History : What Are We Fighting For? : Victories : Decision Making
YOUTH JUSTICE COALITION'S HISTORY
In the spring of 2002, 62 people from throughout LA County -- the majority young people who had direct experience with the system -- came together to share their stories, concerns and opinions. Over three meetings, we mapped out 13 areas in juvenile and criminal justice that we wanted to impact:
(a) Zero Tolerance Policies in Schools;
(b) Eliminating the use of Gang Data Bases and
(c) Gang Injunctions;
(d) Challenging racist practices that result in the disproportionate arrest, detention and incarceration of people of color;
(e) Creating and expanding alternatives to arrest, detention and incarceration;
(f) Improving conditions and expanding opportunities at County Jail,
(g) LA County’s three juvenile halls, and
(h) California Youth Authority;
(i) Challenging the failure of Probation and
(j) Parole to support people to succeed on the outside;
(k) Challenging LA County’s over-reliance on detention and incarceration, as well as long stays in those systems;
(l) Challenging racist police practices that serve to brutalize and contain poor and working class communities of color; and
(m) Challenging LA County’s long tradition of policing and deporting immigrants even though the mandate of local police departments is clearly not to engage in these activities.
To begin working, the YJC membership prioritized four initial campaigns:
(1) Mobilizing youth detained in Juvenile Halls to organize for changes in conditions and policies as well as for increased opportunities.
(2) Challenging the Gang Database and Gang Injunction systems used in LA County, that push thousands of youth a year into the system.
(3) Reducing LA County’s use of juvenile detention by 75% by the year 2010 by:
- Exposing and dismantling policies and practices used by school officials, police and the courts that lead to the massive lock up of poor youth and youth of color,
- Closing all beds for juveniles at County Jails,
- Reducing the average lengths of stay in detention;
- Exposing LA’s over-reliance on detention for minor criminal offenses and status offenses (e.g. truancy, curfew, homelessness); and
- Transforming Probation so it ceases to be system that sets youth up to “fail”
(4) Pushing LA County to develop community-based, owned and operated alternatives to arrest, detention and incarceration.
Based on the experiences and concerns raised by our membership, the YJC strategy moving forward is to:
• Expose and educate the community, media, elected and appointed officials on policies and practices used by school officials, police and the courts that lead to the massive lock up of poor youth and youth of color, including zero tolerance policies, gang profiling and race and class inequity in arrests and sentencing. Maintain that policies should be standard for all areas of the county regardless of wealth, race or politics.
• Expand and fund new community based, owned and operated alternatives to detention and incarceration, spending $1 on alternatives for every $1 spent on detention/incarceration.
• Reduce the average length of stay in detention to 10 days by 1) Respecting all juveniles’ right to a 72-hour arraignment; 2) Reducing juvenile arraignment periods to 48 hours to maintain equity with adults; 3) Reducing transfer waits of youth after sentencing to 10 days before they are moved to California Youth Authority, camps or placement.
LA County could easily reduce detention by 75%: 35% through the expansion of alternatives to detention and incarceration and by reducing the average length of stay in detention, and 40% by decriminalizing offenses that should not be handled by the court system at all. This could happen without addressing LA County’s more serious offense of disproportionate arrest, prosecution and confinement of poor youth and youth of color – while easy to prove, system racism is harder to argue in a County that is only 25% white -- (only 16% of the youth population is white), and where the majority of voters in communities of color supported Proposition 21.