After working with the issue of youth violence in Bosnia and Kosovo, Jorja Leap was inspired to come back to her hometown of Los Angeles and work on problems of youth violence in her own region.
Now, Leap, a professor of social welfare, has been asked by Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa to be his adviser on gangs and youth violence.
“There are so many people touched by gang violence,” Leap said. “Most of us cannot imagine the lives of these people, how violent they are and how frightened they are.”
Leap started her career as a clinical social worker at Martin Luther King Hospital in South Los Angeles in the late 1970s, where she was first exposed to the effects of gangs and gang violence.
Later in her career she worked in Bosnia and Kosovo, where she witnessed the impact violence had on children.
In the early 1990s she returned to Los Angeles and was an expert consultant on gangs and youth violence for the National Institute of Justice in Washington, D.C., while also teaching at UCLA.
The position of adviser on gangs and youth violence for the mayor began as informal advising and evolved into a position that Villaraigosa specifically created for Leap, she said.
Stanley Paul, director of communication at the UCLA School of Public Affairs, the department in which Leap teachers, emphasized the significance of her appointment, especially given the current situation in Los Angeles.
“Her position (in the mayor’s office) is important because there is an emphasis on the (gang) issue right now and Dr. Leap is taking an active role in it,” said Paul.
Leap said statistics have shown that crime related to Los Angeles gang violence is on the rise.
“There has been a big report done by an outside company, the Advancement Project, and I’m reviewing that report and advising (the mayor) on how to structure gang policy in L.A.,” Leap said. “Even though crime is going down, gang crime is going up.”
The Advancement Project, a policy and legal action organization, recently completed a nine-month study on gang violence in Los Angeles and came up with a list of recommendations of actions the city should take.
Gang prevention and intervention programs are being held at schools, and Leap said the programs concentrate on children who are most likely to join gangs or be aff ected by gang violence.
“We are looking at kids at risk of being in gangs ““ if they live in violent neighborhoods, if they have family in gangs, go to schools with gang members,” Leap said. “The sad part is we need to do work with kids at younger and younger ages.” “It used to be high school. Now it’s middle schools and we’ll probably be moving into the elementary schools,”
she added.
Leap said she will do long-term work for the city and mayor to combat the gang violence in Los Angeles.
“This is going to be an ongoing opportunity and commitment for the city of L.A. Th is isn’t being looked at as a six-month research project,” she said.
Both Leap and the Advancement Project study cited the lack of coordination between gang prevention and intervention programs as a major obstacle to solving the problem.
“L.A.’s single biggest problem has been lack of any coordination between the prevention and intervention programs. They all work independently of each other,” Leap said.
She said one of the aspects of her work will be to evaluate how to bring in scientific research to determine which gang programs work and which do not.
Another part of her research will involve following trends and analyzing gang statistics.
“One of the things we are going to track in our data is whether we start seeing brothers or family members joining the gangs,” Leap said. “With intervention programs, they try to stop retaliation between the gangs. We need to see, do these programs stop the retaliation? I’m going to be assisting the coordination of the programs and evaluating new
and different ways to stop or cut gang violence in L.A.”
Leap said the current disciplinary system is problematic because it puts gang members in prison in a very violent atmosphere, which she believes teaches them more violent tactics.
“The line between prison gangs and street gangs is blurring every day,” she said.
Father Gregory Boyle, founder and executive director of Homeboy Industries, a gang rehabilitation center, said the city needs to come up with more positive solutions in order to diminish gang violence.
“The city needs to set clear consequences as well as clear help. They have to off er help,” said Boyle, who has worked with Leap on gang violence issues in the past. “But what the city really needs to address is the lethal absence of hope. Then they’ll be successful in combating these issues.”