LAJC’s Youth Justice Program envisions a Virginia where all young people have access to high-quality public education, evidence-based community supports, mental health services, and a truly restorative youth justice system. 

We partner with youth, their families, and their communities to achieve racial justice, social justice, and economic justice for all young people by dismantling systems that create and perpetuate poverty. 

Our strategies include individual legal representation for youth with unmet needs in the education, foster care, and juvenile justice systems, impact litigation, community education and organizing, and statewide policy advocacy. We promote public policies and system reforms that keep young people in school, out of the youth justice system, and living successfully in their communities.