Her mother’s prison term turned her life upside down, but now Jade Green is leading an organization that’s transforming the lives of young people who have been involved in the justice system — inside a former youth detention center converted into a place of education and triumph

Editor’s note: This story is part of the “Safe to Learn” ongoing investigative series, exploring how communities define safety for their children and what those children need in order to develop their full potential in and out of the classroom.

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Words by Aitana Vargas, @AitanaVargas. Images by Zaydee Sanchez, @zaydee_s. Edited by Allison Torres Burtka, @atburtka.

Night was falling, and the parking lot looked desolate as a law enforcement officer pulled up at Jade Green’s high school in Florida and ordered Jade to come with her. At the time, the teen was unaware that her Jamaican-born Black lesbian mother, Claudette Hubbard, had been arrested that morning in a federal raid cracking down on an interstate cocaine-trafficking ring in Brevard County. It was April 1992.

The night before, Hubbard had hugged her 15-year-old daughter tightly and told her she loved her. That would be the last goodnight wish Green would receive from her mom for 10 years.

The Texas-born minor became known as the “cartel kid” to law enforcement officers, and she recalls the sting of hearing them call her that. It felt “dismissive” and “disrespectful,” she says.

Hubbard’s arrest and 20-year prison term turned her daughter’s life upside down and unleashed a series of traumatic events that Green, a Black single mother of two kids, still grapples with today, at age 47.

After a journey of many lows, Green is now co-executive director of the Youth Justice Coalition (YJC), a nonprofit organization in South Central (though renamed South Los Angeles in 2003, most residents still refer to the area as South Central). YJC advocates for formerly incarcerated or otherwise “system-impacted” teens and young adults — mostly Black and Latino students who have been expelled from the Los Angeles Unified School District — and offers them a path to a high school diploma.

*Jade Green and her mom, Claudette Hubbard, in Claudette’s home. Photo by Zaydee Sanchez for palabra*

Green earned her position as co-director last year, even without a college degree. She started volunteering at YJC in 2015. First as a teacher and now as a director, Green has been helping those who have been cast out from public schools, who face criminal proceedings and sometimes homelessness, and whose future hangs in the air.

When I meet Green at the YJC building, she is wearing a black YJC hoodie, tight black pants, and black running shoes. Her long, colorful oval earrings and yellow headscarf nearly match the YJC letters on her hoodie. After we begin talking, she smiles and excuses herself for a second, stepping outside her office to burn incense in the hallway. Now, everyone knows that she has arrived.

Initially, Green may seem rough around the edges: She speaks in blunt statements and often coarse words. But beyond that, it is easy to see why staff members consider her a caring and joyful leader.

The students work toward high school diplomas through FREE LA High School, an accelerated 2-year charter education program that YJC founded in 2007.

*Youth Justice Coalition (YJC) students at their 2023 graduation. Photo by Zaydee Sanchez for palabra*

“I can relate to so many of these students in so many ways from personal experience, not some shit I read out of a book,” Green says. “I've been on the other side of these systems as a young person. I know what it feels like. I know what it looks like.”

Some of the students’ struggles are familiar to her. “We have students here – females – that are teen moms. I was a teen mom, so I understand, and I remember what it was like to be pregnant my senior year in high school and still having to graduate,” she says.

“THE CARTEL KID”

Following Hubbard’s 1992 arrest, Green recalls that she was placed in a foster home in Rockledge, Florida, with 10 other kids. Without her parents around, she felt let down, neglected, and angry that none of the white adults in charge were meeting her basic needs — neither adequate meals nor a warm bed. “Why doesn't the world care about me?” she says she often wondered. “I didn't know what was gonna become of my life.”

Green was transferred to a temporary shelter for system-impacted kids and enrolled in Florida’s Titusville High School. It felt like a “dormitory-prison,” she recalls. There, her anger only escalated, and she physically attacked a girl who’d called her mom a “Jamaican bitch,” she says.

*Corkboard with family photos, inspirational quotes and mementos at Green’s office at Youth Justice Coalition (YJC) in South Central. Photo by Zaydee Sanchez for palabra*

“They gave me my own version of solitary confinement,” says Green. “I was only allowed to go to school. I didn't get to congregate in the lobby. I had to go straight to my room. I had to sit in there by myself with my food, and just do my work and stay there until the next day.”

Ultimately, her father, who had separated from Hubbard years earlier, was able to be reunited with Green in Dallas. But trouble found her there, too. She says she got pregnant for the second time — after an abortion at 15 — and into another fight. The Dallas Police Department denied palabra’s request for police records.

“People were telling me I was gonna end up in jail, just like my mom,” Green recalls.

Green recounts how, at age 19, she and her boyfriend packed their bags and moved from Texas to Cerritos, California. But that chapter included domestic violence, having a second baby, and finding herself on the verge of homelessness. She ended up changing her name multiple times as she entered new phases of her life. She managed to land a job, a clean apartment, and against all odds, enroll in college, despite lacking a high school diploma.

Green started working toward a bachelor’s degree in behavioral science, but she put it on hold. In 2014, she stood at a crossroads. Her mother had been transferred to an Immigration and Customs Enforcement facility in California after serving her prison sentence, and she faced deportation proceedings. Green decided to quit school to bond her mother out of the facility and help her fight the deportation — a decision that she doesn’t regret.

“Who else cares more about my mom's freedom than me? I said, ‘Well, school is gonna always be there, you know? But my mom won't,’” she explains.

*Claudette Hubbard looks out of her apartment door in Los Angeles. Photo by Zaydee Sanchez for palabra*

It’s been nine years since Hubbard was released on bond, yet her immigration fate still hangs in the balance. If deported, Hubbard would likely face violence and persecution in Jamaica because she is a lesbian, according to her pro-bono attorney, Holly S. Cooper. But the case looks promising, and this is perhaps because Green has proved to be her mom’s best advocate, holding her hand through thick and thin, raising funds for her legal defense and providing emotional support.

STUDENTS AND SECOND CHANCES

Green has also been advocating for the students at FREE L.A. High School. Among the 400-plus students who’ve graduated from the program in the past 20 years is 27-year-old Gloria González, who obtained her diploma in 2014. González recalls that, at 11, she was arrested and expelled from her middle school following a physical altercation with another student who had been bullying her, a story that she’s previously shared in a public appearance and the YJC website.

“(The officer) handcuffs me, and he just started telling me, like: You see? All of this, like you caused this, and so now you're gonna be held accountable to the fullest extent,” González explains.

González says that she found herself fighting a charge in court while searching for middle schools willing to accept her. She showed up in court multiple times with her undocumented mom, who doesn’t speak English. Ultimately, her mom said: “We can't keep going to court, because I can't keep missing work … just accept … it’s your fault. You shouldn’t have done that.”

‘This country has an addiction to incarceration.’

González was ordered to pay a $500 fine and received a driver’s license suspension, meaning she wouldn’t be able to get her license when she turned 16 unless she paid off the fine, she explains. She didn’t pay it. But years later, California passed legislation abolishing juvenile fees and discharging that debt, so, at 22, González obtained her license without making any payments. The Los Angeles Police Department denied palabra’s request for police records.

*Mother and daughter interlace hands. Photo by Zaydee Sanchez for palabra*

But the experience left González emotionally scarred. She says that FREE LA High School was a lifesaver; it provided the ecosystem that she needed to gain control of her life. So did her relationship with Green, who made a lasting impression on González since the day she first saw Green arrive at a meeting.

“She was just so cool, like, she was on her bike. She had these really cool earbuds,” González recalls. “She seems so, like, a very confident, strong, powerful woman, and I was like, whoa, I want to be like that.”

Green’s decades-long personal struggles have also inspired González. “It allowed me to see how we don't have to be our experiences,” González says.

THE PEACEBUILDERS

Although students at YJC’s school are generally perceived as troubled young people, González says there’s often more than meets the eye. “It's beautiful to see how we've been able to break barriers down and show who we really are, and, like, blossom into these amazing human beings,” she says.

After she graduated, González became an intern at YJC and went on to work there full-time. Eventually, she became the youth development director, a position she held for about five months before transitioning to a job elsewhere earlier this year.

González's time at YJC reinforced her belief that school police take kids “directly down a school-to-prison pipeline,” particularly in predominantly Black and Brown neighborhoods. She advocates for replacing police officers with peacebuilders — school staff who are trained in conflict de-escalation and “hold you accountable with care,” understanding your situation and needs.

Dionzay Tisby Jr. celebrates his graduation with his family. His mother, Shaquayax Hampton (right), says, “It is a blessing to see him as a child and to see him now. A parent always wants to see their child accomplish something.” Photo by Zaydee Sanchez for palabra

Green shares this belief. “This country has an addiction to incarceration,” she says. Since 2011, YJC has ferociously campaigned to remove police officers and school resource officers (SROs) from schools. And YJC has two on-site peacebuilders: 50-year-old David Dodson and 52-year-old Charles Blanton, both Black ex-convicts.

Dodson drives students back and forth from home to class, cooks lunch for them, helps teachers run their classes smoothly, lends his ear, and addresses conflicts that arise among students and staff members. The peacebuilder’s role requires patience, understanding, and firsthand knowledge of what it's like to be sent to prison for mistakes made at a young age. Together, Dodson and Blanton offer invaluable insight on “how to stay out of trouble” and “keeping them on the right path,” Blanton explains.

LAPD officers are largely off-limits here, because YJC’s policy dictates that all conflicts be handled in-house unless it’s a serious crime, like murder. “We do not interact with law enforcement when it comes to our children,” says Dodson. “They are not allowed in unless they disarm themselves by leaving the guns and stuff in the car.”

YJC’s peacebuilders are part of a more comprehensive approach to address difficult situations while providing a safe environment. “Transformative justice circles” are also part of this approach, modeled after Indigenous practices that were used to resolve conflicts well before our modern systems.

*Parents and community members cheer for the graduates at YJC. Photo by Zaydee Sanchez for palabra*

“These circles are done in the Indigenous way, before (there were) cops, before law enforcement, before jails,” Dodson says.

Students, staff members, and even parents sit in an intimate circle and are given the opportunity to speak — one at a time — about the incident or situation that is affecting the students. The students must come up with resolutions that enable all parties involved to repair the harm, heal and transform their relationships. Dodson says these circles have been helpful in addressing challenging situations, including gang shootings outside the school.

These circles are an alternative method to resolve conflict so the students can “be their own peacebuilders within their community,” says Green, noting that it’s about understanding what problems they’re facing at home: Is the father in jail? Is there domestic violence? “This is a safe space for young people to be young people … and have another chance at what's left of their childhood.”

The 60 students currently enrolled at YJC — all between the ages of 15 and 25 — have had some kind of contact with the police. Aware that mistakes at a young age may land them in prison, YJC provides legal support and representation to remove the strikes on the student’s record.

California has a three-strikes law that imposes a life sentence on defendants ages 16 and older who are convicted of a violent or serious felony if the defendant already has at least two prior convictions for such offenses. The school is now helping a 21-year-old student to avoid the long-term consequences of a potential third strike, Green explains.

YJC has been advocating to disrupt the school-to-prison track. So far, the organization’s advocacy efforts have contributed to 31 statewide bills being passed. Among them is banning the arrest of kids under 12, which would have prevented González’s arrest years ago.

*YJC student’s cap with a decoration note about wearing scars as medals. Photo by Zaydee Sanchez for palabra*

In May 2023, Green and other staff members traveled to Sacramento for a hearing on juvenile halls, or detention facilities, being closed down at the state level and shifted to the counties. YJC argued that they should be shut down at both levels. And as often as possible, students take field trips to the state capital to share their experiences with legislators and call for reforms to end systemic racism in schools.

“The educational system has never been set up for Black people to succeed,” Green says. Since the inception of the country, she argues, laws were passed to trump Black progress and to intentionally create the school-to-prison pipeline because “you do not want Black and Brown individuals to be a part of society.”

MAKING ROOM

In 2019, YJC moved from the city of Inglewood to a former courthouse and youth detention center in Los Angeles’s South Central. The building was repurposed into the community center and school that it is today.

Green’s office is not far from the lock-up cells, which still contain the original bunk beds, sinks, toilets, and wood benches. In the corridor, a sheriff sign remains glued to a door, which opens to a room now used as temporary storage for students’ artwork, mostly prison-themed. “We’re trying to make a museum out of it,” says Dodson.

*A former lock-up cell at YJC’s facilities, which used to be a courthouse and youth detention center in South Central. Photo by Zaydee Sanchez for palabra*

YJC is still figuring out how to repurpose some of these spaces to make them serve the coalition’s goals and reflect its core values. The school also houses a “Rebel Garden” with plants and produce that students tend and harvest. Green explains that the YJC’s goal was to take a building erected “as a place of punishment and criminalization of youth” and transform it into a place of “triumph, education, liberation and power.”

“That transformative work is happening every single day that we’re in here,” she says.

Green remembers feeling like adults were failing her. “I was looking out into the world, and I didn't understand as a young person: Why is the world like this? Why don't you care if I have a roof over my head?” she says. “I made society make room for me.”

Now, Green has made room for both herself and the young people at YJC. And she’s also in the final stretch of a long quest to win room for her mom in this country. They await a ruling in Hubbard’s deportation case, and if they win, the government will have to pay back the bond money Green put up. After that, Green wants to buy her mom a food truck, which will enable her to sell the Jamaican food that she loves to make.

*After graduation, the celebrations begin. Green shares a dance with a friend at YJC. Photo by Zaydee Sanchez for palabra*

Green hopes this long quest will end with her mom getting a second chance — just like the young people getting a do-over at YJC. They need someone to stand up for them. Green knows how that feels. “Any rights that I have, I'm gonna use them to me and my people's benefit,” she says.

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Funding for this project was provided by the LA Press Club’s Charles M. Rappleye Investigative Journalism Award. @LAPressClub

Disrupting the School-to-Prison Pipeline