Youth: Education, Advocacy, & Restorative Services

The LRC operates two programs: the Community Defense Program, and Youth: Education, Advocacy & Restorative Services.  This proposal seeks funding for the restorative services component of the latter program.

The Youth: Education, Advocacy & Restorative Services program neutrally facilitates school-based Family Group Conferences – a strengths-based restorative practices method. Youth are referred to the LRC when their behaviors are indicative of severe disengagement from their own education, and the restorative process provides a positive, trajectory shifting, alternative to ineffective punitive outcomes. The project works extensively with the Minneapolis and St. Paul Public Schools districts, while also receiving referrals from: the Suburban Ramsey Schools Collaborative, the Minneapolis Police Department (Juvenile Diversion), the Hennepin County Attorney (Juvenile Diversion), Ramsey and Hennepin Juvenile Probation (when youth return to school from correctional placement or detention), and be@school/Juvenile Court (truancy diversion). For education and advocacy, the program leverages our unique cross-systems (justice/education) and cross-practice (court representation/restorative justice) expertise in youth advocacy networks, and presents education and trainings for youth and/or the professionals working with them in order to promote practices which reduce youth pathways to juvenile justice entry and life-impairing criminal records. Broadly stated, our objectives are to reduce disparities and diminish the school-to-prison pipeline.