For decades, California and the nation have responded to nearly every problem in our classrooms and communities with police and prisons. These efforts have pushed millions of students out of school, and led to the mass incarceration of youth and our families. Public policies have also disproportionately targeted Black and Brown youth, contributing to severe racial injustice in our educational and court systems. A growing movement led by youth and families is demanding a new investment in public safety - one that prioritizes COLLEGE PREP NOT PRISON PREP!

2. The YOUTH JUSTICE COALITION/FREE L.A.!is working to build a youth and
community-led movement - mobilizing youth in lock-ups and on the street,
their families and formerly incarcerated people - to challenge race, gender
and class inequality in Los Angeles County’s, California’s and the nation’s
juvenile injustice system. The YJC’s goal is to dismantle policies and
institutions that have ensured the massive arrest, detention, incarceration
and deportation of people of color, widespread police violence and
corruption, consistent violation of youth and communities' Constitutional
and human rights, the creation of a school-to-jail track, and the build-up of
the world's largest network of jails and prisons. We use direct action
organizing, advocacy, political education and activist arts to agitate, expose,
and annoy the people in charge in order to upset power and bring about
change.

3. Organizing Campaigns:
1.Impact conditions of confinement at juvenile
halls, camps, county jails and prisons, including
challenging LIFE WIHTOUT PAROLE and other
extreme sentences. (Including Senate Bills 9,
260, 61 and Welcome Home L.A.)
2.Challenge the County’s War on Gangs
including ending the use of gang databases
and gang injunctions. (Including Senate Bill
458.)
3.Reduce L.A. County’s over-reliance on
incarceration and increase community based
alternatives to arrest, court, detention and
incarceration, with a goal of reducing lock-up
by 75% in ten years, including closing
CYA/DJJ youth prisons.
4.Dollar for Dollar - Move law enforcement
dollars to youth jobs, peace
workers/intervention workers and youth
centers. (Just 1% = 100 Million.)
5.End the school-to-jail track (no truancy
tickets/truancy sweeps, free metro passes,
replace police in schools and school push-
out with intervention workers and
Transformative Justice.
6.S.T.O.P. Police Violence.

4. YOUTH SEEN AS
SATAN1600s

5. ORIGINAL SIN
The Puritans believe that children
are born close to the Devil, and the
role of society and family is to
wrestle Satan from within the child.

6. FIRST PUBLIC SCHOOLS
Massachusetts’ Old Satan
Deluder Act of 1647
establishes first public school
system. Since, Puritans
believed that children were
born with the “original sin,”
they had to be raised in an
atmosphere of fear, strict
discipline, hard work, and a
strong knowledge of the Bible
to delude Satan.

7. YOUTH SEEN AS
SAVAGES1800/1900s

8. INDUSTRIAL
REVOLUTION
As the Nation’s first well-known State
Secretary of Education, Horace Mann
argued in 1837 that public education‟s goals
are to create an “industrious class of women
and men” who obey the law and are diligent
in their work.” For factory and mining work,
only basic literacy was required. By 1860,
there were no more than 300 high schools in
the United States, less than 100 of them free.
The public education system designed by
Franklin and promoted by Mann is still the
standard public school curriculum today.

9. Classroom
Management
With strict discipline,
“one who studies
educational theory
can see in the
mechanical routine of
the classroom, the
educative forces that
are slowly
transforming the child
from a little savage
into a creature fit for
law and order, fit for
the life of civilized
society.”- 1907
William Chandler
Bagley

10. YOUTH SEEN AS
REBELS
RADICALS &
REVOLUTIONARIES
1960s - EARLY 70s

12. OUT OF L.A. CAME THE BUILDERS OF SCHOOL DE-FUNDING AND MASS INCARCERATION

13. ’65 Watts Rebellion in response to police brutality in South L.A.FBI and police surveillance,
infiltration and bombing of Panther headquarters in L.A. and Pasadena; leads to United
Slaves shoot out with Panthers at UCLA. (US leader Karenga goes on to found Kwanzaa
and teach at Cal State Long Beach.) Geronimo Pratt (now Geronimo Ji Jaga) is framed by
LAPD and FBI. Crushing of prisoners’ rights movement at Soledad; guards assassinate
George Jackson and his brother. (Jacksons are from Pasadena.) Angela Davis teaches
and organizes at UCLA. LAPD riot on Chicano Moratorium and assassination of L.A.
Times reporter Ruben Salazar. CIA floods L.A.’s neighborhoods with drugs.
IN L.A. :

14. U.S. POLICIES THAT COME OUT OF L.A.:
Nixon‟s Law and Order backlash after
60s movements leads to mass incarceration
of poor people and people of color. The prison population
increases 300% in 20 years. Cali and L.A. lead the world
in incarceration and harsh sentencing, including creation
of JLWOP, Three Strikes, Prop 21 and Prop 9 - all are
written and financed from L.A..
Reaganomics including anti-tax movement and Prop 13.,
the “war on drugs” and war on welfare, and mental health
de-institutionalization without community services, all
lead to massive increase in homelessness. L.A. creates
“planned Skid Row” to force homeless into downtown
isolation.
U.S. fuels wars against rebellions in Central America. In
the 1980s, LAPD and Sheriffs work with U.S. military to
teach counter-guerilla tactics, interrogation and torture
against civilians. In the 90s and 00s, they return to teach
gang suppression when people are deported - (the
greatest number from L.A.)
Chief Parker introduces military-style policing and brings
National Guard into Watts in „65. Gates takes
militarization further by creating SWAT and CRASH (first
gang units).‟92 Uprising once again reflects L.A.‟s anger
over entrenched police brutality. Gates also created
DARE.
2007 - Jordan Downs is first community in the U.S. to get
GPS surveillance system. L.A. and Riverside first to use
GPS monitoring to track people with gang convictions
returning home from prison.

15. THEN CAME L.A.’S “WAR ON GANGS”

16. YOUTH SEEN AS
PREDATORS1980s - 1990s

17. Los Angeles County built the nation’s first comprehensive gang suppression policies:
[1] Gang injunctions - first in 1983,
the ability to lock down a
neighborhood and arrest people if they are
on the street with another alleged gang
member, out past a curfew, or carrying a cell phone.
[2] Gang databases in 1987 -
computerized lists that label
people as “gang members”
without their knowledge, without
any chance to appeal, and without a
clear way to get off.
(3) The statewide STEP Act in 1988 that provided the nation’s first law targeting street
gangs, first gang definition, first language referring to gang members as “terrorists,”
first gang enhancements in court, and took database statewide [Cal Gangs Database].
[4] In 1985, L.A. established CLEAR I[Community Law Enforcement and Recovery].

18. THAT WAS FOLLOWED BY THE SCHOOL-TO-JAIL TRACK

19. PRESIDENT REAGAN APPOINTS
WILLIAM BENNET AS U.S.
SECRETARY OF EDUCATION.
Zero
Tolerance
policies include requirements for
suspension, expulsion and arrests; the
takeover of school discipline by police
departments; and relationships in
schools replaced by metal detectors,
locker searches, drug-sniffing dogs,
and security gates.

21. 1. Police
Departments
take over
school security
2. More Probation
Officers than
Counselors
3. Schools look
and run like
prisons; some
have the same
architects
4. Searches, metal
detectors, gang
profiling
5. Leads to
massive push-
out and arrest

22. CALIFORNIA’S
ADDICTION
TO INCARCERATION

23. IN 1980, CALIFORNIA ALREADY HAD 12 PRISONS.
AND THEN, WITH THE MASSIVE DEMAND FOR
CELLS THAT CAME WITH TOUGH-ON-CRIME
POLICIES, THE STATE STARTED TO RAPIDLY
EXPAND THE BUILDING OF PRISONS AND CUT THE
BUDGET TO EVERYTHING ELSE.

45. DURING THAT SAME TIME,
CALIFORNIA BUILT TWO CAL
STATES AND ONE UNIVERSITY.

46. BY 2010, CALI HAD 176 THOUSAND STATE
PRISONERS. 40% FROM L.A. COUNTY.
2010
With realignment, 135,000 people in prison. The question remains
whether we will just shift bodies from state cages to county cages.

47. California used to be #1 in school spending
and had one of the best school
systems in the world.
Now, California is #1 in prison spending,
and with this year’s budget cuts,
dropped from #47 to #50
in school spending!
South and East L.A. lead the
nation in school overcrowding,
low test scores and
drop-out/push-out rates
with only 40%
of students graduating.

48. The YJC investigated the budgets for all 57 law enforcement departments
within LA County, interviewed youth on their experiences with the police, and
surveyed more than 2,000 residents on a 50 mile march across LA County.

49. Job and Cost Comparisons Between Law Enforcement and Intervention

50. Intervention Savings: Each Murder Costs $1 Million to Investigate and
averages $16 million more in Jail, Court and Incarceration. With drastic
decreases in homicide, should the saved money be reinvestment in our
schools and communities?

51. Just
1%of L.A.’s Courts,
Police, Sheriffs’
District Attorney’s,
Probation’s and City
Attorney’s Budgets
would pay for: 500 full-
time intervention
workers/peacebuilders;
50 youth centers open from
3pm - midnight, 365 days a
year; and 25,000 youth
jobs!