Youth Justice at a Crossroads
This month, the Youth Justice team at Liberty Hill, along with our community partners at Young Women’s Freedom Center, hosted “Youth Justice at a Crossroads”—a special donor activist event featuring a site visit and strategy briefing.
Liberty Hill invited individual donors, funders, and advisors to learn about the progress of our Liberation Fund grant program which invests in community-led solutions to end system involvement for girls and gender-expansive youth, and the potential pathway the initiative is creating for LA County to become the largest jurisdiction in the nation to end the incarceration of girls and gender-expansive youth.
Julia Arroyo, Executive Director of Young Women’s Freedom Center (YWFC), facilitated a grounding exercise and engaging conversation on the critical moment we find ourselves to support young people most in need of care in our communities.
Special guests—including David Carrol (LA County Youth Development Department), Milinda Kakani (Probation Oversight Commission), Abigail Richards (Reimagine Freedom), and Kaylee Matthews (YWFC Youth Organizing Fellow)—joined Liberty Hill Senior Director of Youth & Transformative Justice Lisa Small in a panel discussion.
Together, they shared lived experiences and community reflections, as well as profound data and solutions to ending youth jails and detention centers in LA County.
Panelists delved into the collaborative work to reach and sustain full decarceration of girls and gender expansive youth in the region and explored the current legislative opportunity—SB 357—that would give LA County additional tools to address the ongoing crisis in our local youth jails.
For too long, LA youth have been failed by a broken system. SB 357 gives LA County additional tools to address the ongoing crisis in our local youth jails. By granting the Board of Supervisors the option to delegate some functions of Probation to the Department of Youth Development (DYD)—which was created to meet the needs of youth—we have the opportunity to empower the DYD to begin to address the failures of our broken justice system.
“We have so much responsibility and such a powerful opportunity to create something wildly different that isn’t just generational trauma,” shared Milinda Kakani.
If passed, SB357 would grant the LA County Board of Supervisors the option to delegate some functions of Probation to the Department of Youth Development (DYD)—a significant step towards prioritizing youth and creating strategies that meet their needs.
The powerful program ended with a call to action by Liberty Hill Senior Director of Donor Engagement Joy Friedman, “Right now, we are at a critical moment to take action. Action that requires believing that Los Angeles’ youth belong to us all.”
To learn more about Liberty Hill’s ongoing efforts to end the incarceration of girls and gender-expansive youth in LA, visit our Liberation Fund webpage for insights about the organizing work and causes we support.
