Advancing and Continuing Youth Justice Improvements in Seattle and Minneapolis
This week, the RFK National Resource Center convened critically important virtual conferences with juvenile justice leaders and practitioners in King County, Washington (Seattle) and Hennepin County, Minnesota (Minneapolis). We are honored to guide the collaborative partnerships within Seattle and Minneapolis to address youth justice transformation on behalf of their children, families, and communities. Among other positive outcomes, these partnerships will provide excellent opportunities to measurably impact the overrepresentation of minority children and youth through real policy and practice change.
During the pandemic, we have initiated or continued our dynamic system transformation partnerships with 15 additional state or county jurisdictions across the United States and the Territory of Guam – and we are making a real difference on behalf of youth, families, and the communities in which they live. These include: Milwaukee County, Wisconsin; Cobb County, Georgia; Dutchess County, New York; Clark County, Nevada (Las Vegas); and Lancaster County, Nebraska, among others. Our community partners have been critical to that success and include law enforcement, schools, treatment providers and positive pro-social supports.
We use proven frameworks to bring these communities together to create locally driven, impactful solutions—that on research, evidence, data and local experience—to produce fair, equitable, sustainable, and measurable solutions. We encourage you to access our Alternative Response Initiative Workbook and our Probation System Review Guidebook, 3rd Edition to learn how you can take immediate action or mobilize your juvenile justice community to act on behalf of your youth and jurisdiction. We welcome new partners in our passionate quest to ensure a positive future for all youth and the wellbeing and safety of our nation’s communities.