Answering the call for a new approach in how Los Angeles addresses gang violence, Mayor Villaraigosa has conducted sweeping reforms in the City’s delivery of gang reduction and youth services.
Creating clear lines of oversight, accountability and performance measures, the Mayor has consolidated the delivery of gang prevention and intervention services in the Office of Gang Reduction and Youth Development.
The comprehensive approach is working to change conditions that have fueled nearly 400 gangs and 41,000 active gang members, by supporting its core mission of establishing safe, clearly identified places where at risk-youth and their families can receive unconditional support, services and counseling.
Targeting communities with high levels of gang crime with a strategy that is equally tough on crime as it is on the root causes of crime, the innovative approach is complementing suppression with data driven prevention and intervention services aimed at ending cycles of gang violence.
Violent gang activity in Los Angeles is heavily concentrated in scattered pockets throughout the city, and as result 12 neighborhoods have been identified where rates of violent gang-related crime are at least 400 percent higher then elsewhere in Los Angeles.
These Gang Reduction and Youth Development Zones – each covering a roughly 3.5 square mile area – are creating models to be utilized citywide in efforts to reduce gang violence.
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View the .pdf Final Report or Statistics
View the .pdf Final Report or Statistics
View the .pdf Final Report or Statistics
View the .pdf Final Report or Statistics
View the .pdf Final Report or Statistics
View the .pdf Final Report or Statistics
View the .pdf Final Report
View the .pdf Final Report
View the .pdf Final Report
Taking action to combat gang violence during the traditionally most-violent summer months, Mayor Villaraigosa’s Summer Night Lights is an anti-gang initiative that will keep parks open after dark with organized activities for at risk youth, and provides job opportunities and a safe place to spend the summer.
Summer Night Lights targets park facilities in the City’s Gang Reduction and Youth Development zones with expanded programming, after-school activities, athletic leagues, art initiatives and family programs.
In its first year of eight weeks of expanded programming for youth and families, communities around SNL parks experienced a 17% drop in violent gang related crime and a 86% reduction in gang related homicides, helping to secure the City’s safest summer since 1967.
In partnership with gang researchers at the University of Southern California and the University of California, Irvine, an assessment tool has been developed to assist community agencies in the selection of clients at highest risk of gang joining and most appropriate for street gang prevention programming.
The first of its kind in the country, the Youth Services Eligibility Tool will help identify youth that are most liekly to join a gang and invest resources in those kids. The use of the new tool is a requirement in selecting clients who receive gang prevention services at all 12 of the GRYD’s gang prevention providers.
The assessment tool is based on the best, most consistent research findings over the last 20 years. This is an evidence-based approach to client-selection; one which if followed carefully could substantially reduce the perpetuation of the street gang problem in Los Angeles.
Working to address the root causes of gang crime, in gang prevention the primary goal is to reduce the number of youth joining gangs by providing direct services for youth ages 10-15 at highest risk of gang-joining in each of the Mayor’s Gang Reduction and Youth Development zones.
As part of a new innovative strategy that supports prevention services in the most gang-plagued communities across the City, Mayor Villaraigosa’s office has implemented a fair and competitive bid process to identify 12 non-profit organizations to provide gang prevention services in each of the Gang Reduction and Youth Development Zones.
Utilizing tools to identify those highest at risk of joining gangs, prevention services provide one-stop resource centers for youth and families that offer after-school and summer activities, tutoring and mentoring, parent-involvement workshops and parenting classes.
Intervention at the neighborhood level is handled by trained intervention workers, and are individuals whose personal experience with gang life gives them credibility in these targeted communities.
Working in teams, intervention workers have three primary functions:
(1) violence interruption;
(2) proactive peacemaking – establishing “ceasefire” agreements, quelling rumors that fan the flames of gang violence, mediating conflicts between rival gangs before they escalate; and
(3) outreach with incarcerated gang members immediately before and after their release – to prevent them from returning to gang life during the first 24 hours after reentry, when they are most likely to fall back into activities of gang crime.