OUR MISSION
The Maryland Youth Justice Coalition is a diverse array of organizations dedicated to preventing children and adolescents from becoming involved in the legal system, upholding the highest standards of care when youth do enter the legal system, and ensuring a platform for system-involved youth and their families to be heard. MYJC strives for a Maryland where no children are at risk of system involvement and, if they are involved with the legal system, they and their families receive every possible opportunity to define and live safe, healthy and fulfilling lives through restorative practices supported by our state and local communities.
OUR VALUES
The Maryland Youth Justice Coalition believes that all young people have a unique capacity for growth and achievement that can best occur in supportive and well-resourced communities outside of the legal system. The harsh treatment of young people under the cover of law, unduly punishing them for their juvenile and adolescent mistakes, is an attack on youth itself. In Maryland as elsewhere, this injustice falls disproportionately upon youth of color and particularly punishes Black teenagers.
WHO WE ARE
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ACLU of Maryland
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Advance Maryland
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Baltimore Legal Action Team (BALT)
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Baltimore Jewish Council
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BRIDGE Maryland, Inc.
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Disability Rights, Maryland
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Free State PTA
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Human Rights for Kids
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Jews United for Justice
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Liberty's Promise
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Maryland Catholic Conference
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Maryland Association of Youth Service Bureaus
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National Juvenile Justice Network
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R Street Institute
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The Sentencing Project
OUR HISTORY
The Maryland Youth Justice Coalition was formed in 2017. We successfully supported reforms in the 2022 General Assembly to ensure that Maryland residents 17 and younger are guaranteed the protections of the Fifth Amendment to the United States Constitution (SB53) and an evidence-based omnibus reform package (SB691), endorsed by the Juvenile Justice Reform Council, that expands the use of diversion from juvenile courts, restricts the overuse of detention and confinement, limits terms of juvenile probation, and ends the prosecution of young children.
