Community Justice for Youth Institute Named Winner of Gloria J. Jenkins Award

A Chica­go-based orga­ni­za­tion that uses com­mu­ni­ty-based jus­tice as a way to reform juve­nile jus­tice sys­tems and heal youth, vic­tims and com­mu­ni­ties received the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Glo­ria J. Jenk­ins Award dur­ing the JDAI Inter­site Con­fer­ence in Houston.

The award is named for Glo­ria Jenk­ins, who had a 40-year career as a com­mu­ni­ty activist and who served on the board of the West­side Asso­ci­a­tion for Com­mu­ni­ty Action in Chica­go. With her hus­band, Ernie Jenk­ins, she helped open JDAI’s first evening report­ing center.

Com­mu­ni­ty Jus­tice for Youth Insti­tute bases its work on a restora­tive-jus­tice mod­el derived from the Tlin­git Tag­ish tra­di­tion of the Yukon Ter­ri­to­ries. Its work has also been influ­enced by the peace and rec­on­cil­i­a­tion work in South African townships.

The orga­ni­za­tion leads train­ings in restora­tive jus­tice and peace-mak­ing cir­cles; gives tech­ni­cal assis­tance to schools, com­mu­ni­ties and juve­nile jus­tice sys­tems imple­ment­ing restora­tive-jus­tice prac­tices; and advo­cates around dis­pro­por­tion­ate minor­i­ty con­tact and the school-to-jail pipeline.

Schools have used the cir­cles to pre­vent and resolve con­flicts that could lead youth into the juve­nile jus­tice sys­tem and to help rein­te­grate sus­pend­ed or expelled stu­dents. The cir­cles are also used to address ​“harms” caused by offend­ers and ​“repa­ra­tions” to vic­tims and com­mu­ni­ties, and as a com­mu­ni­ty-based court diversion.