 |
| Sarah Bryer |
By Sarah Bryer
It is a particular challenge for the juvenile justice reform movement that much of our most crucial work happens on the state and local levels. State laws and policies regarding juvenile justice vary widely from state to state, leading to diverse reform agendas as local advocates all push for the changes they see as most urgent, most impactful, or most feasible for their state.
As a result of this diversity, juvenile justice advocates find ourselves frequently confronting the movement’s most persistent questions: How can we create a unified movement out of these disparate efforts? How can we build a new system when there is not one particular tool —getting youth out of the adult system, eliminating racial and ethnic disparities, providing access to counsel, implementing community-based alternatives to incarceration—can do the whole job?
The organization I direct—the National Juvenile Justice Network (NJJN)—must confront this question on a regular basis. NJJN’s members are state-based juvenile justice advocacy organizations, each working to advance juvenile justice reform in the specific context of their own states. NJJN’s challenge is to find a way to support and advance individual reform efforts while grounding that work in a vision for a coherent national movement.
In 2005, when NJJN was just forming as an organization, we had members in only 12 states. Our vision, however, was much bigger, and we knew that as NJJN grew, we would need something to tie our members together and to ensure that we were all moving forward with a shared vision of reform. In those early days, the Youth Transition Funders Group’s (YTFG) “Juvenile Justice Reform: A Blueprint” offered just what was needed: specific, actionable, easy-to-scan tenets that were neither too broad nor so specific that they would exclude any of the diverse range of reform issues and policy priorities that our members brought to the table.
Nine years later, NJJN has more than tripled its membership. YTFG’s principles have guided our growth and helped us stay focused on the areas in which reform is most urgently needed. With 43 members in 33 states, we’re still finding YTFG’s principles to be an effective way to articulate and unify our members’ priorities. At our annual gathering this year in Washington, D.C., NJJN’s leadership resoundingly agreed to adopt the updated third edition of the principles, citing their continued resonance, relevance, and importance.
The principles are both powerful and practical in our daily operations and serve as a guiding star for our work. All NJJN members have endorsed the principles as a whole, and each NJJN member must be working actively in at least two of the ten reform areas. The principles also serve as the backbone for our discussion of juvenile justice reform on our website, helping us articulate our work for broader consumption. As such, the YTFG principles have provided scaffolding for our organization’s collective vision and the complete range of our members’ reform work.
The principles have also gained traction on the local level and are used by our members in a variety of ways:
The organization I direct—the National Juvenile Justice Network (NJJN)—must confront this question on a regular basis. NJJN’s members are state-based juvenile justice advocacy organizations, each working to advance juvenile justice reform in the specific context of their own states. NJJN’s challenge is to find a way to support and advance individual reform efforts while grounding that work in a vision for a coherent national movement.
In 2005, when NJJN was just forming as an organization, we had members in only 12 states. Our vision, however, was much bigger, and we knew that as NJJN grew, we would need something to tie our members together and to ensure that we were all moving forward with a shared vision of reform. In those early days, the Youth Transition Funders Group’s (YTFG) “Juvenile Justice Reform: A Blueprint” offered just what was needed: specific, actionable, easy-to-scan tenets that were neither too broad nor so specific that they would exclude any of the diverse range of reform issues and policy priorities that our members brought to the table.
Nine years later, NJJN has more than tripled its membership. YTFG’s principles have guided our growth and helped us stay focused on the areas in which reform is most urgently needed. With 43 members in 33 states, we’re still finding YTFG’s principles to be an effective way to articulate and unify our members’ priorities. At our annual gathering this year in Washington, D.C., NJJN’s leadership resoundingly agreed to adopt the updated third edition of the principles, citing their continued resonance, relevance, and importance.
The principles are both powerful and practical in our daily operations and serve as a guiding star for our work. All NJJN members have endorsed the principles as a whole, and each NJJN member must be working actively in at least two of the ten reform areas. The principles also serve as the backbone for our discussion of juvenile justice reform on our website, helping us articulate our work for broader consumption. As such, the YTFG principles have provided scaffolding for our organization’s collective vision and the complete range of our members’ reform work.
The principles have also gained traction on the local level and are used by our members in a variety of ways:
- The Juvenile Justice Coalition of Minnesota has used the principles extensively since 2006 to develop a strategic, targeted plan for the organization’s advocacy.
- The Iowa Coalition 4 Juvenile Justice has used the YTFG principles both as educational material for state legislators and to raise awareness of juvenile justice issues among the general public.
- Families & Allies of Virginia’s Youth has adopted the tenets as its own guiding principles and publicly shares them on its website.
- Review the principles. Visit our website to download a copy of “Juvenile Justice Reform: A Blueprint,” and discover ten of the most urgent reform areas for the juvenile justice movement.
- Visit www.njjn.org to find out how we and our members are implementing the principles every day across the country.
- Get involved! Many of our members and partners rely on local support for their efforts to reform state juvenile justice systems. Find the NJJN member in your state, and join in their efforts. Or team up with one of our partner organizations, including the Campaign for Youth Justice—dedicated to keeping youth under age 18 out of the adult criminal justice system—and the Campaign for the Fair Sentencing of Youth—leading the movement to end extreme sentencing of youth.
No comments:
Post a Comment