Community Passageways

Community Passageways (CP) is a Seattle-based nonprofit founded in 2017 with a vision for zero youth incarceration. We create alternatives to incarceration for youth and young adults by rebuilding our communities through committed relationships centered on love, compassion, and consistency.

We:

• Create alternatives to the carceral system through rebuilding our communities.

• Serve primarily Black and brown youth and young adults in King County by connecting them to Ambassadors with shared life experience.

• Believe criminalization and ostracization are ineffective deterrents to unproductive behaviors; and the carceral system further harms people who have already been negatively impacted by trauma.

Community Passageways (CP) is leading the way in reimagining and actively creating an alternative to today’s criminal legal system. 

Over the last 20 years in Seattle, we have seen a sharp decline in the number of young people in detention. But even as the overall number decreased, our current juvenile legal system has a disproportionately harmful impact on youth of color, particularly black youth. While only 10% of King County’s 2 million residents are black, they now make up almost half of the detention population on any given day, and more than half of felony offenses.

We have a four-pronged approach to community justice: 

• Prevention: Keep youth on a good path. Show them new paths.
• Diversion: Keep people out of the prison system and in community.
• Support: Support people already in the prison system.
• Reintegrate: Ensure a smooth, successful integration into the community.

Our community-centered and evidence-based model provides an alternative to the current criminal legal system.  We collaborate with families, schools, the court system, correctional center staff, religious institutions, policy makers, and community members to support adolescent youth of color. We provide youth mentors and access to programs focused on personal healing, identity development, and leadership building.

We employ men and women from the community who share similar racial, cultural, and socio-economic backgrounds with our young people who have lived experience navigating the full spectrum of the school-to-prison pipeline to act as credible messengers and Ambassadors. Our Ambassadors work with heart, humility, and compassion, to lead community and school-based healing circles, individual and family case management, court advocacy, and youth leadership opportunities. 

Young people kept in the community through their dedication and our support have gone on to enroll in college, start businesses, graduate from high school, and help rebuild our communities.