I couldn't imagine not dedicating my career,
the time that I have so far, to this effort
that is focused on getting kids, children,
out of adult jails and prisons.
And working with Penn Law students helped
us build and grow this organization, which
is a novel approach in Philadelphia and we
think, frankly, in the rest of the country.
YAP has evolved over three years and we now
focus on the direct service component of our
work, which looks like supporting the Youth
Sentencing Re-entry Project on the direct
file juvenile cases that they take on in support
of the attorney who is representing the young
person.
We work directly with young people who in
the adult criminal justice system, providing
mitigation support and re-entry support.
So, what that means, is we work with the young
person and his or her family to understand
the context of this child's life and all of
the factors that led up to this young person
facing the charges that they are facing.
And our teams are made up of two social work
students and two law students, so I'm working
with them to identify partners in the community
that can work with, identify themes for their
report, and just generally help them pull
together something that is going to help this
young person.
We have students from the law school learning
from students at the Social Work School, students
from the Social Work School learning from
students at the Law School.
We as
attorneys learning from all of them and really
the young people that we work with benefiting
as a result as their thoughtfulness and their
care and their dedication to the work.
That can demonstrate to a judge that this
child has strength and hopes and dreams that
go beyond the reasons why they're in court
in the first place.
YAP does a good job of making sure you get
out, but then when you get out, you have the
supports around you so that you can shape,
create a better life for yourself than maybe
what you had.
I've been able to promote change in our community
and I'm excited to use my degree and use my
platform as a lawyer to be able to promote
wider change in the different cities that
I end up practicing in.
