Rooted in Struggle

Unceded ancestral lands of Coast Salish peoples and the Duwamish Tribe Dxʷdəwʔabš, Seattle, King County-After decades of Black, Indigenous, and Brown communities fighting to dismantle the carceral state, in April 2011, King County announced their plan to build a new youth courthouse and jail. The county was immediately met with pushback from the community, with intentional organizing of No New Youth Jail Coalition and broad calls for the abolition of incarceration throughout the county. That same April King County Councilmembers held a meeting that was interrupted by community members expressing their concern for Black, Brown, Indigenous, Undocumented, Queer, and other oppressed youth disproportionately impacted by incarceration. One Black mother spoke of the harm that she had experienced, the harm she feared her children may endure and the harm her nephew was enduring in the existing facility. 

Resistance to the youth jail and the violence of incarceration continued from that April day into the present. Community members engaged in a diversity of tactics to resist the youth jail, including home demonstrations in front of council member houses, marches, teach-ins, noise demos, disrupting Executive Dow Constantine’s events, filling council chambers for community comment, shutting down the King County council chambers, block parties in front of the youth jail, countless meetings, op-ed articles and much more.  Despite continued resistance, the County moved forward with the plan.

After the completion of the $242 million dollar “Children and Family Justice Center” that exists to prosecute and incarcerate youth, King County has started to take steps toward divestment/investment by investing $6.2 million dollars into Restorative Community Pathways. 

Restorative Community Pathways (RCP) is the result of decades of organizing against the incarceration and punishment of our youth, building off of the work of Black, Indigenous, organizers of color, anarchists, and countless others who organized against the King County Youth Jail. Once the King County Council agreed to fund RCP, people impacted by the criminal legal system throughout the county came together as work groups tasked with designing RCP. They included young people, parents, families, community providers and community members who have developed restorative and transformative practices.

RCP was initially proposed by Collective Justice, Creative Justice, CHOOSE 180, and Community Passageways. It was informed by focus groups with youth impacted by the legal system and King County community service providers.

These community-based organizations worked with the Department of Public Defense to negotiate with the King County Prosecuting Attorney’s Office. As a result, 40% of youth will be referred away from prosecution to RCP with plans to increase the number of youth in the next few years