CJNY History

Greetings Movement Builders,

The Community Justice Network for Youth (CJNY) is a unique collection of community-based programs that serve primarily young people of color. We consist of a variety of programs - small and large, residential and non-residential - throughout the United States. We started over two years ago and we want to give you a history of the evolution of the CJNY.

For too many years public officials and foundations did not include in their juvenile justice policies and practices the voices of people impacted by their decisions. In order to address this deficiency, James Bell of the Haywood Burns Institute and Bart Lubow of the Annie E. Casey Foundation invited seven community-based programs that represented a cross section of communities of color that specialized in delivering exemplary services to youth in their communities to the Alex Haley Farm.

At Haley Farm, it was decided that there were other organizations, across the country, in similar situations and that we should explore growing a network. This network would be a national force of grass-roots organizations that serve young people of color, as well as, a place for organizations within the network to support each other around their unique needs. We decided to approach those organizations and invite them to a national organizing meeting to launch this effort. In November of 2000, we all came together and met in Austin, Texas. The host organization was the Southwest Key Program (an original program) and over one hundred people representing approximately 40 organizations, as well as, youth leaders and cultural artists were in attendance. It was from this meeting that the Community Justice Network for Youth was born.

Since then, we have secured full time staff (Mr. Tshaka Barrows and Ms. Ophelia Williams) to assist us in this organizing endeavor, divided ourselves into regions to better facilitate our value-added services to the work of local organizations and are in the process of reconnecting with member organizations that attended the Austin meeting and connecting with new organizations that embrace our mission and values.

The CJNY believes that young people in trouble with the law can be served in their communities, and that their behaviors can change making them contributing and positive members of their communities. It is our belief that programs like yours that come from grass-root efforts have much expertise in changing young people's lives. We believe that there is tremendous value in the peer-to-peer exchange of ideas amongst programs like yours, which specifically work with youth of color in the juvenile justice system.