Posted on July 29, 2026
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Dear HEP Community,
The Vera Institute of Justice is committed to our mission to end mass incarceration and the criminalization of people of color, immigrants, and people experiencing poverty. Our work supports our vision of safe, healthy, empowered communities and a fair, accountable justice system.
To that end, our initiative at Vera is currently working on a project aimed at building a tool that calculates the real cost of reentry people face upon release from incarceration, in order to shift public narratives and advocate for increased wages pre-release. To center the voices of people with lived experience, we are asking for your help disseminating and/or participating in our Reentry Calculator Survey. It is a confidential, anonymous online survey that asks about the different kinds of costs people encountered during the first 30 days upon release from your most recent incarceration. Anyone who has been incarcerated in either jail or prison in the United States is eligible to participate in the survey.
We encourage anyone eligible to participate, and to be honest and candid in your responses, but participation is voluntary. We have attached an information sheet about the survey, and you can contact Dr. Kelsie Chesnut, the lead researcher on this work at kchesnut@vera.org with any additional questions. Feel free to forward the survey to anyone you think may be interested in participating!
Sincerely,
Allan Wachendorfer, MSW
Associate Director
Pronouns: he/his/him
