$25,000 / 2018
Started in 2003, the Youth Justice Coalition (YJC) is working to build a youth, family, and formerly and currently incarcerated people’s movement to challenge America’s addiction to incarceration and race, gender and class discrimination in Los Angeles County’s, California’s and the nation’s juvenile and criminal injustice systems. Hazen’s renewed funding will enable the YJC to continue to organize young people in or affected by the juvenile and criminal justice systems to end disproportionate contact with law enforcement and confinement of people of color. Last year, YJC won a preliminary decision that removed 10,000 people from LA City gang inunctions and won the county’s first youth development department, securing funding through the establishment of the Department of Youth Diversion and Development. Over the next grant period, YJC will continue to coordinate a statewide coalition to dismantle gang databases, injunctions and enhancement; end random searches in LAUSD schools; establish representation on the Youth Development and Diversion Department at the county level and implement diversion of up to 11,000 youth a year from arrest through implementation of the youth diversion workplan; continue to help lead the effort to challenge LA County’s $3.7 billion jail expansion plan and redirect savings to community resources; and block federal efforts to increase police in schools, as well as expand policies that increase student criminalization as a response to the Parkland shooting.