About Us
The Justice Education Project (JEP) is the first national Gen Z–led criminal justice reform organization. We equip young people to analyze and publicly challenge policing, courts, incarceration, and emerging technologies that shape the legal system. Through research and youth-authored civic storytelling, we help the public and policymakers understand how justice systems operate, who they harm, and which structural reforms advance safety and accountability.
Vision
JEP follows the Proximate Analyst framework.
When the people closest to a system are also the ones producing the analysis of it, the research gets sharper, the policy gets more accurate, and the reform gets more durable.
Countless studies demonstrate that criminal justice research systematically excludes the generation most exposed to its consequences. Gen Z is the first to come of age inside a justice system that is simultaneously expanding its reach and automating its decisions.
By building research capacity in young people and pairing it with institutional access and civic storytelling, and through the lens of the Proximate Analyst framework, JEP collectively advances a justice system in which the people it affects most have the power, standing, and tools to reshape it.
Our Theory of Change
Gen Z–Led Research & Analysis
The Problem: Criminal justice debates are dominated by people with the least exposure to their consequences. Young people who will live longest under algorithmic policing, automated courts, and expanding surveillance have almost no seat at the research tables where those systems get evaluated and defended.
Our Impact: We build Gen Z research capacity alongside legal scholars and university partners, ensuring youth analysis carries institutional weight inside the spaces that shape criminal justice policy. JEP...
-
Produces youth-led research on policing, courts, incarceration, and emerging justice technologies
-
Develops this work with legal scholars so it meets academic and policy standards
-
Translates justice issues into briefs, books, and commentary the public can use
Institutional Partnership & Access
The Problem: Young people are invited to share stories at justice convenings and almost never invited to produce the research or set the agenda. The result is that youth show up as testimony, not as analysts, and the institutions that drive reform stay closed to the generation with the most at stake.
Our Impact: We move young people from the testimony chair to the research role inside universities, think tanks, and national justice organizations. JEP…
-
Partners with universities and research centers to pilot youth-led research
-
Hosts scholar-informed briefings and convenings that put Gen Z analysts inside institutional spaces
-
Co-authors public-facing work with established legal and academic partners
Youth Authored Civic Storytelling
The Problem: The people closest to the justice system, including young people who are currently or formerly incarcerated, are written about constantly and almost never get to author the account themselves. When their experience reaches the public it's been filtered through someone else's frame, which strips both the accuracy and the authority that comes from telling it firsthand.
Our Impact: We give young people the platform and the editorial support to author their own analysis of the systems they've lived inside, so that public and policy conversations include the people those conversations are about. JEP…
-
Supports young people in publishing co-authored research and first-person civic writing
-
Pairs that writing with moderated public and institutional forums
-
Connects local youth experience to national justice debates through strategic media engagement
