Political Science

The L.A. Bridges Program is a community-driven and multi-phased gang intervention and prevention program established by the City of Los Angeles in 1997 through the citys Ad Hoc Committee on Gangs and Juvenile Justice (Street Gangs, n.d.). The program is basically a joint partnership between the law enforcement agencies, community organizations, schools, parents and students and the Los Angeles Community Development Department. The missions of the L.A. Bridges Program are to (1) enrich the lives of middle school youth ages 10 to 14 years old (2) strengthen their families and (3) promote community action to empower their localities (Street Gangs, n.d.).

In order to accomplish the aforesaid missions, the L.A. Bridges Program integrated three components - prevention, intervention, and community action. The prevention component includes well calculated programs carried out by community-based organizations that focus on the prevention of youth from any forms of gang involvement case management that targets the most endangered youth and their families, such as mentoring and counseling and after-school activities, such as organized sports and tutoring (Street Gangs, n.d.).

The intervention component, on the other hand, is implemented to maintain peaceful and safe neighborhoods. It involves community-based partners that directly work with local gang leaders in providing referral and information services, developing peace treaties between gangs, assisting with conflict resolution, etc. Finally, the community action is the component of the program that directs the involved parties to work directly with the neighborhoods in empowering the residents to assume responsibility of their communities.

With regard to the success rate, L.A. Bridges Programs latest evaluation reveals that targeted families reported 67 percent decrease in runaways, and a 33 percent decrease in domestic neglect and abuse drug and alcohol use decreased by 66 percent among the targeted youth 66 percent decrease in probation cases and 72 percent decrease in arrests and 48 percent decrease in association with gang peers (Street Gangs, n.d.).