Vol. I · Issue No. 01 A Public Document of the Youth Justice Education Project

Education before & beyond the Courtroom.

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Detroit
est. 2026

Young people are expected to exist with and within systems they have never been given the fundamental knowledge to navigate. We change that.

Read the Programs Read the Manifesto
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200+
Youth Served · Year One
Our floor — not our ceiling.
3×
Better Outcomes
Youth with legal & systems literacy show higher school engagement and lower disciplinary rates. OJJDP (2020); Borgmann & Jacobs, J. Legal Educ.
100%
Community-Led, Community-Accountable
Built from within — never extracted from. Led by people accountable to the communities we serve.
i. Manifesto Why we exist
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Built from within.
For the community.

Too many young people are expected to navigate legal and institutional systems they were never taught to understand. YJEP exists to change that.

We don't extract value from vulnerable communities. We build from within them, led by people who are accountable to them.

— Youth Justice Education Project
Detroit, MI · 2026
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ii. The Programs Seven units · Grades 6–12
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A syllabus
that's needed & necessary.

Proactive in- and after-school community programming, built around seven units of legal and systems literacy.

01 /

Constitutional Foundations

The structure of rights, government authority, and how the Constitution shapes everyday life for young people.

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02 /

Know Your Rights

Practical legal literacy — what students and families can do when they encounter law enforcement, school officials, or court systems.

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03 /

School Discipline & the Law

Demystifying suspension, expulsion, and disciplinary processes — and how to exercise rights within school systems.

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04 /

Criminal Law

Foundational criminal law for young people — elements of offenses, statutory frameworks, due process, and the procedural realities of arrest, charging, and trial.

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The Court System

How courts actually operate, what happens at each stage, and how young people can navigate them with confidence.

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06 /

Community Advocacy

Building the skills to speak up, organize, and advocate for change in schools, neighborhoods, and civic spaces.

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07 /

Digital Citizenship

Rights, responsibilities, and risks in digital spaces — online speech, privacy, and what the law says about virtual conduct.

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iii. The Evidence The case for change
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The school-to-prison
pipeline is not
an accident.

It is the product of systems that were never designed to explain themselves to the people they govern. YJEP interrupts that pipeline at its root: with knowledge.

§ 01

Rights without knowledge are rights denied.

Having legal protections means nothing if you don't know they exist. YJEP makes rights real, practical, and usable in the moments that matter.

§ 02

Schools rarely teach this.

Traditional curricula don't cover what happens when a student gets stopped, searched, or suspended. We fill that gap on purpose.

§ 03

Informed students make better decisions.

Legal literacy correlates with higher school engagement, reduced disciplinary involvement, and stronger life outcomes downstream.

§ 04

Community must lead.

YJEP is built and led by people accountable to the communities we serve — not extracting from them, but investing in them.

§ 05

Parents are partners.

Our Parent Advocacy Workshop (PAW) series gives families the same literacy as their children — amplifying impact at home.

§ 06

Intervention before crisis.

We meet young people upstream of the courtroom — equipping them before they need to defend themselves, not after.

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iv. The Founder Margina Cohen · J.D., Ed.S.
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Margina Cohen, Founder of the Youth Justice Education Project
Margina Cohen Founder · Educator · Advocate
About the founder

Educator &
Advocate.

Educator — because people deserve quality in those leading them, especially in the classrooms and communities where their futures are being shaped. Advocate — because teaching the law should be fundamental to being accountable to it. You cannot lead, govern, or hold authority over people and treat their literacy of the systems that bind them as optional.

With nearly two decades of experience as a teacher, principal, district leader, and Juris Doctor graduate, Margina Cohen founded the Youth Justice Education Project to address a gap she witnessed at every level of the education system: young people entering institutional spaces completely unprepared for what they would face there.

Her legal education, Innocence Project work, and published research on digital liability and youth converge here — at the intersection of educational equity, legal literacy, and community power.

Juris Doctor
Western Michigan University Cooley Law School
Ed.S.
Education Specialist · Educational Leadership
Published
Cooley Law Review — Virtual Misdeeds: Parental Liability in Cyberbullying Cases
Innocence Project
Exoneration & wrongful conviction advocacy
18+ years
Classroom teacher to Interim Superintendent
Read the full bio at margina.org →
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Put a classroom between them & a courtroom.

Fund the work. Partner with us. Bring YJEP to your school or district. Every action interrupts the pipeline. Start where you are.

Donate Now Bring YJEP to your school