This report outlines the successes YFJC has had over two years enacting our Theory of Change. It also highlights key components of our strategic vision for the future as it relates to building power with state campaigns, collaborating with youth, communicating our message and evaluating and modifying our approach.
Intro:
In 2025, we’ve seen focused attacks on some of our most deeply held values, leading to rollbacks on hard-fought policy wins from previous decades. We’ve also seen a resurgence of the “super-predator myth” and increased budgets for incarceration, despite overwhelming evidence that prisons do nothing but harm children.
Yet, at this very moment, people all across the country are organizing for the safety and sanctity of their communities.
We know from experience that organizing works, even in—especially in—tough times. Youth First Justice Collaborative’s (YFJC) State Partners made significant progress in 2024 and 2025, keeping youth carceral facilities closed in Kansas, Louisiana and New Jersey and defeating efforts to open new (or re-open previously closed) facilities in Pennsylvania and Connecticut. We have supported reinvestment campaigns advocating for diversion, placed limits on detention and incarceration and strengthened community alternatives in Minnesota, Texas and Pennsylvania.
As the only national resource hub engaging youth in the movement to end mass incarceration, YFJC has an extraordinary history. We have been unafraid to boldly name challenges, engage in honest conversations and commit to learning from each other across generations.
The stories highlighted in this Report include young people who formed intersectional coalitions and found community in organizing. They are proof that we can and will end youth incarceration. To do that, communities at the ground level must keep challenging the structural roots of violence—not just imagining new alternatives to incarceration, but also investing in and piloting them.
That’s why, although YFJC began as a time-limited initiative, we’re now in it for the long haul. Download the Report to see what the future looks like for YFJC and our State Partners.
