows will work with a Vera research team for one academic year, participate in applied research, and potentially test new ideas and research approaches to Vera’s existing work. There are up to two fellowship places for the 2018/19 academic year.

 

Eligibility Requirements

Applicants must be Level II doctoral students with Graduate Center Fellowships (GCFs), in good standing.

 

Application Requirements

 

Students should submit:

 

• A 2 page proposal narrative that addresses, under specific headings, the “project of interest” and short descriptions describing “potential research questions” that the student is interested in addressing and the “relevant experience”, and “research methods” the student would use to answer those questions.
• Letter of support from faculty advisor
  • Including recognition that the faculty advisor should have quarterly updates with each fellow’s Vera supervisor
• Up-to-date resume or CV
• Signed letter of academic standing (from applicant’s Executive Officer)

 

Students interested in more than one project should submit one application per project. Selected applicants will be asked to interview with Vera staff, depending on their project of interest, and additional materials may be requested.

 

Fellowship Details and Deadlines

 

The Fellow will be expected to spend three days per week at Vera’s offices between September 1, 2018 and May 30, 2019. Over this period, they will be embedded within a research team and will contribute to Vera work products. AJR Fellows will be encouraged to identify opportunities to publish and otherwise disseminate products from Vera projects and to explore opportunities to expand Vera’s work in new directions.  The Fellow must currently hold a Graduate Center Fellowship (GCF), the student will continue to receive the GCF funding, but will be permitted to substitute the work at Vera for their normal GCF service.  Vacation and time off will be discussed with each applicant, but will not follow the academic calendar.

 

Applications are due in full by January 29, 2018

Interviews will be scheduled throughout February.

The selected AJR fellows will be notified by March 16, 2018

 

Email any questions to LeShae Henderson: lhenderson@vera.org

Email final application materials to Jim Parsons: jparsons@vera.org and LeShae Henderson: lhenderson@vera.org

 

 

Applied Justice Research (AJR) Fellowship Projects:

 

1) Status Offenses

Center on Youth Justice

Status offenses (non-criminal offenses that are only illegal because someone is a minor) after often youth’s first touch with the criminal justice system. However, there are no studies, to our knowledge, that examine the connection between status offenses and later juvenile-level offenses. Using police and court data from a state partner (we already have the data), a Vera fellow placed with CYJ would examine the trajectory of youth through the justice system for those that start with a status offense versus those who start with a more “traditional” delinquency arrest.

 

2) AJR Policing Fellow

Program in Policing

A growing awareness of the myriad ways the justice system is failing the poor and indigent, the undocumented, the mentally ill, and especially people of color has prompted calls for reform from street protestors to the President. As the frontline of the justice system, police are perceived as directly responsible for disturbing patterns in use of force and indirectly responsible for the epidemic of mass incarceration. In many parts of the country, there is profound distrust between the police and the communities they are sworn to serve and protect. A root cause of this distrust is a policing paradigm almost exclusively focused on driving down the crime rate, a paradigm that too often comes with collateral consequences of racial profiling, heavy-handed response to some offenses (or offenders), and inadequate response to others. Within these communities, the “traditional” model of policing engenders cynicism about our laws and justice system, ironically undermining public safety and making law enforcement more hazardous.

 

Central to any reform are the following questions, all of which must be answered by all stakeholders, including members of the community who receive (or should) receive police service:

• What is the role of police in the 21st century?
• How can police agencies be accountable and provide services that reflect the needs of the communities—that are becoming more diverse as the country approaches being majority minority—they serve?
• What do communities want and need from police, as one actor in a complex and opaque justice system?
• How can reform agendas of policing leaders be adopted by city leadership, police chiefs, and rank and file?
• Who is best suited to police work, and how can law enforcement recruit these people?

 

The Research Fellow will develop research projects that enable Vera to offer significant contributions to answering these questions. In particular, Vera is eager to use research to enable a role as a national thought leader on “Right Sizing the Role of Police.” Today’s police officers are increasingly tasked with responding to a variety of social problems, including homelessness, mental illness, parent-youth conflict, and drug abuse, which might be better dealt with through other governmental or NGO channels. In many of these situations, arrest- the primary tool of responding officers- is at best a temporary, suboptimal solution and at worst leads to further, more serious criminal justice involvement. Likewise, any successful reduction of mass incarceration almost certainly requires a reduction in arrests. Vera can lead the field in rethinking the role of police in solving social problems that do not require criminal justice intervention and/or require a multi-system response.

 

 

 

3) Incarceration Trends Project Fellow

Center on Sentencing and Corrections

The Incarceration Trends Project (ITP) seeks to advance research on the prevalence and impact of incarceration at the local-level. Vera’s ITP dataset merges 45 years of county-level jail population data from the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) Census of Jails and Annual Survey of Jails, county-level prison population data from state departments of correction statistical reports, and resident population demographic data from the U.S. Census Bureau. For more information, see the ITP data tool at trends.vera.org and complete details on the ITP dataset in Incarceration Trends: Data and Methods for Historical Jail Populations in U.S. Counties, 1970-2014 (Kang-Brown, 2015).

Vera is seeking a pre-doctoral fellow that will use this dataset to explore the factors the drive the wide variation in prison and jail incarceration rates observed in the more than 3,000 U.S. counties. The fellow will also contribute to the research activities of the ITP team and help shape the future direction of the project.

 

4) Solitary Confinement in U.S. Prisons and Jails

Center on Sentencing and Corrections and Substance Use and Mental Health Program

Incarcerated people placed in segregation (commonly ‘solitary confinement’) are held in heavily isolating conditions, often restricted to a small cell for a minimum of 23 hours per day. Citing the potentially devastating psychological and physiological impacts of this practice, a diverse range of international and national bodies, advocates, policymakers, the U.S. Department of Justice, and corrections practitioners have called for prisons and jails to reform their use of segregation. However, there are still significant gaps in our knowledge relating to how segregation is used across the country.

Vera is embarking on a new set of research activities to (1) document and describe the various policies governing segregation across the United States, (2) analyze administrative data from eight state departments of corrections to identify the characteristics of people placed in segregation, the reasons they are placed there, and patterns and biases in its use, and (3) evaluate the impact of working in these conditions on the physical, mental and emotional wellbeing of corrections officers in two states.

Vera is seeking a pre-doctoral fellow that will leverage the project’s multi-site administrative records (8 states) to explore the similarities and differences among states’ use of restrictive housing.  The fellow will also contribute to the work of Vera’s research team, which will include the analysis of a national survey on the use of solitary confinement in prisons and jails.

 

5) SAFE Cities Network

Center on Immigration and Justice

The Vera Institute recently launched the SAFE (Safety and Fairness for Everyone) Cities Network, a group of geographically and politically diverse local jurisdictions from around the country that are committed to keeping communities safe and strong by protecting due process and providing legal representation to immigrants facing deportation. Studies show that immigrants who are represented are up to ten times more likely to establish a right to remain in the United States than those who are unrepresented. But, almost no non-citizens are legally entitled to government-funded representation, and most go unrepresented, meaning they are less able to access the protections to which they may be entitled under the law and instead face permanent separation from their loved ones, their livelihoods, and their communities if deported. SAFE Cities marks an important turning point as local governments around the country have committed resources to ensuring their immigrant residents are able to make their cases on a level playing field, with the assistance of counsel.

As part of this new national initiative, the research team in the Center on Immigration and Justice will be conducting a multi-year study of the varied impacts of legal representation for individuals, families, and communities across the United States. This includes ethnographic work with individuals and their families to understand the range of ways legal representation may contribute to family unity, thus offsetting the negative effects of detention and deportation; analysis of how legal representation for immigrants may contribute to a climate of public and personal safety; and measurement of the economic impacts of legal representation for individuals, households, and the broader state and local economy. This research builds on Vera’s previous evaluations of other legal access programs, contributes to the Center on Immigration and Justice’s ongoing work to develop a blueprint for universal representation for immigrants facing deportation, and will inform broader efforts to expand access to due process for all immigrants.

The Center on Immigration and Justice seeks a research fellow to help study the impact of legal representation, especially in contributing to family unity, public and personal safety, or on state and local economies. This is an opportunity to develop and conduct an original, applied research project as part of an interdisciplinary research team and to contribute to broader efforts to understand how increased access to due process might change the landscape of immigration enforcement and rights in the United States.