Youth justice: there's more to the story.
Too often, youth make the news only when the story is about crime. Report for Youth Justice helps journalists tell fairer, more complete stories about young people and the juvenile justice system — grounded in data and research, and centered on youth telling their own stories.
Read the Style GuideThe facts
Stories about youth rarely make headlines — much less the news at all.
When young people are covered, it's almost always in the context of crime — overwhelmingly violent crime, the least likely kind of crime youth are involved in.
What's working in juvenile justice — and what isn't — often goes unexamined.
Youth voices go unheard. Reporters usually turn to police and official government sources — not the young people who have lived the system and have solutions.
When crime is the only story we tell about young people, the public gets a distorted picture — and policy follows. Fairer, more complete reporting builds understanding, accountability, and better outcomes.
Supporting journalists.
We support journalists in telling more accurate, fair, and balanced stories about youth, youth justice issues, and the juvenile justice system — reporting grounded in data and research, and shaped by the young people who have lived it.
Young people are more than a headline about their worst moment.
Report for Youth Justice
The Youth Justice Style Guide
Our blog: regular, practical guidance on best practices for reporting on youth and the juvenile justice system — covering language, ethics, sourcing, data, and the stories that go untold.
Read the Style GuideAbout
Report for Youth Justice was founded by Liz Ryan, one of the nation's leading voices on youth justice, with more than 30 years of experience reforming how America treats young people in the justice system.
Liz Ryan
Liz served as Administrator of the U.S. Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention (OJJDP), appointed by President Biden in 2022 — the federal government's top position on juvenile justice. Before that, she founded and led two national campaigns: the Youth First Initiative, to end youth incarceration and direct resources to community-based alternatives, and the Campaign for Youth Justice, to end the prosecution of youth in adult court.
Liz has spent her career at the intersection of youth justice and journalism — serving as an expert source for national media, writing extensively on juvenile justice, and working as an investigative journalist with the LSU Cold Case Project on civil rights-era injustices.
Liz currently serves as the Stanley S. Nelson Distinguished Practitioner for Justice Reporting & Communications at Louisiana State University. In that role, she engages Louisiana journalism students as well as reporters across the country in covering youth justice issues and the juvenile justice system, and helps run the LSU Cold Case Project field experience class investigating civil rights-era murder cases. Together with her colleague Janet Chiancone, Liz launched Read for Youth Justice, a resource curated in partnership with youth justice stakeholders and libraries to elevate books, narratives, and voices that reflect the realities of youths' experiences in the justice system.
She founded Report for Youth Justice because she has seen firsthand how news coverage shapes public perception and public policy — and how much better both can be when young people get to tell their own stories.
Get in touch
Working on a story? We can provide recommendations for you on where to find data, research, and experts in the field to help you get the story right.
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