2024 Legislative Priorities
CTJA is a youth-adult partnership that has been a statewide organization for over 20 years. We use advocacy, policy, and organizing tools to protect the rights, futures, and well-being of potentially, currently, and formerly incarcerated youth under the age of 25 years old.
CTJA believes deeply in: addressing root causes, lived experience being expertise, and that communities must be equitably invested in.
2024 Priorities
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Residential Correction does not work: 72% of young people incarcerated in adult prison in CT returned to DOC within 3 years*
Incarceration creates long-term mental health problems for those confined during adolescence: U.S. DOJ found that youth at MYI had inadequate mental health services and isolation practices caused them grievous harm.**
*OPM Criminal Justice Policy and Planning Division 2023 Recidivism Study
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The human brain does not fully mature until age 25 and as brains mature, youth age out of lawbreaking***
Incarcerating kids actually slows their psychologically maturity because they are removed from environments that would help them grow.***
***Why Youth Incarceration Fails, The Sentencing Project, Dec 2022
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Youth Advocate Programs, working with kids who would be in prison and have complex needs, supported over 60 youth in CT last year. 86% of high risk youth in a YAP program have remained arrest free.**
Wraparound programs that account for the mental health, school attendance, and basic needs of behaviorally troubled youth save millions of taxpayers dollars by divesting from prison and out-of-home placements.