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GUEST: Jorja Leap, faculty member with the Luskin School of Public Affairs at UCLA. She is an internationally recognized expert in gangs, violence and crisis intervention, and senior policy advisor on Gangs and Youth Violence for the City and County of Los Angeles. Her earlier book is ‘Jumped In: What Gangs Taught me About Violence, Drugs, Love, and Redemption’.

Social scientists love to give parents advice – how to best train your child to sleep through the night, what language to use in order to convince them to do the right thing, what the best age is to start musical instruction, etc. But few have taken on how to stitch a family back together when poverty, unemployment, and incarceration tear it apart.

For several years now, a group of fathers in Watts, mostly African American, and all formerly incarcerated, have been meeting to learn from one another how to be better parents.