NYJN provides our members and the larger youth justice movement with policy recommendations in specific issues areas that reflect the broad consensus of our membership. These policy platforms are based on established standards in the field and provide a foundation for youth justice transformation. Policy platforms are developed by a committee of NYJN members from across the country, and are approved by the entire membership voting body.
Resourcing Communities: Investing in Youth for Justice Transformation, April 2024
A pathway for moving away from the failed policies of youth incarceration toward giving communities what they need for young people to flourish.
Mapping Transformative Schools: From Punishment to Promise, January 2023
Steps all stakeholders can take to transform schools into cultures of opportunity and away from cultures of surveillance and punishment.
Redesigning Justice: Our Youth Action Agenda, October 2022
NYJN’s youth-led blueprint for justice, created by 14 young leaders from across the nation to redesign what justice is and can be.
[Infographic] Redesigning Justice: Our Youth Action Agenda, October 2022
One-pager infographic summary of NYJN’s youth-led blueprint for justice, created by 14 young leaders from across the nation to redesign what justice is and can be.
Keep Children with Mental Health Challenges out of the Youth Legal System, November 2021
Recommendations and resources to end the mental-health-to-prison pipeline and stop the criminalization of youth with mental health challenges.
[Infographic] Mental Health-to-Incarceration Pipeline Infographic (May 2022)
Infographic companion to NYJN’s policy platform Keep Children with Mental Health Challenges out of the Youth Legal System.
Raise the Minimum Age for Trying Children in Juvenile Court, December 2020.
A reasonable minimum age of prosecution when in conflict with the law is a human right included in the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC). The most common minimum age internationally is 14, which is consistent with scientific evidence on brain development and with the minimum age recommended by the CRC.
[Infographic] Raise the Minimum – End Kindergarten Courts, September 2021
Companion infographic to the policy platform.
Reducing Youth Arrests: Prevention and Pre-Arrest Diversion, December 2019
Punitive approaches to youth welfare do not work in mitigating risky youth behaviors or improving public safety. A better approach includes holistic policies and practices that prevent system contact and divert youth prior to arrest.
Supporting Immigrant Youth Caught in the Crosshairs of the Justice System, August 2018.
Out of the estimated 11.1 million noncitizen immigrants living in America today, approximately one million are children under 18 years old. NYJN calls for policies and practices that protect youth from entanglement in the youth legal system and furthers best practices for positive youth development for all youth, regardless of immigration status.