Youth Violence Prevention Initiative

The City of Bridgeport is seeking proposals from Independent Contractors to provide services under the Youth Violence Prevention Initiative. The selected contractors will perform a variety of services to ensure that youth have ample opportunities for leading healthy, safe, productive lives and that those who have made bad choices have rehabilitative services available to them. The contractors must incorporate the principles of positive youth development, evidence-based approaches, data collection, and outcomes measurements. Programs must also include city-wide strategies that combine prevention, intervention, treatment, and re-entry strategies. Some key aspects of the project include: • Primary Prevention: reducing risk factors or increasing protective factors among the entire population of youth and families in communities with significant levels of gang activity • Secondary Prevention: decreasing the likelihood that youth who have already displayed early signs of problem behavior or who are exposed to multiple known risk factors of gang activity will join a gang • Intervention with high-risk or gang-involved youth: community-based programs that balance the delivery of services and educational and employment opportunities with supervision and accountability • Targeted gang enforcement: community-oriented and problem-oriented policing strategies with an emphasis on gangs and collaborative enforcement strategies involving probation and prosecution to target high-rate gang offenders, gang leaders, and serious violent offenders