Rotarians braved the heat on Wednesday July 10th for a presentation from the founder of the Center for Children and Youth Justice (CCYJ), Justice Bobbe Bridge, and current President and CEO Rachel Sottile. CCYJ has been in Washington since its inception in 2006 and has aimed to reform the State’s child welfare and juvenile justice systems. “The outcomes were really bad on not just individual cases, but it was systemic. The systems themselves were failing,” Bridge said when describing the impetus for starting CCYJ. CCYJ chose to act through their vision of research based, data driven, silo busting, and youth centered nonprofit to address disparities in overrepresentation in the youth criminal justice system.
CCYJ aims to break the cycles and burdens that come from the justice system when outcomes would set up youth to fall into a vicious cycle. “Sometimes the only graduation that these young people would experience was from childhood homes, to juvenile justice, to homelessness, to poverty, and to the adult criminal system,” Bridge said. CCYJ has sought to end this harmful cycle by convening, coordinating, collaborating, educating, and engaging across Washington with state and local leaders to promote the overall welfare of the youth caught in the flow of this harmful cycle.
CCYJ’s mandate is to improve the outcomes in Washington state’s foster care and juvenile justice systems for all children who are ages zero to 25. To achieve sustainable improvements in this field, CCYJ works to apply three operating modalities. Those modalities are to facilitate multisystem coordination and collaboration; provide training and ongoing technical assistance; and advocate for data driven and youth centered solutions. CCYJ operates nearly a dozen programs to address a wide variety of critical issues facing the well being of children in Washington state. Through these programs CCYJ aims to bring forward systemic change and reform that is equitable, data driven, and youth centered.
An example of this reform that CCYJ has helped to achieve came in May of 2023, when Washington become the sixth state to end the act of placing fines and fees on the youth involved in the criminal justice system. This change was also reflected through further success in ending the statute called “Parent Pay” though House Bill 1169. “Parent Pay” was implemented in the 1970s and required families of children in the juvenile justice system to pay a percentage of their gross income to cover the costs of their child’s incarceration. “Many families facing financial hardship were forced to forego basic human needs: housing, food; in order to pay those fees. For many, the result was a vicious cycle that kept families impoverished and entrenched in the system,” Sottile said when addressing the adverse outcomes from “Parent Pay.”
CCYJ analyzed the data from the “Parent Pay” statute and found that only 25% of fees under this program were actually paid and a line item was kept in the Department of Families and Children’s budget that allowed for collections on “Parent Pay” to follow the families and youth caught in this cycle. CCYJ’s work in 2022, with state leaders, enacted new legislation that eliminated nearly $41 million in outstanding penalties and fees under this program. Despite this elimination, collection agencies, credit bureaus, and background checks would still show these outstanding fees as an adverse mark against someone’s credit; despite not being collectible any longer. This year, CCYJ advocated for Senate Bill 5974 that would make these outstanding collectible items null and void, ending the adverse effects that it had on families and individuals. “Our work is about ensuring fidelity to the intention of the law and holding accountable the systems responsible for filling it,’ Sottile added.
Additionally, CCYJ has been working with the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Program of the Department of Justice, to address the issue of youth gun violence here in King County. CCYJ’s Leadership, Intervention, & Change (LINC) program aims to reduce gun violence through youth networking, facilitating information sharing, and advocating for initiatives that help prevent youth from getting involved in community violence. LINC’s work is being conducted at a critical time in the Seattle and King County area with increases in cases of gun violence having climbed by 70% to over 450 in 2023. While much of the US has seen decreases in gun violence since the uptick during the COVID-19 pandemic, the increase locally has resulted in 54% of shootings being fatal. Of the local victims nearly 25% were between the agents of 18 and 24. “There is no easy solution to this challenging and complex myriad of gun violence,” Sottile commented. “Work takes time. Community violence intervention takes time, and we will have worked on that, because lives are at stake. We remain committed to being part of the solution to this precarious epidemic,” Sottile said in closing.
The meeting concluded with announcements for upcoming events. On
July 17th there will be an evening meeting, on
July 24th there will be a
Zoom only meeting, and on
July 31st there will be an in-person meeting. Further information for these events can be found on the
Seattle 4 Calendar.
