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Fifth-graders at the Going on to College graduation ceremony. This gang prevention program focuses on the importance of higher education.

OJJDP's GRP model incorporates a broad spectrum of research-based interventions to address the range of personal, family, and community factors that contribute to juvenile delinquency and gang activity. In addition, the model integrates local, State, and Federal resources to incorporate state-of-the-art practices in prevention, intervention, and suppression in program activities.

In Project Amiga, reformed gang members offer positive community support to youth entering gangs.

• Primary prevention: focusing on the entire population in high-crime, high-risk communities.

• Secondary prevention: focusing on high-risk youth ages 7–14 to provide appropriate services for preventing onset of gang membership and other problem behaviors.

• Intervention: focusing on active gang members and their close associates to provide a combination of services and opportunities
  while holding these youth accountable for their actions.

• Reentry: focusing on gang-involved and other serious offenders who face multiple challenges to reentering their communities after confinement.

• Suppression: focusing on gang leaders to undertake aggressive prosecution efforts.

Boyle Heights and the other GRP pilot communities identified and coordinated resources, programs, and services to address known risk factors for delinquency in the community. They used grant funding to fill gaps so they could address risk factors across the broadest possible age spectrum.

Since 2003, the Boyle Heights neighborhood has experienced a 44-percent reduction in gang crime. The new initiative will draw on the pilot community's experience and approach to expand prevention efforts to other high-violence zones in Los Angeles. (Note: The statistics in this article are taken from the Mayor's office, City of Los Angeles, via the Los Angeles Police Department.)

According to Mayor Villaraigosa:

Of all the public safety challenges facing Los Angeles, street gangs have proven the most intractable. Our City is home to the largest and most established gang population in the country, with over 400 separate gangs and an estimated 39,000 gang members. These criminal gangs exact a tragic toll.... As a result, too many innocent Angelenos live in fear of indiscriminate gang violence resulting from petty disputes over drugs, turf, and revenge.

The Boyle Heights community's recent reduction in gang crime stands in contrast to citywide trends. In 2006, although overall crime in Los Angeles continued to decline for the fifth straight year, gang-related crime increased 14 percent. In that year alone, 56 percent of all homicides and 70 percent of all shootings in the city were gang related, 272 people lost their lives to gang violence, and more than 1,500 people were the victims of gang-related shootings.

In explaining his gang reduction strategy, Mayor Villaraigosa says:

The most effective way to address gang violence is through a comprehensive, collaborative, and community-wide approach. Our plan provides both a strong emphasis on enforcement with strategic development of programs and services focused toward communities with high at-risk populations. This solution is about community safety, community opportunity, and community empowerment.