OUR VISION
Stemming the rise of mass incarceration.
Young people of color, their families and their communities are disproportionately captive to systems of surveillance, control and exploitation.
Our work is dedicated to stemming the reliance on and ultimately eliminating juvenile incarceration, while also building out an alternative system of care dedicated to the healing and well-being of our children.
We envision a world where all young people and the people who love them are free.
OUR MISSION
Challenge oppresive systems that criminalize and devalue Black and Brown youth.
Why now?
The California Youth Justice Project is an organization created to challenge the systems that criminalize and devalue Black and Brown young people amid California’s accelerating return to mass incarceration.
Why this matters
We analyze statewide and local policy, build community power through political education and strategic support, and organize to shift decision-making power to communities working to realize Youth Justice Reimagined across Los Angeles County.
We want to challenge these oppressive systems through a three-prong approach that focuses on:
Statewide and local policy advocacy
Policy and political education for base-building and youth-led coalitions
Organizing strategy to shift power from protected systems to communities
OUR TEAM
Milinda Kakani
Milinda Kakani
Co-founder and Executive Director
Milinda works with grassroots organizations to dismantle the juvenile carceral system and build out conditions for healing and meaningful public safety, and a commissioner on Los Angeles County’s Probation Oversight Commission. Prior to this, she was the Director of Youth Justice at Children’s Defense Fund – CA. Before joining Children’s Defense Fund, Milinda was a supervising attorney for Public Counsel’s Transition Age Youth Project. She began her legal career at the Bronx Defenders’ Family Defense Practice as a staff attorney and then a supervising attorney, where she represented parents dealing with allegations of abuse and neglect, often connected to poverty.
Lena Mallett
Lena Mallett
Co-founder & Senior Advocate
Lena focuses primarily on Youth Justice policy change and political education in LA County. Their work is centered on supporting efforts that abolish violent systems of racialized family separation and is guided by the belief that no human and, especially no young person belongs in a cage. Lena is most fulfilled when creating spaces and facilitating political education opportunities for and with youth and young adults that have been impacted by these systems. Before this position, Lena worked for the Children’s Defense Fund as a Youth Justice Policy Associate and prior to that role, as a program manager inside facilities and a re-entry coordinator for young people returning home in Santa Barbara County.
ADvisory board
Roshell Amezcua
Director of Juvenile Justice Clinic (JJC)
Roshell Amezcua is the director of Juvenile Justice Clinic (JJC) at Loyola, in which students represent youth clients facing delinquency charges in Los Angeles County Juvenile courts under the supervision of an attorney. Roshell's philosophy and representation is rooted in eliminating the presence of government interference and oppression in historically marginalized communities. Roshell seeks to represent youth in a holistic way, focusing on adolescent development, generational trauma rooted in racism, poverty, classism, and ableism, the over policing of historically marginalized communities, and always through the lens that youth and families thrive together. Prior to joining the JJC as director, Roshell was a supervising attorney in the Family Defense Practice at The Bronx Defenders, a public defender nonprofit that annually represents about 30,000 low-income Bronx residents in criminal, civil, child welfare, and immigration cases.
Tia Elena Martinez
Dr. David C. Turner III
Roshell Amezcua
PARTNERS
LAYUP
The Los Angeles Youth Uprising Coalition works to end youth incarceration, reform probation practices, divert youth out of the juvenile justice system, and reinvest resources into a comprehensive system of youth development in Los Angeles County.
ReLA
Reimagine L.A. is a coalition of advocates, community organizations and neighbors that called for a ballot measure to divest from incarceration and policing and invest in the health and economic wellness of marginalized people in their communities. Years later, they are still fighting for full implementation.
LibFund
The Liberation Fund Coalition is a collective of ten organizations working to disrupt cycles of incarceration by advancing gender-responsive, community-based alternatives that protect girls and gender-expansive youth. Grounded in community power, the coalition is advancing a bold shift away from punitive systems and toward gender-informed, community-based care that centers healing, prevention, and collective liberation.
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