Alianza

Reform, at its best, has been a 24-hour per day/7 day a week test of willpower by institutions to defend the status quo in order to protect jobs at the expense of children of color. We’ve tried reforming a culture of control fashioned to be lethal to people of color for the privileged “protection” of non-people of color. We’ve tried reform; reform is not the answer.

Thirty years of youth justice reform with limited benefit to brown youth, and a legacy of evidence of harm towards Indigenous youth revokes that there can be an irreducible minimum while ending incarceration of Indigenous youth. Conversely, a robust approach that leads with data-driven policy development of community-based cultural and healing-centered approaches, while centering the voices and participation of directly impacted youth and their families, is what is most needed to build justice with comunidad, cultura, and healing.