Disrupting The School To Prison Pipeline

Did you know?

The United States has the world's highest prison population. The US accounts for 5 percent of the world’s population, but 25 percent of its prisoners.

The United States incarcerates more youth than any other country in the world. Most youth are incarcerated for non–violent offenses.

Relying on incarceration has not reduced crime and has increased unwanted social and economic consequences, according to the National Academy of Sciences on the Growth of Incarceration in the US. It is Ineffective, unfair and unsustainable.

TURNING THE GEARS OF JUSTICE, CREATING SAFETY TOGETHER

Introduction

Genesis Youth Leaders seek a justice system that emphasizes fairness, rehabilitation, the strengthening of community and the ending of structural racism and economic injustice. We owe it to our society to work together to create safety together, and to invest in tools that are both effective and fair. We strive to dismantle a system that suspends and expels, stops and questions, arrests, incarcerates, and even murders youth of color with impunity. As we work together to transform the justice system, we will emphasize care, not fear. We will build partnerships, equity and unity, not exclusion, hatred and division. We will ensure youth are squarely in the middle of policy and practice decisions to create effective and transformative justice systems, while ending youth incarceration entirely.

Platform

The Genesis Disrupt the Pipeline task force is organized around the belief that youth should be at the center of this issue, as they are affected by these policies more than adults and that youth should not be incarcerated.

We aim to dismantle the Prison Industrial Complex which puts profits over people by creating very lucrative food, healthcare, labor and other systems that directly benefit from incarceration. We believe that the emphasis on incarceration and other punitive measures is a direct result of a narrative surrounding “public safety” which has been used as a pretext to fill our prisons with non-violent offenders. We believe that there needs to be an emphasis on ending incarceration and building community.