Sewell: Gangbanger candidates target of hopeful new program

By John Sewell –

As we climb out of cold February into the early spring of March, here’s some good news. The federal government has agreed to fund a program targeting youth involved in gangs and violence. It is exactly the kind of initiative recommended by Roy McMurtry and Alvin Curling in their report “Roots of Youth Violence.”

The project will be led by Scot Wortley of the Centre of Criminology, University of Toronto. Wortley has done a number of studies into youth and gangs, including a project in 2004 on youth gangs in Toronto. He also helped the police in Kingston, Ont. conduct a landmark study into racial profiling by police in that city, although the chief of police was not able to get the support to put programs in place to reverse the profiling that the study uncovered.

This program will involve 300 youth from the communities of Regent Park, Jane/Finch, and Jamestown/Rexdale—all neighbourhoods beset with property crimes, drugs and violence. Wortley has said he’ll be selecting youth who are either already involved in gangs, or are on the verge of joining a gang.

The plan is to work intensively with them on personal issues such as goal setting, anger management and conflict resolution. The hope is that they can be enticed to renew educational opportunities, or find reasonable jobs.

Wortley thinks alienation is one of the key issues for the youth he wants to get involved. He quotes one young male as typical:

“What chance has a guy like me got in the real world? A poor black guy? Schools are shit, teachers don’t think you can do the work. Nobody’s gonna give me a job. So I’ll get paid and live in another way, in another world where I can get respect and nobody cares what I look like or where I come from. I know I’ll probably die young or go to jail, but what other chance is there?”

Intensive one-on-one work seems to have a good payoff. Pathways to Education is a program that’s been running in Regent Park for about five years.

It provides supports to youth to keep them in school, helping with transit fares, assisting on homework and assignments, and generally having someone being available to overcoming smaller hurdles which in the past have resulted in kids dropping out of school. It has proved enormously successful in terms of reducing dropout rates and improving school outcomes. There’s no good reason why the same approach won’t be successful in dealing with gangs and violence.

Wortley thinks too much emphasis has been placed on a criminal-law strategy of identifying and weeding out those thought to cause the problems, and not enough has been place on community investment—dealing with the larger community problems such as poverty and social issues. He expects to assess the impact of this new program in terms of data about crime and violence before the program begins and after it has been underway. Too often programs begin and end without making assessments of impacts.

Fortunately, the federal government appears to have taken the long-term view of the problem. Funding in the amount of almost $5 million has been provided over a 3.5-year term. This program will have some legs. It won’t provide instant results, but it has, with Wortley’s leadership, the smell of success.