Register for the Grand Opening of the Dr. Dennis Deer Community Justice Center

Transforming communities and systems. One pilot at a time.

Safer neighborhoods, less crime, and more opportunity—for ourselves, our children, and the communities we love—is what we all want. And it is possible.

Since 2010, we’ve been proving how it can be done one pilot at a time. We test innovative solutions grounded in community and restorative justice for youth and emerging adults so that our criminal justice system is equipped to enhance public safety and produce better outcomes for our communities.

One of our most recent pilots, the Dr. Dennis Deer Residential Workforce Development Center, opened its doors in April 2025. And with your support, we will continue launching innovative pilots that improve systems and strengthen communities.

We can’t punish our way to healthier communities and safer cities.

Cities that people want to live in, raise their families in, shop in, grow businesses in, spend their money and free time in begin with public safety. Our current system relies primarily on two punishments to increase public safety: permanent criminal records and incarceration.

This model of punishment, however, has created a revolving door of young defendants returning to courts and prisons after their first offense.

At LCLC, we implement and evaluate ground-breaking pilot programs that equip and empower local communities to implement restorative justice practices that hold young people accountable to healing the harm they caused by crime while giving them the support and opportunities they need to become vital, contributing members of society.

It’s time to do right by all our young people - not just some of them.

Young people who grow up in communities that lack access to quality education, jobs, mental health care, and safe housing often end up in the prison system in a deadly arrest/incarcerate/rearrest/repeat cycle.

Ever since we started LCLC in Chicago’s North Lawndale community in 2010, we’ve been working towards innovative, scalable solutions that disrupt that cycle. The unique restorative justice approach we’ve developed has not only proven to be good for individuals, it’s also been good for the city as a whole.

Contrary to the extremely high recidivism rates our current model of punishment produces, we are creating a new model of restorative justice where every young person’s first contact with the criminal justice system is their last.

87%

Each year, more than 80% of our active clients are not rearrested*

*for new case or technical violation

Systems Solutions

When LCLC began, we provided criminal legal defense for Chicago’s youth and young adults facing criminal charges, trapped in the quicksand of crime, poverty, and violence. However, over the years, working with young people and in partnership with members of the communities we serve, we quickly realized that the criminal justice system itself, particularly for youth, needs to be reimagined and revitalized.

Rather than accept the revolving door of extraordinarily high recidivism rates as normal, we are imagining a system where everyone expects a young person’s first contact with the criminal justice system to be their last.

To do this, we implement innovative pilots that integrate legal support with holistic, community-based restorative justice resources that address the poverty, trauma, and isolation that are often a root cause for justice system involvement, something the current system does not address well.

We believe the results that we all want – better and safer neighborhoods where every person has the opportunity to thrive – will truly be realized. That is at the heart of the work we are doing today.

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Innovative Approach

When we saw firsthand the ineffective practices impacting young people in the North Lawndale community and throughout the city of Chicago, we knew we needed a new solution. A holistic solution. And a scalable solution that could be implemented in neighborhoods and cities across the country.

After developing and piloting a number of models, and building off what we learned, we constructed The Dr. Dennis Deer Community Justice Center - which opened in 2025 - to provide new offices for all of our staff alongside a brand new residential workforce development center that houses 20 emerging adult males 18-25 years old, as an alternative to incarceration.

The Deer Center’s Residential Workforce Development program includes not only on-site legal support, but also dormitory-style housing, age-appropriate workforce development training, education, employment, mental health, and life skills, so that they complete their sentence of probation satisfactorily, never return to the system again, and go on to lead successful lives in our community.

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Restorative Justice

At LCLC, restorative justice is at the center of everything we do. Our community-focused, human-centric approach helps repair the harm caused to the victims and the community as a whole. At the same time, it also helps heal and change the lives of the young people involved by ensuring their legal and social needs are addressed, which makes them much less likely to commit another crime in the future.

Compared to the traditional retributive justice model, national studies have shown that, through restorative justice, recidivism rates are reduced, victim satisfaction increases, and the fear of becoming a victim again decreases. Our restorative justice approach offers hope, healing, and the help young people and their communities need to flourish.

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Our Justice Innovation Model is building a better system for young people.

The criminal justice system, as it exists today, is not doing what it was designed to do: reduce crime, eliminate violence, and increase public safety. Instead, it has created generational cycles of crime, physical and emotional harm, and incarceration. It’s also very expensive.

It doesn’t have to be this way.

But we realized that to change the system, we needed viable alternatives, proven to work better. And that through developing, testing and scaling innovative solutions and putting them through a thorough evaluation process, we can create a more effective system that improves justice outcomes and transforms communities.

That’s why we developed our Justice Innovation Model.

Using this iterative model, we have been learning through pilot programs what works best, so we can continually improve and more quickly and efficiently build the best solution.

2010

Community Holistic Defense for Youth

2012

Detention Reduction Program Pilot

2015

MAC House Pilot

2017

Restorative Justice Community Court Pilot

2018

Randomized Controlled Trial Launch

2020

Diversion Pilot

2023

Partners in Housing Pilot

2025

Dr. Dennis Deer Community Justice Center

Safer communities, where every person has the opportunity to thrive, are possible. Together, we can make it happen.