SCSI; Seattle​/CD Community Safety Ambassador

What We Stand For

We exist to eliminate the need for the criminal legal system for youth and young adults. To do this, we create alternatives to incarceration for youth and young adults based on committed relationships centered on love, compassion, and consistency. We use community to heal community, planting seeds of hope, self-respect and vision to unlock the promise of our youth while fighting to dismantle the systems of oppression that threaten to take that promise away.

We exist to eliminate the need for the criminal legal system for youth and young adults. To do this, we create alternatives to incarceration for youth and young adults based on committed relationships centered on love, compassion, and consistency. We use community to heal community, planting seeds of hope, self-respect and vision to unlock the promise of our youth while fighting to dismantle the systems of oppression that threaten to take that promise away.

Over the last 20 years, we have seen a sharp decline in the number of young people in detention across King County. But even as the overall number decreased, our juvenile legal system has had an increasingly and disproportionately harmful impact on youth of color, particularly Black youth. While only 10% of King County’s 2 million residents are Black, they now make up almost half of the detention population on any given day and more than half of felony offenses.

In the last three years, Community Passageways has worked with nearly 200 young people with felony charges with the aim of diverting their charges and keeping them in the community. In the end, most of them spent no time in detention and the average young person saw an 80% reduction in their length of sentence. The young people kept in the community through their dedication and our support have gone on to enroll in college, start businesses, graduate from high school, and help rebuild our communities.

We are a family born from the community we serve. The lived experiences of staff prepare them to act as credible messengers and Ambassadors. Our Ambassadors work with heart, humility, and compassion to lead community and school‑based healing circles, individual and family case management, court advocacy, and youth leadership opportunities.

Reporting to the Community Safety Manager and working in partnership with the Resource Navigator team as part of a comprehensive Care Team, Community Safety Ambassadors build rapport and trust with participants. They establish a consistent schedule of outreach and help to provide participants with support needed to move into more positive opportunities. Additionally, they support the Community Support Team on longer‑range truce negotiation, conflict mediation, and incident and hotspot‑specific outreach.

The employee must be able to perform the essential functions of this position satisfactorily and, if requested, reasonable accommodation will be made to enable employees with disabilities to perform the essential functions of their job, absent undue hardship. The Employer retains the right to change or assign other duties to this position.

• Alongside Resource Navigators, build ongoing relationships and trust with participants largely between the ages of 12 to 30 who meet three risk factors and/or those referred through SCSI and RPKC network. Risk factors include:
  • Regularly singled out by law enforcement, even if no arrest
  • Has been shot and/or seriously injured from violence
  • Has had a close peer, friend, or family member shot and/or killed in the last 3 years
  • On probation, parole, electronic home monitoring, or have an active case
  • Lives or hangs out in hotspots
  • History and/or immediate risk for engagement in gun‑involved activity
• Leverage relationships with participants to help shift their mindsets and support their growth, and connect them to pro‑social activities, a positive peer group, and formal and informal community support.
• Work alongside Resource Navigators to provide connection to services and resources as participants become ready to receive them.
• Facilitate connection to…