The DC Lawyers for Youth's Youth Justice Project (YJP) is a new initiative to convene youth community stakeholders in Washington D.C. to collectively advance a proactive youth justice agenda and to promote positive District-wide media coverage of youth, youth issues and successes in the effort to continue juvenile justice reforms in Washington, D.C.

The YJP will convene existing youth-serving organizations affected by juvenile justice issues as well as engage new youth-serving and direct service organizations, non-juvenile justice organizations, D.C.
Government agencies, and D.C. youth and their parents to advance a proactive youth justice agenda.   YJP will convene groups to prioritize reforms in the following juvenile justice issue areas:

1. community-based detention alternatives,
2. pre-trial detention alternatives, and
3. juvenile transfer to the adult criminal justice system.

Additionally, the YJP will devise and implement a proactive media strategy in order to increase positive images of juvenile justice issues and on-going juvenile justice reforms in the District.

Finally, the YJP will collect existing data on youth justice issues and organize this data in a series of fact sheets and promote data collection and new research projects among the existing government and
non-profit research organizations.