Jorja Leap has been on the faculty UCLA Luskin School Social Welfare Department faculty since 1992 and serves as the Executive Director of the UCLA Social Justice Research Partnership. As a social worker/anthropologist and recognized expert in gangs, community violence, and systems change, she develops, coordinates and directs real-life scholarly efforts that involve research, evaluation and policy recommendations at the local, state and national level. Dr. Leap has worked in post-war environments and settings that experience harm and violence throughout her career, applying a multi-disciplinary, community-based participatory approach to her research. Her current efforts focus on gangs, community violence intervention and community-based approaches to public safety. She also engages in forensic work related to the death penalty, felony and capital cases and the need for research based approaches to expert testimony. Additionally, she continues to engage in long-term research on the dilemmas faced by individuals reentering society after incarceration, including women, a group often overlooked.

Most recently, Dr. Leap has served as the lead researcher for the White House Community Violence Intervention Collaborative, an effort that encompassed 16 jurisdictions and 17 cities across the United States from 2022 to 2024. Dr. Leap is currently engaged in a longitudinal evaluation of Homeboy Industries, the largest gang reentry program in the world. She serves as an evaluation partner for the Community Based Public Safety Collective as well as the lead evaluator for research into the Newark Community Street Team, an innovative community based effort in New Jersey. She is the co-founder and director of the UCLA Watts Leadership Institute, working closely with the community-based leaders of Watts as well as its nonprofit network. As part of a life-long commitment to the Watts community, she serves as a board member and research director for the Watts Gang Task Force.

Alongside these efforts, she has served as an expert witness in local, state ,and federal judicial proceedings involving gangs, community violence, and the relationships between trauma and criminalized behaviors. Additionally, Dr. Leap has authored a series of reports on gang membership, dynamics, community violence, and trauma that have been used in felony and capital cases, appeals, habeas corpus hearings, and clemency proceedings. Through these endeavors, Dr. Leap works to educate the court in understanding the nuances of gang activity as well as community violence and the trauma that underlies so much of its commission. She also continues to provide media-based commentary for television, radio, online and newspaper coverage on gangs, community violence and public safety.

Dr. Leap has authored numerous reports, chapters, and books, including Jumped In: What Gangs taught me about Violence, Drugs, Love and Redemption, Project Fatherhood: A Story of Courage and Healing in one of America’s Toughest Communities, and Entry Lessons: The Stories of Women Fighting for their Place, their Children, and their Futures after Incarceration. Dr. Leap has been recipient of numerous awards and honors, including being named one of the 50 Most Influential Women in Los Angeles (2012) and being presented with the Hero Award for Commitment to Families of Murder Victims (2017). In 2019, she was deeply honored to receive the UCLA Distinguished Teaching Award and has been inducted into the California Social Work Hall of Distinction (2023).

Learn more about Dr. Leap’s work.

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