Fall 2024/Spring 2025 - Intern, Research & Policy, Beyond Jails Initiative

Who we are:

The Vera Institute of Justice is powered by hundreds of advocates, researchers, and policy experts working to transform the criminal legal and immigration systems until they’re fair for all. Founded in 1961 to advocate for alternatives to money bail in New York City, Vera is now a national organization that partners with impacted communities and government leaders for change. We develop just, antiracist solutions so that money doesn’t determine freedom; fewer people are in jails, prisons, and immigration detention; and everyone is treated with dignity. For more information, visit vera.org.

Vera has a staff of 224 people, is headquartered in Brooklyn, New York and has offices in Washington, D.C., 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 team:

To reduce the nation’s dependence on jails, Vera’s Beyond Jails team is working in jurisdictions across the country to shift resources to community-driven solutions to help people thrive. Vera’s Beyond Jails work has three core strategies: statewide advocacy campaigns and coalition building to create lasting policy change; pilot and build evidence around decarceration strategies; and building will for change in jurisdictions. The team works with local government and community partners to develop plans for jail decarceration, prevent the construction of new jails, and design reinvestment strategies. 

About the role:

The Research & Policy Intern role for Beyond Jails is an opportunity for a college or graduate-level student to experience working in a full-time research and policy role at a non-profit organization. Working on the Beyond Jails team will support building program materials with county-based partner organizations, supporting data analysis and writing research materials that inform our county and state policy and advocacy work, and helping to build our 2025 cohort of partnerships. The Intern will participate in day-to-day team activities, including meeting with partners and coalitions, project meetings within BJI, team-building activities, and more.  

What you'll do:

Writing summaries of policy implementation and reviews of evidence about county-level CLS/pretrial reforms 

• Background research and drafting of summary materials for common pretrial justice reforms at the county level 

• Consolidating 2024 partner information/activities into summaries for lessons learned and replication

Support on state-level research projects 

• Cataloguing data sources and gathering various types of data, including but not limited to administrative data from criminal legal system agencies, budget data, and socio-economic data, for PA and TX. 

• Writing summaries of patterns and findings in different formats for rapid-response and coalition work. 

County partnership support – campaigns and building new cohort 

• Supporting current partners with dissemination materials and events at the county level (PA, TX) 

• Supporting BJI’s planning work to build an RFP and recruit new partners in 2025. 

Other administrative Ad Hoc Duties as assigned

What qualifications are we looking for?

• Comfort working with quantitative data, preparing data for analysis, conducting descriptive and statistical analysis, and with other data types, including survey data and qualitative data; 

• Commitment to advancing racial and gender equity in work;