Los Angeles Leadership Academy, Los Angeles, CA

With Proposition 21 on the law books in California, teenagers under 18 can be charged as adults if they commit serious felonies. As a result, California teens are being sent to jail in record numbers. A team of eighth grade students at the Los Angeles Leadership Academy wanted to know more about the concrete steps a community, like the one that surrounds their school, can take to keep its youth out of jail. The students knew that positive ways for young people to spend free time plays a critical role in prevention, but they suspected there was much more to helping teens, especially those in impoverished neighborhoods, stay on track.

By interviewing juvenile justice scholars and conducting a community survey, students created an informational pamphlet and also a PowerPoint about juvenile incarceration and delinquency prevention in California. They were stunned by many of their findings-for example, that California spends approximately $48,000 per year on each juvenile it detains, while spending only a little over $6,000 per pupil on education. They learned that minority youth in California are eight times more likely to be tried in adult court than their Caucasian counterparts.

Final Products Our "Keep Kids Out of Jail!" PowerPoint presentation Our violence prevention brochure

Next report >>

Back to introduction >>