Mitigation Specialist, Youth Sentencing & Reentry Project – Feb 1

Posted by on January 31, 2023

The Youth Sentencing & Reentry Project  (YSRP) seeks to end the practice of charging youth as adults. In the meantime, YSRP seeks to lessen the duration and impact of adult criminal sentences on children and their families, who are primarily low-income and Black and Brown. Through individual cases and systemic policy advocacy, we work to transform the experiences of children prosecuted in the adult criminal justice system, and to ensure that children who have contact with the adult justice system can return home and live full lives with dignity. We partner with court-involved youth, their families, and lawyers to develop holistic, humanizing narratives that mitigate the facts of each case in an effort to avoid adult incarceration and provide decision-makers with actionable alternatives. With a commitment to elevating our client-partners’ agency and self-determined goals, we make crucial connections to community resources, providing our youth and Juvenile Lifer client-partners with access to supportive services including in the areas of education, healthcare, housing, and employment. Finally, we work to raise awareness of the issues that face young people in the adult criminal justice system, and to reform the system. For more information about YSRP’s mission, values and work, please visit our website.

Position Description

YSRP seeks a Mitigation Specialist to partner with youth who face charges in the adult criminal justice system in the Philadelphia area, and to provide comprehensive strategic mitigation services and advocacy for our client-partners. The Mitigation Specialist will work collaboratively with YSRP staff and client-partners to support activities across YSRP’s integrated mitigation, reentry and policy advocacy model. The Mitigation Specialist will employ a team-based approach to collaborating with YSRP colleagues who provide mitigation, reentry, and legal support, as well as with the young person’s defense counsel, to support the accomplishment of the youth client-partner’s self-determined goals. Mitigation services may include, but are not limited to: comprehensive investigation into the youth’s background, support of the youth while incarcerated, interviews with the youth and their family and support system, collection and digestion of records, and writing a mitigation report. The Mitigation Specialist is a full-time, exempt, staff position that will report to YSRP’s Director of Advocacy. The Mitigation Specialist’s role is critical in effectuating YSRP’s comprehensive case advocacy model, which seeks to lessen the duration and impact of adult criminal sentences on children and families in and around Philadelphia.

We will begin reviewing applications on February 1, 2023.

Full job description and application information.