Vera Institute of Justice
Data Collection Intern, Redefining Public Safety
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 grassroots 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 almost 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.
Who you are
Vera’s Redefining Public Safety Program is working to promote true public safety as defined by communities most impacted by our criminal legal system. This includes driving systemic change that minimizes the use of policing to address social issues; ends police violence and unnecessary enforcement that disproportionately harms Black people and communities of color, and advances data transparency to promote accountability, trust and racial justice.
The Redefining Public Safety data collection intern will work on Vera’s new Police Transparency Index (PTI), a directory of public safety related data with embedded metrics assessing the degree to which included datasets meet transparency goals. The intern will help to identify, locate, and index publicly available datasets from police departments and cities across the United States, assist in the implementation of automated processes to ensure the index remains current, and apply evaluative metrics to collected datasets. Interns will also be exposed to related projects involving the collection, input, organization and restructuring of similar data.
In this role, you will:
- Identify location and characteristics of publicly available datasets
- Review incoming data and restructure to address anomalies and inconsistencies
- Standardize and restructure the master dataset
- Upload and manage version control for past and current datasets
- Provide other team support, as needed
- Learning and development to support professional growth
What qualifications do you need?
Required:
- Undergraduate and graduate students are welcome to apply
- Experience in data collection, input and cataloging
- Strong attention to detail
- Confidence and professionalism when verifying data with a small team of volunteers
- Technical expertise with Excel, Google Sheets, and similar spreadsheet software
- Ability to exercise creativity in locating and identifying datasets made available online
- A demonstrated ability to work with people from diverse backgrounds
Preferred:
- Understanding of criminal legal systems, especially policing
- Understanding of governmental and other open data
- Lived experience as a person directly impacted by the criminal legal system
- Preferred – GitHub, SQL
- Additional Microsoft Office Suite Software
List of Required Software applications:
- Proficient in Microsoft Office Suite or similar software
- Mac or Linux OS; permission to download applications
