To the next Mayor and the people of Washington, D.C.:
We write as advocates who work alongside D.C. young people and families across the youth justice, education, disability, and child-welfare systems. These recommendations draw on that experience and on the expertise of the young people most directly affected.
Washington can become a city that stands with its young people: a city where every young person can learn, work, gather, heal, and build a future without being needlessly criminalized, surveilled, or shut out.
We ask the next administration to make a clear commitment: the District must be a defender of its young people. Safety is the product of stability, opportunity, family connection, and accountable public systems. Confinement, exclusion, and punishment do not produce safety.
We ask the next Mayor to commit, within the first 100 days, to a public plan and timeline for each of these ten priorities, developed with young people, families, and the organizations that serve them.
1. Make racial justice a governing commitment
Racial justice must be central to the District’s youth agenda. The burdens of criminalization, confinement, educational exclusion, and failed public systems fall overwhelmingly on Black children and families. As of May 2025, every committed young person held at the Youth Services Center was a Black boy; the D.C. Sentencing Commission found that 91.5 percent of the young people direct-filed and prosecuted as adults under D.C. Code § 16-2301(3) were Black. (Council for Court Excellence, Committed Youth Awaiting Placement in the D.C. Youth Services Center; D.C. Sentencing Commission, Title 16 Sentencing Trends: 2013–2023).
The next administration should commit to building a smaller, fairer, and more developmentally appropriate youth justice system with racial justice as a primary focus. Every major policy, budget, contract, and agency practice should undergo a published racial-equity review before adoption and be monitored afterward using outcomes disaggregated by race, gender, disability, ward, and system involvement. Young people, families, and affected communities should help define the measures and review the results.
Increasing educational equity, protecting disability rights, and reducing reliance on incarceration are inseparable parts of that work. The measure of progress must be whether Black and Brown young people can thrive free from unnecessary criminalization and system involvement.
2. Decriminalize youth and reduce unnecessary confinement
The District should keep young people out of detention whenever possible and reserve confinement for the rare situations where it is necessary.
- End detention and incarceration for misdemeanor-level conduct and technical supervision violations.
- Require DYRS and other mayoral agencies to use the least-restrictive, individualized, and developmentally appropriate approaches within their authority, including in placement, supervision, incentives and sanctions, services, and release planning. Use the Mayor’s budget, appointments, legislative advocacy, and interagency coordination to advance the same principle in pretrial practice.
- End the prosecution of children as adults, including the direct-file prosecution of young people under D.C. Code § 16-2301(3) (referred to here as “Title 16 youth”).
- Replace punitive responses to missed appointments, curfew violations, or difficulties in placement with support, problem-solving, graduated incentives, and proportionate, developmentally appropriate responses.
Between Dec 31, 2013, and Dec 31, 2023, the U.S. Attorney’s Office direct-filed adult charges against 176 16- and 17-year-olds under D.C. Code § 16-2301(3), filing 289 qualifying counts. Of those counts, 146 (51 percent) resulted in a conviction, across 117 sentenced cases. More than 91 percent of the young people charged were Black. The gap between initial charges and final convictions is why a prosecutor’s charging decision should not, by itself, determine whether a child loses the confidentiality and rehabilitative protections of juvenile court. (D.C. Sentencing Commission, Title 16 Sentencing Trends: 2013–2023).
Until the prosecution of children as adults is ended, the District must protect the young people subjected to it. The District should adopt a policy permitting Title 16 youth to remain in DYRS custody past their eighteenth birthdays until they turn 21 or are sentenced and designated to the Federal Bureau of Prisons, whichever occurs first, and should seek any additional legal authority necessary to implement that policy. Adult prosecution should not unnecessarily sever a young person’s access to developmentally appropriate education, treatment, family connection, advocacy, or reentry planning.
No young person should lose their liberty because they need more support to succeed.
3. Make DYRS live up to its rehabilitative mission
The Department of Youth Rehabilitation Services (DYRS) exists to rehabilitate the young people in its care. Young people have a right to programs that build their capacity, relationships, education, health, employment, and future. Warehousing is not rehabilitation.
The next administration should reduce overcrowding, expand community-based placements and services, and establish clear, published standards explaining what young people committed to DYRS can expect and how they can succeed. DYRS should invest in careful hiring, training, supervision, and accountability for Youth Development Representatives, emphasizing trauma-informed practice, de-escalation, positive youth development, and relationship building.
Purposeful family engagement must be central to rehabilitation. DYRS should involve each young person’s chosen family and support network in rehabilitation planning, placement, education, health care, and release and reentry planning; maintain regular communication about the young person’s progress; provide transportation, technology, and flexible visiting opportunities; and remove practical barriers to participation. DYRS should treat family connection as a source of stability and should never withdraw it as punishment.
Title 16 youth should have equitable access at the Youth Services Center to the same meaningful programming available to other young people in DYRS custody, including recreation, therapy, life-skills instruction, vocational education, paid workforce pathways, apprenticeships, and industry-recognized credentials. DYRS should not separate Title 16 youth from detained or committed youth without an individualized safety or legal justification.
DYRS should provide these developmentally appropriate services before and after trial for as long as legally permissible.
The Youth Services Center’s population rose 50 percent in two years, from 83 to 125; some committed young people reported waiting seven months or longer for placement; and youth-on-youth assaults averaged more than 34 per month through August 2025. (Council for Court Excellence, Committed Youth Awaiting Placement in the D.C. Youth Services Center). The District’s own study found that 92.7 percent of young people completing DYRS commitment in 2018 were rearrested during commitment or within two years. (Criminal Justice Coordinating Council, Juvenile Recidivism: 2018 Cohort Study).
These figures show that the District is failing to keep young people in its care safe and prepare them to succeed. The District should fulfill DYRS’s rehabilitative mission through less confinement, independent oversight by the Office of the Ombudsperson for Children, individualized services, transparent standards, and sustained investment in community-based care.
4. End stigmatizing surveillance and protect confidentiality
GPS monitoring should be rare, individually justified, time-limited, and subject to regular review. It stigmatizes young people, interferes with daily life, and undermines the confidentiality juvenile-court involvement is meant to protect.
The District should ensure that juvenile records are sealed effectively across government. MPD, courts, prosecutors, schools, and every relevant agency must have clear procedures, training, and accountability so that a young person’s record does not follow them after the law says it should be sealed. The next administration should also support legislation making expungement automatic for eligible juvenile records wherever legally permissible, so that old system involvement is eliminated rather than merely hidden from ordinary view.
5. Guarantee education and disability rights
All students, regardless of race, income, court involvement, or disability, should have meaningful access to a quality education. Education and disability rights do not stop when a young person enters a facility or moves between placements.
The next administration should guarantee uninterrupted school access, timely special-education evaluations and services, credit and records transfer, and confirmed enrollment before a young person leaves custody or placement. It should specifically:
- Fix credit loss and discontinuity. Support passage and implementation of the Education Continuity for Students in the Care of D.C. Amendment Act (B26-0403). Require schools to accept credits earned during detention and incarceration, count partial credits consistently, offer “completer courses,” transfer records promptly, and enforce existing interagency agreements among OSSE, DCPS, DYRS, DOC, and education providers.
- Guarantee diploma pathways for older students with disabilities. Fully fund and implement the LEARNS Act (B26-0526). Young people entering the D.C. Jail without an IEP must be identified and evaluated when a disability is suspected. Eligible students through age 22 must receive a free appropriate public education, including students in restrictive housing and students in DOC custody who are receiving treatment at St. Elizabeths Hospital. When the District fails to provide required services, it should provide compensatory education and qualified individual support.
- Create a centralized educational-records system. Establish a District-wide system through which transcripts, credits, course progress, evaluations, and IEPs follow court-involved students across D.C.’s many local education agencies, DYRS and DOC facilities, placements, and community schools. A short period of detention should not erase completed work, force a student into the wrong classes, or cost a student their place at their community school.
- Protect disability rights throughout the system. Every school, DYRS facility, community placement, and contracted provider should comply fully with the IDEA, Section 504, and the Americans with Disabilities Act. That includes accessible communication and programming, timely evaluations, honoring IEPs and providing all required related services, reasonable accommodations, assistive technology, and transition planning.
Young people and families also need accessible grievance and remedy processes when these rights are denied. A young person should never be left without a confirmed, appropriate school placement, an evaluation, an IEP, or a path toward graduation because of system involvement.
6. Create a Transition Guarantee
Young people leaving DYRS commitment deserve at least the same transition support available to young people leaving the child-welfare system, and the District should strengthen both.
These are largely the same children. The Council for Court Excellence reports that national studies estimate that between 45 and 83 percent of justice-involved youth have child-welfare histories. In the District, the audit identified 181 unique crossover youth with active delinquency cases and CFSA involvement from fiscal years 2018 through 2022. At the end of that period, court records showed 93 unique crossover youth with open delinquency or neglect cases; all but 10 were Black. Yet transition supports still depend on which legal system has custody when a young person approaches adulthood. (Council for Court Excellence, A Broken Web).
Transition support works: compared with peers who left foster care for permanency at 17 or 18, 19-year-olds in extended foster care were 41 percent less likely to have experienced homelessness and 64 percent less likely to have been recently incarcerated. No comparable, coordinated transition guarantee exists for young people leaving DYRS. (Annie E. Casey Foundation, The Evidence for Extended Foster Care).
Every young person leaving DYRS should have:
- A safe housing plan before release;
- Identification, benefits, healthcare continuity, and transportation;
- A confirmed education, training, employment, apprenticeship, or certification pathway;
- Credit, IEP, and school-record continuity;
- A named navigator and warm handoffs to community providers; and
- Ongoing support through early adulthood.
7. Establish an Office of Emerging Adult Services
The District should establish an Office of Emerging Adult Services with the authority, staffing, and resources to align DYRS, CFSA, education, housing, workforce, behavioral health, DOC, and community partners around young people’s needs through age 25.
The Office should own the Transition Guarantee, publish cross-agency outcomes, identify service gaps, and be publicly accountable for ensuring that young people do not fall between agencies. Young people should not be released or transferred without a plan, continuing relationships, and the resources to carry it out.
8. Replace exclusion with opportunity
The District should expand paid workforce pathways, apprenticeships, career and technical education, and industry-recognized certification programs. Young people should have access to structured pathways that combine stipends, education credits, credentials, mentorship, and direct connections to careers in health care, education, technology, infrastructure, public service, and the green economy.
The next administration should expand the District’s school-year High School Internship Program as a year-round counterpart to the Summer Youth Employment Program. Applications should be accepted on a rolling basis so that young people who are ready to work can enter paid opportunities throughout the year.
These cannot be make-work programs. They should be pipelines into stable employment and further education, designed with employers and accessible to young people facing the greatest barriers, including court-involved youth and emerging adults.
The District should also guarantee accessible after-school, evening, weekend, and summer programs in every ward. These programs should be co-designed and regularly evaluated by young people, including court-involved youth, with compensated roles for youth participants. Availability should be measured by actual participation and by young people’s assessment of whether programming is welcoming, useful, and responsive to their interests. Rather than relying on youth curfews and exclusionary enforcement, D.C. should make it possible for young people to be safely present in their own city: traveling, working, gathering, and participating in public life.
Safe recreation, arts, sports, cultural programming, late-night transportation, and welcoming community spaces are public-safety investments.
The District should also create civic-engagement opportunities for young people, including compensated seats on youth advisory bodies, participatory budgeting, leadership development, and formal roles in evaluating the agencies and programs that affect their lives.
9. Build community defense and shared power
Families, young people, and communities should share power in the decisions that shape young people’s lives.
The District should invest in community-defense capacity: family justice hubs, youth and family navigators, rights education, case-support and mitigation resources, and community organizations that can accompany young people through court, placement, school, and reentry.
Every Title 16 youth should be paired with a credible messenger: a trusted, culturally competent adult who can provide consistent mentorship, help the young person navigate education and services, support family connection, and participate in release and reentry planning. That relationship should continue if the young person moves from DYRS to DOC or federal custody. Institutional transfers should not sever one of the young person’s few stable, supportive relationships.
These structures help families understand the system, advocate for their loved ones, obtain services, and hold public agencies accountable.
10. Make transparency and accountability enforceable
The Office of the Ombudsperson for Children (OFC) should have explicit authority, independence, resources, and access to monitor DYRS facilities and community placements; receive confidential complaints; investigate recurring conditions and service failures; and report its findings publicly. OFC oversight should include direct engagement with young people, families, attorneys, community organizations, and staff.
DYRS and related agencies should be required by statute to publish their policies, placement standards, program expectations, use of incentives and sanctions, use of GPS monitoring, data on confinement and overcrowding, and transition outcomes.
The District should set public goals and report regularly on racial disparities and whether young people are actually safer, more connected to school and work, securely housed, receiving necessary disability services, and able to remain in their communities. Reporting should include structured, independently collected feedback from young people and families through permanent, compensated Youth Advisory and Family Advisory Councils with access to agency data, regular meetings with agency leadership, and public responses to their recommendations.
Washington, D.C., can choose a different measure of success: how many young people it helps thrive rather than how many it confines or controls. We ask the next Mayor to adopt that measure and, within the first 100 days, publish a concrete plan for meeting it.
Respectfully submitted,
The Youth Justice Project