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AHSHAY Center Brief Overview 2023

AHSHAY Center

Brief Overview 2023

Shared with permission by Dr. Ben Danielson, director of AHSHAY Center

AHSHAY - Allies in Healthier Systems for Health and Abundance in Youth - Ben Danielson 2023
Challenge: Overwhelming evidence shows youth incarceration does not work and is in fact harmful. Reform efforts have met with promising reductions in incarceration. Yet those strategies have also yielded worsening racial disparities. Our ...
Myth-busting - The data says: Youth incarceration does not reduce recidivism, diversion programs do. Victims often don’t feel incarcerating youth offenders is justice. Offering services in detention does not justify detention. Services are often...
Opportunity: King County has made a commitment to end youth incarceration by 2025. This is an opportunity to build up the infrastructure to make this commitment into a practical reality. This proof of concept in local county form can contribute to...
At UW and in community: In the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the University of Washington and hosted in the Rainier Valley community by the Tubman Center For Health & Freedom. The mission of AHSHAY is to build up fortifiers...
Approach: Coalesce our wisdom, energy and resources. Instill the health perspective: community health, public health, generational wellness, brain development and mental health, ground our efforts and focus us on hope-filled healthy pathways. Work...
Getting From This... (art depicting prisoners) ... To This (photo of mural of Black child on shoulders of older Black child)
Two Arms of Work: Upstream: build a vision for a community that has everything it needs so that it doesn’t need to imprison youth. The Fortifiers. Downstream: unbuild the factors that lead to youth incarceration and the structures that enable...
How the work happens: Build The Fortifiers - Fortifying Futures for our Youth Project: Bringing together partners and youth to envision the future together. Then launch pilots that bring those visions to life. Landscape Analysis: Figure out what...
How the work happens: Unbuild The Fortifications. Decommissioning Advisory Council: Participate as part of a multidisciplinary group convened by the county to plan for the detention center’s closure. Community Partner and County Government...
AHSHAY is building up the fortifiers of health and hope for youth, and unbuilding the fortifications of youth imprisonment. (Flowchart of how work connects)
Logo - stylized bird protecting an egg. AHSHAY