The ULI team was primarily composed of female, immigrant, low-income students currently enrolled in Universities throughout Texas.  Specifically, ULI participants followed a curriculum developed by TCJC consisting of past theories for social change, as well as successful educational campaign strategies.   This allowed them to conduct outreach at high schools to teach students and parents about the importance of higher education and civic participation as one means of decreasing high school dropout rates, thus greatly increasing the likelihood that these students will never enter the prison system. 

In June, 2007, this effort evolved into the more strategic Juvenile Justice Initiative (JJI), which functions in many ways as a smaller, parallel juvenile track to the Solutions for Sentencing & Incarceration Project.  Specifically, our new JJI works with relevant state agencies and local juvenile justice stakeholders to shift Texas’ juvenile justice paradigm from an unnecessarily punitive approach that is over-reliant on incarceration and detention to a more rehabilitative approach that will improve the chances of success for troubled youth.