NCPLS’s Incarcerated Youth Advocacy Project represents juveniles in the custody of the North Carolina Department of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.   IYAP advocates for children whose sentences may have been wrongly imposed, and investigates and represents children on claims relating to conditions of their confinement, such as education, health care and sexual abuse.  The Project will also document the ongoing need to provide youth access to the courts by gathering relevant information for policy makers. 

IYAP works with the Office of the Juvenile Defender and other stakeholders in and outside of state government to ensure that incarcerated youth are treated fairly, safely, and humanely.  In 2010 there were 357 youth committed to youth development centers, with an average daily population of 429 youth.  In the same year there were 4221 youth confined in local detention centers.  Before implementation of the Incarcerated Youth Advocacy Project these inmates had no readily available access to attorneys to examine potential sentencing errors or to investigate constitutionally deficient conditions of confinement.   

For information on the effects and outcomes of juvenile incarceration, click here for a recent publication by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, No Place for Kids: The Case for Reducing Juvenile Incarceration.

NCPLS is grateful to the Z. Smith Reynolds Foundation for funding the Incarcerated Youth Advocacy Project.  The Project’s services are free of charge, available to committed youth anywhere in the North Carolina, and referrals are accepted from any source.  To have your case reviewed for representation please contact:

Wendy L. Greene, Director
Incarcerated Youth Advocacy Project
North Carolina Prisoner Legal Services, Inc.
PO Box 25397
Raleigh, NC  27611
(919) 856-2200
wgreene@ncpls.org
fax: (919) 856-2223