Economic Stability Program

Poverty is one of the biggest issues facing our clients and their families and a destabilizing force that can have a negative impact on reentry. Therefore, we have created a program to improve our clients’ economic stability, based on a model developed by the Financial Clinic. As trained financial coaches, Youth Represent staff will ascertain our client's financial goals and assess their current financial situation in five main areas: asset building, banking, credit, debt, and taxes. Because Youth Represent’s clientele is young, much of the financial coaching will involve developing basic financial literacy and helping clients develop strategies for financial stability as they move into adulthood. In some cases, we will also address the financial situation of the family, if it is a significant barrier to reentry.

Education and Community Outreach

We educate youth and youth advocates on the collateral consequences of criminal justice involvement and its impact on employment, housing, and education. Additionally, we collaborate with community-based organizations to identify solutions and create systems that will lessen the barriers to reentry when young people return to their neighborhoods. The workshops we provide are also opportunities to gain input from community members affected by these issues, making certain that Youth Represent continues to keep pace with the realities and needs of the community, and ensure that the community has a voice in the policies and practices that will affect the lives of these young people.

Our workshops include:

Know Your Rights: We teach kids about how best to respond if they are stopped a police officer and what rights they have in police encounters.

Removing Barriers to Employment: Youth Represent teaches youth and youth advocates about the collateral consequences of criminal justice involvement, particularly the impact of criminal records on employment, to give youth the tools they need to overcome some of the barriers to employment they will likely encounter if they have a criminal record.

Criminal Justice Orientation: We lead criminal justice classes to teach youth about how the court system works and the collateral consequences of criminal court involvement.

Early Release from Probation

In collaboration with the Center for Alternative Sentencing and Employment Services (CASES) we are starting an initiative to obtain early release from probation for eligible youthful offenders. We see this as an incentive for youth to stay out of the criminal justice system. Youth Represent will advocate in court for early release from probation for former CASES youth program graduates who have remained out of the criminal justice system and have made positive changes in their lives. We will also offer them the opportunity to have their commercial criminal background information checked to make sure they are accurate.

Policy Advocacy

Youth Represent uses the institutional knowledge it gains from its broad legal representation to initiate policy reform, as we believe strongly that those who provide direct services are often in the best position to create innovative legislation that will support their clients over the long term.
For example, we are meeting with policy makers, practitioners, and partners in the field to discuss the feasibility of increasing the upper age of juvenile court in New York State to 17. Connecticut recently passed a bill that would put 16 and 17 year-olds back in the juvenile justice system making New York one of only two states, along with North Carolina, where 15 is the upper age of juvenile court.

In addition, we are working with a other youth advocates to raise the level of juvenile justice representation throughout the state of New York by creating a resource and model for attorneys defending youth.