In 2016, the Vera Institute of Justice and The Graduate Center launched the Applied Justice Research (AJR) pre-doctoral fellowship. This fellowship is an opportunity to spend a full academic year at the Vera Institute, working 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.

 

Research at Vera

 

The use of data to inform policy and drive change is at the core of Vera’s approach to reform. Researchers based in each of Vera’s thematic centers and programs use a range of methods and approaches to address some of the most pressing justice issues of our time. Currently, Vera researchers are working on issues ranging from the conditions of confinement of young people in prison, to the systemic racial bias that undercuts U.S. policing and prosecution, to the impact of providing legal representation to people who are facing deportation. While the topics addressed by Vera researchers are wide-ranging, the common thread that runs through all of this work is a drive to use data to understand and address real-world problems that perpetuate disparity and limit the ability of vulnerable groups to access justice.

 

Application Requirements

 

Students should submit:

 

• A 2 page proposal narrative that addresses, under specific headings, the “project of interest” and short descriptions describing “goals for the fellowship”, “relevant experience” (including specific methodological expertise) and “potential research questions” that the student is interested in addressing.
• Letter of support from faculty advisor
  • Including recognition that the faculty advisor should meet once a semester with the fellow and their 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. If you are applying to more than one project, please fill out the last page of this document, indicating the projects to which you are applying in order of preference, and include it with the rest of your application materials. 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 working on Vera projects during the 2021-2022 academic year. 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. Fellows must currently hold a Graduate Center Fellowship (GCF), the student will continue to receive the GCF funding (which enables international students to apply for this award), 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 on April 9, 2021.

 

Email any questions to Jakiyah Bradley: jbradley@vera.org

Email final application materials to Jakiyah Bradley and Jim Parsons: jbradley@vera.org

and jparsons@vera.org

 

 

 

Applied Justice Research (AJR) Fellowship Projects:

 

1) Center on Sentencing and Corrections, Unlocking Potential

 

Vera’s Unlocking Potential initiative promotes postsecondary education for those who are incarcerated.  Research suggests that education is key to improving many long-term outcomes for incarcerated people, their families, and their communities—including reducing recidivism and increasing employability and earnings after release. Vera works with colleges who offer prison-based programs to ensure that they provide quality higher education to as many students as possible.

As part of this initiative, Vera is engaged in two research projects funded by the District Attorney of New York’s Criminal Justice Investment Initiative. The first is an outcome evaluation of college-in-prison programs in New York state. This project compares those who enroll in college programs against incarcerated peers who do not, focusing on outcomes like recidivism, post-release education completion, and employment. The second is a process and outcome evaluation of a reentry program for women in New York City. It compares those who participate in education- and career-based reentry programming against peers who do not, focusing on recidivism, employment, and wages.

Vera seeks a research fellow who will contribute to both of these evaluations. Depending on the fellow’s expertise, tasks may include quantitative data collection, cleaning, and analysis; qualitative data collection and analysis; report writing; or logistics support for the two projects. The fellow may also have an opportunity to develop independent research that contributes to the mission of the team.

 

2) Policing Program

 

The goal of the Vera Policing Program is to shrink the footprint of American policing and advance racial equity. We provide data and tools in support of grassroots and community-led movements, and blueprint approaches that prioritize community needs. We approach our work by focusing on areas in where disparities and biases exist, making enforcement data widely accessible, and uplifting community-based solutions.

 

Relative to these goals, a fellow would have the opportunity to contribute to several projects including – although not limited to – our Behavioral Health Crisis Alternatives work,  Arrest Trends and our continuing work in the 911 space. These projects will provide opportunities for fellows to practice and develop applied research skills in translating research findings for general audiences; contributing to training and technical assistance and working with and visualizing big data.

 

3) Center on Sentencing and Corrections, In Our Backyards

 

As incarceration rates in major cities have fallen over the past two decades, rural and small city incarceration rates have been rising. Small cities and rural counties now have the highest incarceration rates in the country, and county after county has been expanding jail capacity. Vera’s In Our Backyards initiative employs both quantitative and qualitative analysis to explore the causes, as well as the social, economic, and political implications, of these trends so that we can drive reform in places that have long been under-studied.

 

Vera is seeking research fellows that will support the work of the In Our Backyards research team and contribute to the emerging body of literature on rural and small city incarceration. The research fellows will also support the work on jail incarceration and the criminalization of poverty that the In Our Backyards team is engaged in Indiana, Kentucky, and Tennessee. For examples of our research, see: https://www.vera.org/in-our-backyards-stories, https://www.vera.org/publications/people-in-jail-in-2019, and https://www.vera.org/publications/the-new-dynamics-of-mass-incarceration.

 

Students from all academic disciplines with demonstrated experience studying incarceration are encouraged to apply.

 

For more information on the county-level historical jail and prison data that the fellow can leverage, see https://github.com/vera-institute/incarceration-trends. For more information on In Our Backyards, see https://www.vera.org/projects/in-our-backyards.

 

4) Greater Justice New York

 

The Greater Justice New York (GJNY) is an interdisciplinary team that tackles the drivers of mass criminalization and mass incarceration in New York. New York State is a microcosm of the landscape of incarceration across our country—arrests and the number of people in jail in large, urban areas like New York City are declining while a quiet but significant incarceration boom is under way in more rural, less populated parts of the state. We use research, policy, and advocacy to shine a light on injustices in all areas of the state and in all aspects of the criminal system—from bail to sentencing, parole, fines and fees, and more—and drive change through piloting innovative solutions and providing technical assistance. Our vision is a leaner, fairer, and more effective justice system where incarceration is the last resort, not the default, across all 62 counties of New York State.

 

Vera is seeking a research fellow who will work collaboratively with GJNY staff to conduct qualitative research on key issues in the criminal system including, but not limited to pretrial, bail, and parole. The fellow will gain training from research staff on several qualitative research methodologies including observations and interviewing. The fellow will participate in systematic court observations and interviewing key stakeholders (e.g., prosecutors, defense attorneys, probation staff), coding and analyzing qualitative data, and writing findings for reports. GJNY welcomes applications from students who are passionate about racial justice and wants to explore ways to achieve this through research and practice.

 

5) Center on Youth Justice, Nurturing Justice

 

Nurturing Justice is a budding initiative with the twin aims of supporting the creation of safe, nurturing communities and transforming the national conversation on violence. This project draws inspiration and grounding from peace/conflict studies, public health, black queer feminism, well-being theory, structural and community-rooted investment, and participatory action research. This initiative takes structural violence as a major obstacle to the flourishing of communities of color and seeks to support and partner with activists, organizers, and local organizations to develop comprehensive democratic plans for promoting safety, healing, and transformative community-led investment.

Transforming Violence, a sub-project of Nurturing Justice, aims to transform the conversation around violence by creating content and research on structural violence and its relationship to interpersonal violence. Transforming Justice seeks to not only uproot and address the structural drivers of violence in communities of color, but also promote healing and transformation within these communities through investment and community-building.  Antiviolence, nonviolence, nurturance, community healing, and transformative justice must be further explored to properly highlight, inform, and/or build responses to violence that dismantle structural oppression. A new narrative about violence alone is not enough.

The second sub-project, Sowing Safety, aims to support deep local work to contextualize understand the history of violence in a community and its structural drivers, partner with communities of color to assess the current anti-violence assets and investments, and foster the conditions for community-led safety agendas centered on care work, investment, and healing. Safety must be rooted locally, tended to by everyone, and cultivated from a thriving community. Responses to violence are often triaged leading to a heavy focus on ending interpersonal violence and punishing individuals. But structural violence, which contributes to interpersonal violence, is not carried out by any one individual and requires collective action and cohesion to repair. Sowing Safety aims to create the conditions for communities to collectively imagine what structural safety and flourishing looks like for them.

The heart of Nurturing Justice is building strong equitable partnerships with advocates and organizations, both local and national, to support proactive accountability on behalf of the project and ensure the initiative aligns with racial equity and respects existing and historical efforts, coalitions, and progress, especially ones rooted in local community. Another lifeblood of the project is using art and creative expression in every aspect of the initiatives. Art, inclusive design, and self-expression are essential elements to building deep community, disrupting ableist and elitist patterns, and sharing power and experience across social identities.

 

Grounding Project Values

• Nonviolence and harm-reduction
• Intersectional anti-oppression
• Holistic participatory research
• Equitable partnership
• Power-sharing & accountability
• Public education & artistic expression
• Cultural healing & flourishing
• Liberation and joy

6) Center on Youth Justice, Restoring Promise

 

Restoring Promise is an initiative across 2 organizations, MILPA and Vera, radically transforming the living and working conditions inside jails and prisons, with an initial focus on young adults. The initiative aims to end mass incarceration, advance race equity, eliminate violence in corrections, and ensure success for young adults. We work with corrections agencies using a values-based and antiracist approach to open new housing units centered on human dignity. Restoring Promise’s four values are restorative justice, racial equity, family and community engagement, and cultural healing.

 

Restoring Promise’s transformation process ensures:

• Human dignity is first and foremost- from how people are treated, to the design of spaces, to the daily schedule
• Daily life is productive- young adults attending school, work, or activities that are designed by themselves, their peers, mentors, and corrections officers/counselors
• Staff are agents of change- they go through intensive training on restorative justice, development, and family engagement
• Mentors give support- people serving life sentences are trained to provide coaching and support to staff and young adults on the unit
• Family are partners- families get an orientation to the unit, they are called on to help when young adults are struggling, and they are kept updated on young adults’ progress in their activities and education

 

Our applied research is guided by Participatory Action Research (PAR). That means all of our work is done in collaboration with those most impacted- the folks who live and work in prisons. We have three main buckets of research:

1. a prison culture survey- to understand how the people that live and work on Restoring Promise units experience prison culture and any changes resulting from our partnership with them
2. a randomized control trial- to understand the impact, if any, of changing prison culture
3. a transition study- to understand the experience of moving on from a Restoring Promise unit, whether that be to another unit, prison, or to the community.

 

The fellow who joins the Restoring Promise team may analyze data from our prison partners, administer surveys to young adults, mentors, and corrections staff, analyze survey results, train new researchers who  lived on Restoring Promise housing units, conduct interviews, analyze quantitative or qualitative data, and/or assist with the randomized control trial. The fellow will learn about collaborative research techniques and how to effectively partner with the communities most impacted by our research.

 

 

7) Center on Immigration and Justice, Quantitative Research Fellow
 
In the face of stepped-up immigration enforcement, millions of non-citizens are at risk of extended detention and permanent separation from their families and communities. The Center on Immigration and Justice (CIJ) is helping to build a movement toward universal legal representation for immigrants facing deportation. CIJ seeks a quantitative research fellow to join a project team that aims to increase government transparency, create data-driven tools for advocates, and shape an understanding of mass detention as an extension of mass incarceration.

Vera seeks a quantitative research fellow to work collaboratively with the project team to conduct exploratory analyses using Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) data released through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) (e.g., detention, detainers, removals/deportations, or ICE AIR flights datasets). Candidates should be comfortable working with large, messy administrative datasets for quantitative analysis, including: writing code to clean data, assessing data quality in the absence of an available codebook, conducting exploratory analyses, producing descriptive statistics, and building and refining statistical models. The fellow is likely to be involved in creating a special report or interactive data visualization to share findings with the public.

CIJ welcomes applications from students from all academic backgrounds (e.g., social science, computer science, statistics, mathematics). Applicants with experiences with the immigration system are especially encouraged to apply.

 

8) Center on Youth Justice, Ending the Incarceration of Girls

 

Vera is leading a national initiative to end of girls’ incarceration in the US. We partner with government and community leaders across the country to disrupt the unique pathways leading girls and gender expansive youth into the juvenile justice system and into confinement. The number of youth in the girls’ side of the juvenile justice system is small, most girls are unjustly locked up to protect their safety or to address unmet needs, and jurisdictions across the country are finally ready to commit to gender-responsive systems change.

 

Vera seeks a research fellow to help advance two major research projects:

1. an mixed methods evaluation of an innovative diversion program designed in collaboration with New York City’s Administration for Children’s Services, New York University’s Steinhardt School of Culture, Education, and Human Development
2. a research report combining demographic and geographic analyses of juvenile probation data along with information from a Youth Participatory Action Research (YPAR) project on the scope of girls’ incarceration in California written in collaboration with our partners at San Francisco’s Young Women’s Freedom Center.

Working closely with the Senior Research Associate and the partners mentioned above, the research fellow will merge and recode juvenile system (probation, jail, and child welfare) data; conduct descriptive analysis; organize and format output and document analysis process; manage codebooks; write research memos, and document statistical software code. The ideal candidate will have intermediate quantitative and qualitative skills, including coding unstructured interview and observation data, sorting, querying, and recoding numeric data, producing and interpreting descriptive statistics, simple data visualization, and managing output and graphical files. Some experience or interest in GIS would be helpful.