Senior Data Scientist, Economic Impacts of Incarceration

Who we are:

The Vera Institute of Justice, founded in 1961, is a nonprofit criminal justice organization that strives to build just government institutions and safe communities free from the scourge of racism, white supremacy, profit, and inequity that is pervasive in this country’s legal systems. We are an “inside” lane organization that drives change at scale with ambitious public sector leaders who share our commitment to building anti-racist, reparative systems that deliver justice. We leverage our access to government to transform these systems and work collaboratively with stakeholders across many movements—including advocacy, grassroots, and grasstop organizations. Our role is to pilot solutions that are transformative and achievable, harness the power of evidence to drive effective policy and practice, and use advocacy and communications to change narratives and norms.

Vera has a staff of 300 people and offices in New York City, Washington, DC, Los Angeles, and New Orleans. We are an equal opportunity employer with a commitment to diversity in the workplace. We expect our staff to embody respect, independence, collaboration, commitment, anti-racism, and equity—both in our outward-facing work and the internal culture of our workplace. We value a range of experiences in people’s educational backgrounds and encourage people who have been directly impacted by the criminal justice system to apply.

About the Project: 

Involvement in the criminal legal system has a profound and persistent impact on the economic well-being of people and their loved ones. People of color, and particularly Black Americans, are incarcerated at much higher rates than their white counterparts and as a result bear the brunt of the economic impact of incarceration, further exacerbating longstanding racial disparities in income and economic opportunity. However, despite these disparate population-level and intergenerational effects, there is a lack of general awareness of the impact that incarceration has on economic mobility over the life course.  

The Vera Institute of Justice is leading an initiative to address this gap, by highlighting the nexus of incarceration and poverty as a national research and policy priority. Over a three-year period, Vera’s research, data science and communications teams will: construct datasets that describe the connections between incarceration and economic outcomes; develop an online visualization tool that can be used by wide-ranging audiences to elucidate these connections; conduct research, to inform policy and practice; and implement a strategic communications campaign, with the goal of increasing awareness of incarceration as a driver of poverty and income / wealth disparities. 

About the Role:

We are seeking a Senior Data Scientist to join a multidisciplinary team in Vera’s research department to develop data products and analysis that describe the relationship between incarceration in the United States over the last five decades and the economic wellbeing of communities. They will lead technical and analytical projects that make novel connections between disparate, messy data sources that have never been systematically combined to amplify the systemic impacts of mass incarceration and institutional racism felt daily by local communities. The successful candidate will work closely with an internal data engineer and a data visualization vendor to redesign and build upon existing data collection and analysis developed at Vera. They will work in partnership with Vera’s social science researchers to build new approaches to knowledge production on the economic impacts of current criminal legal system policies and practice. Finally, the Senior Data Scientist will work with Vera’s communication and research teams to align project priorities and bring data products to the public with a focus on real-world impact.

At Vera, we are attentive to the potential benefits and negative consequences of the use of technology in the criminal legal system, including by researchers and advocates. Under the leadership of Vera’s Associate Director of Data Science and Analytics, we are developing “public interest data science” approaches by prioritizing projects that constructively overcome the many challenges present in public and administrative datasets that hold key systemic information on the way our justice and public support systems function. We complement this work with a critical perspective on the current and potential ways data science, predictive algorithms, and AI can be used to exacerbate harm. The Senior Data Science role is an opportunity to hone project leadership and subject expertise skills as part of a collaborative team while building and implementing this vision for data science as a tool to dismantle mass incarceration and further racial equity.

Who You Are: