Model and Strategy
This project will transform California’s juvenile justice system by ending our overreliance on youth incarceration, strengthening trauma-informed alternatives in local communities, reducing racial disparities, and empowering youth, families, and communities most impacted to advocate for systems change.
Our purpose is to advance equity by ending the unjust and harmful practices and policies in the juvenile justice system in the Bay Area and across California. We are focused on shifting the narrative and correcting misconceptions about youth in the justice system through their direct engagement in system change. By elevating the voices, experiences, and contributions of youth to people in power, we build mutual understanding, demonstrate youths’ resilience and capacity to grow, and create better policies.
Ultimately, we aim to dismantle the juvenile justice system. In its place will stand resilient, well-resourced, evidence-based, culturally-relevant programs and services in local communities that build on the strengths of youth, address their unique needs and challenges, and are driven by those who were directly impacted by the justice system themselves.
Impact
The long-term impacts that our project will achieve include:
- The elimination of racial disparities in California’s juvenile justice system;
- The decriminalization of youth and young adults of color;
- Improved state and local policies, and increased resources, services, and opportunities for opportunity youth in the Bay Area, representing a shift away from enforcement and punishment, toward community health and positive youth development; and
- The empowerment of poor and under-served Bay Area communities, and increased participation in state and local policy advocacy to improve opportunity youth outcomes.
The short-term impacts that our project will achieve include:
- A reduction in youth incarceration rates in SCC by up to 40% by ending the incarceration of youth charged with committing low-level offenses;
- A new $120 million budget appropriation from the CA Legislature to resource local community-based services for under-served and disadvantaged youth;
- A reduction in racial disparities at all points in SCC’s juvenile justice system by up to 30%; and
- Doubling the number of opportunity youth engaged in our youth justice reform advocacy—especially from Alameda, Contra Costa, San Francisco, and Santa Clara Counties.
Leadership
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Jesse Hahnel
Executive Director
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Frankie Guzman
Director, California Youth Justice Initiative