YOUTH ADVISORY COUNCIL

Every year, WITNESS to Mass Incarceration works with approximately 70 interns, and over the past several years, more than 400 young people have completed internships with us. Many remain connected to WITNESS, and one thing they share is an interest in understanding and addressing mass incarceration.

We are now building a Youth Advisory Council that will take that engagement beyond the internship. Our current interns will help design a program they can bring back to their colleges and universities, engaging other students who want to learn about and become involved in issues surrounding mass incarceration.

Youth Advisory Council members will come together once a month on Zoom to discuss issues related to incarceration and the criminal legal system, share what they are seeing and learning on their campuses and in their communities, and identify areas they want to explore more deeply. Members will also form working groups around specific areas of interest, conduct research and develop ideas between meetings, and report their work back to the full Council the following month.

Our goal is to create a national network of young people who are informed, engaged, and committed to bringing their own ideas and perspectives to the conversation about mass incarceration.