Vera harnesses the growing public demand for justice and partners with leaders in the justice system to drive change. One critical aspect of this work is addressing how the justice system disproportionately targets people of color, from policing to sentencing practices. This too is garnering increased public attention, most recently with the documentary "13TH". While African Americans make up 13 percent of the U.S. population, they are 40 percent of those behind bars. This is the result not of criminality, but of policies that target communities of color. African Americans use drugs at roughly the same rate as whites, for instance, but they make up 31% of those arrested for drug law violations, and nearly 40% of those in prison for them.

Vera works to address these racial disparities in the system, as well as to end the era of mass incarceration that has disproportionately devastated communities of color.