A.B. 702 The PROMYSE Act (2023)

Assembly Bill 702 (Jackson), The PROMYSE (Promoting Youth Success and Empowerment) Act, would help California fully realize the Juvenile Justice Crime Prevention Act’s vision of providing collaborative, restorative, community-based services for young people and ensuring equitable representation and decision-making within county oversight bodies. 

The bill will reduce the involvement of law enforcement entities in these programs, by shifting resources to CBOs and other non-law enforcement agencies, that provide culturally competent, trauma informed, community-based alternatives to incarceration.

This legislation would:

• Reinvest JJCPA dollars into communities by requiring counties to distribute at least 95 percent of allotted JJCPA funds to CBOs and/​or public agencies that are non-law enforcement agencies.
• Ensure equal community representation in decision making by requiring counties’ JJCCs, which decide how JJCPA funds are spent, to designate co-chairs and allocate 50 percent of its seats to community members.

Author: Assemblymember Dr Corey Jackson

Co-Sponsors:

• Alliance for Boys and Men of Color
• Bend the Arc: Jewish Action, California
• California Alliance — Youth & Community Justice
• Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice
• Children’s Defense Fund-California
  
• Community Interventions
• Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice
• De-Bug
• Fresh Lifelines for Youth
  
• Fresno Barrios Unidos
• National Center for Youth Law
• National Prevention Science Coalition to Improve Lives
• SBX Youth & Family Services

You can find the A. B. 702 fact sheet, state one pager, county one pagers, and letter of support templates below. 

• A. B. 702 Fact Sheet
• A. B. 702 State One-Pager
• A. B. 702 Riverside County One-Pager
• Letter of Support Template

In 2020, the California State Auditor released a report verifying long-held concerns about poor JJCPA spending, decision-making, and reporting. The audit included an in-depth review of a diverse sample of counties, finding that counties maintained severely outdated spending plans. Four of the five counties sampled spent over 75 percent of their Fiscal Year 2017 – 18 JJCPA funds on probation departments, running counter to the stated goals of the program.

While each county is required to make JJCPA funding decisions through a Juvenile Justice Coordinating Council (JJCC), the audit found that counties left mandatory stakeholder seats vacant. In fact, 20 percent of all California counties lacked a JJCC during the audit review period.¹Additionally, many counties’ reports failed to evaluate whether their JJCPA-funded programs have been effective.

In the years since the audit, little has changed, the state of the JJCPA in counties has largely remained consistent, with the bulk of JJCPA funds distributed to Probation departments, continued inequitable decision making by JJCCs, and poor reporting and data. In 2000, the Juvenile Justice Crime Prevention Act (JJCPA) was enacted to support youth in their communities and limit their involvement in the justice system. However, for over twenty years, county spending has fallen short of the it’s original goals.

Since 2000, youth arrests have declined by over 80 percent. California has also seen a 66 percent decline in referrals to probation since 2006. However, most counties spend the majority of their JJCPA funds on probation staffing with little to none invested in community-based organizations (CBOs) and non-law enforcement public agencies like education, arts and public health. Some counties have even used JJCPA funds for probation programs that resulted in net-widening, which can have negative impacts on youth participants and their families.

Co-sponsored and supported by a broad coalition of Community Based Organizations including CJCJ (listed below), the PROMYSE Act will require programs and strategies funded under these provisions to be modeled on healing-centered, restorative, trauma-informed, and positive youth development approaches in collaboration with community-based organizations. The bill also requires no less than 95% of the funds allocated to be distributed to community-based organizations and public agencies or departments that are not law enforcement entities. This bill recognizes the critical support and skills that CBOs bring, and the added value that in-community programming provides to prevent recidivism.

Programs such as those provided by Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice (CURYJ) in Oakland include culturally-competent community healing work, youth leadership development programs catered to systems-impacted youth and young adults, life coaching, violence interruption work, build youth leaders and have shown to prevent violence, crime, and further re-entrenching youth in the criminal justice system.

Organizations such as SBX Youth & Family Services provide a variety of programs and services to youth and their families in the Inland Empire. Their prevention and intervention programs offered to young people are restorative, culturally focused, trauma-informed and youth-centered. These include mentoring programs, restorative justice programming, youth civic engagement initiatives, and culturally focused programs that build cultural and historical appreciation of self while also establishing confidence in identity.

You can get involved now by writing a letter of support! 

Click here for a letter of support template. 

Bill will be heard in California’s Assembly Public Safety Committee meeting in January of 2024. We will post updates as they occur.