Who we are.

The Young Justice Advisors are a team of Young Adults aged 18-30 with lived experiences of the Care and Justice System. The team are from all over the country including Leeds, London, Leicester, Birmingham. We are focused on highlighting the voices of those in the systems and are all passionate about seeing informed reform.

In 2016 the Young Justice Advisors was created, with funding from the Barrow Cadbury Trust by Leaders Unlocked. Through this project a unique group of young adults were formed with lived experience of the justice system and care system, to become policy advisors and advocates for lived experience voices and change at the national level.

Over the last 6 years the Young Justice Advisors have gone from strength to strength. The project has become well recognised in the criminal justice sector – working with a range of agencies including the Ministry of Justice, HMPPS, Youth Justice Board, MOPAC, Select Committees, and others. The project has developed, the young adults have developed and now we are working towards a bigger team and more engagement.

In 2017, we published our ‘Race and Criminal Justice’ report and worked with the Lammy Review Team at Ministry of Justice.

In 2019, we partnered with HMPSS to involve service users in the long-term strategy for prisons and probation. This work saw our Young Advisors running workshops in 7 prisons and presenting back their findings to key people at HMPPS.

In 2020 we published our ‘Hearing from Young Adults’ report. This youth-led report was co-produced with our Young Advisors. It brought together the findings from their peer research with 500 young adults in the criminal justice system.

This year we have produced three resources for young adults in the care and justice system: Through the gate, your guide to the adult estate and your guide to the care system. These resources are to give young adults a better understanding of their situations and show them options and alternatives. These have been funded by the Ellis Campbell Charitable Foundation and the Blagrave Trust.

We will also be launching our report in April 2022 which has listened to the voices of 300 young adults across 4 key priority areas: Race, Mental Health, Life after prison and the Care system.