Collective action for youth will work shoulder to shoulder with the community to create the necessary safeguards to steer youth and young adults towards healthy and positive goals

The U.S. Department of Justice's Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP) awarded a $523,234 Cooperative Agreement under the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (CFDA 16.540) program to Collective Action For Youth. The project will run from October 1, 2024 to September 30, 2027 and aims to work with the community to create safeguards that steer youth and young adults towards positive goals. Key activities include: establishing regular coordination meetings, increasing leadership capacity of youth and families involved in the justice system, co-creating tools for jurisdictions to reduce juvenile sight/sound contact with adult inmates and thoughtfully reduce juveniles from adult facilities, designing a statewide network for sharing best practices, data, and program design for diversion, and co-creating and implementing a workshop series to identify and reduce racial/ethnic disparities in the juvenile justice system.

Major activities include: establishing regular coordination meetings with five being in-person statewide convenings and six virtual meetings; increasing the leadership capacity of participating youth and families who have had involvement in the justice system; CO-creating a tool for jurisdictions to use to thoughtfully reduce/remove juveniles & juveniles charged as adults from secure adult facilities; CO-creating a tool for jurisdictions to use to ensure that juveniles do not have sight or sound contact with adult inmates in secure facilities; designing a statewide network for sharing best practices, data, and program design for diversion; CO-creating and implementing a workshop series to identify and reduce racial and ethnic disparities among youth who come into contact with the juvenile justice system.