Building the Leadership of Young People to Dream Beyond Bars

Xochtil Larios was only 16 when she found herself behind bars and caught up in the criminal justice system. She was already in prison for a year when she first encountered a Communities United for Restorative Youth Justice (CURYJ) advocate. What CURYJ (pronounced “courage”) discovered was that Larios was actually eligible to be paroled months before, but because her family on the outside was unhoused, the authorities kept her “behind the wall” (the organization’s idiom for imprisonment). Through CURYJ, Larios was matched with a foster care program that allowed her not only to gain her freedom, but through future engagement with the organization, set her on a path to future success. 

Larios is just one of many young people who found their voice, power, and purpose as a result of CURYJ’s mission. Founded 14 years ago, the organization is devoted to ending the mass incarceration and criminalization of youths and to building community and creating and mobilizing youth leaders, thereby transforming and uplifting the entire community it serves. The organization is the brainchild of George Galvis, whose earliest memory is of “profound domestic violence, fearing for my mother’s life when I was three years old.” 

Looking back on his journey, Galvis recognizes that he reproduced on the streets what he saw at home, “because I look like my father and I know my pain through violence, until I was getting locked up and caught up in the criminal legal system.” By the time Galvis managed to free himself of the justice system, he already recognized that the problem of youth imprisonment and criminalization was a systemic, community, and generational problem. He had community healing in mind when he founded CURYJ. 

CURYJ remedies high rates of recidivism in the community with programs like “Homies 4 Justice,” a paid internship for systems-impacted youth ages 14-18 who are interested in becoming leaders in their communities. Interns also learn to heal trauma, ways to eradicate systemic violence, and social justice through community organizing and efforts to create alternatives to incarceration. Galvis espouses and promotes the need for youths to understand their historical patterns and ancestry and learn how to break that cycle. 

“You don’t really know where you are going until you know where you’ve been,” says Galvis.  

CURYJ also recognizes that while mass incarceration is a systemic problem, it is exacerbated by the for-profit prison industrial complex. The organization’s Dream Beyond Bars fellowship amplifies the political consciousness, political power, leadership and professional development of formerly incarcerated youths. The goal is to create leaders who will transform the juvenile justice system and create community-based solutions to incarceration and opportunities
for diversion.  

The program has already created a diaspora that has effectively lobbied for and created that change in the community, including co-authoring Proposition 57, and helping pass over 50 bills in the state of California, all of which have transformed the lives of systems-impacted young people and their families. 

The success of these programs can be seen in the 100+ systems-impacted young people enrolled in CURYJ’s programs each year. And it can be seen in Xochtil Larios, who has gone on to receive her associate’s degree from Laney College. She is also a recipient of the California Endowment Community Champion Youth Award and she serves as a Youth Commissioner on the Alameda County Juvenile Justice Delinquency Prevention Commission – the first formerly incarcerated person to do so. She represents CURYJ’s vision for a future in which every young person is given the resources to heal, grow, and thrive.