Program areas at Youth Represent
Our flagship community-lawyering model combines direct legal representation, know your rights workshops, and technical assistance. Partnering with a wide variety of community organizations, we offer on-site legal services for clients facing employment discrimination, eviction, school suspension, summonses, and other criminal and civil legal issues. In 2022, we partnered with more than 50 community based organizations, to deliver services to 525 clients. We provided legal representation in 388 cases, provided advice in 120 instances, completed 240 criminal record reviews, addressed 48 social work cases, and made 138 referrals on behalf of our clients. We also delivered 95 know your rights workshops to 1,298 participants.
In partnership with law firms and organizations, such as the naacp-ldf, we pursue individual and class action lawsuits against those who violate the law. These lawsuits aim to procure financial settlements and systemic change, among other forms of relief, for criminal system-affected Youth. Additionally, our strategic litigation practice uses laws that our policy team has championed as a mechanism for social change - laws that aim to counter discriminatory practices that have historically oppressed under-resourced communities of color. To date, Youth Represent's strategic litigation has secured more than $8 million in financial distribution to communities, providing support for over 24,000 individuals wrongly discriminated against.
We advance policies that divest from systems that arrest, detain, and imprison black and latine Youth, and invest in the kinds of programs and resources that make young people and communities truly safe. We were one of the lead organizations in the successful campaign to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 18 in new york, and we currently lead the campaign for the Youth justice & opportunities act (yj&o), a comprehensive agenda to expand alternatives to incarceration and record sealing for Youth. Through our city dreamers program, we provide advocacy training and support for young people and connect them with leadership and civic engagement opportunities so they can be agents for change in their communities.