La Raza Roundtable de California brings together various stakeholders that can impact positive change for Latinos living in the state. The organization focuses on juvenile justice reform, education, workforce issues, and childcare and public service provision.

La Raza is an advocacy organization, and yet over the years it has come to see the value of collaborative action with other stakeholders around issues of concern to La Raza—in this case: the issue of statistical overrepresentation of Latinos in California’s prison system. The causes for this issue are complex, and touch on many spheres of California public life. As a result, La Raza, San Jose Major Chuck Reed, San Jose City Manager Debra Figone, and San Jose Police Chief Rob Davis all teamed up to endorse HNMCPs efforts to conduct a conflict assessment to determine the stakeholders who are interested in issues related to Latinos in the justice system and the barriers that are preventing consensus building efforts.

Our work

Step 1: Identify all relevant stakeholder groups with an interest in this issue, and work to capture their interests with regard to a long-term approach to address this issue.

Step 2: Facilitate a process for devising a medium-to-long-term approach for reducing Latino representation in California’s penal system.

Final Product

Conflict analysis and process recommendation on how to move forward, submitted to both La Raza and San Jose Mayor’s Office for consideration as ‘action blueprint’ for moving forward around this issue.