A decade ago, young offenders were mostly motivated by poverty, say some youth workers. Now, you have kids as young as 13 getting high on crystal meth, making them paranoid and violent; violent subcultures are reaching into middle-class homes like never before; and young men are increasingly lacking positive masculine role models and struggle with self-esteem, causing them to seek brotherhood in gangs.
That’s just a sampling of the reports and statistics showing a rise in youth violence and crime in Canada. The Epoch Times spoke with two men who work with youth and have some insight into what could be behind the increase.
Marcell Wilson, 45, was a gang leader in Toronto for many years. He left gang life several years ago and has since dedicated himself to helping other young men get out. Stan Tu’Inukuafe is the co-founder of the non-profit Str8 Up in Saskatoon, and he similarly helps gang members quit the lifestyle.
Influenced By Music, Culture
Drill music is known for its violent lyrics and is often posted online by rival gang members. “A youth made a ... [drill] track and said something bad about another kid who lives in another area, and real people die over this,” Mr. Wilson said.
“We have our finger to the pulse of the streets in Toronto,” he said. “Our young guys will tell you that the main issue right now is cyber-beefing, music being a big part of it.”
“It’s related to online disrespect,” Mr. Hammond said.
Mr. Wilson said money used to be a big motivation for gang violence. “Social currency is much more valuable than actual currency these days,” he said. “Now it’s for social status ... so they can post a video.”
Drug Addiction
A change in drug habits among youth is another major factor that Mr. Wilson and Mr. Tu’Inukuafe both highlighted.“Working with young people in the last 20 years, I would say the major change has been addictions,” Mr. Tu’Inukuafe said.
A decade or so ago, many of the youth were starting out with marijuana or alcohol, maybe some pills, he said. “Fast-forward to today, now you have 12, 13, 14-year-olds and their first drug is crystal meth,” he said.
He also sees more children in Saskatoon growing up with parents addicted to methamphetamine. In the past, the young people he worked with often spoke of parents who were alcoholics. That was bad enough, Mr. Tu’Inukuafe said, but meth-addicted parents come with a new level of psychological impact.
People who are drunk eventually pass out, he said. People on meth stay up for days and start to hallucinate and become paranoid.
“They start thinking their own kids are after them,” he said. “Imagine you’re in a home where your own parents ... are treating you as if you are attacking them, but you’re only 5 or 6 years old.”
The children also see their parents overdose and grow up familiar with how to use a narcan kit to revive them. Also known as Naloxone, narcan is a drug that temporarily reverses effects of an opioid overdose.
Mr. Wilson said he is seeing younger and younger children in Toronto hooked on harder drugs, particularly opioids—“heavy, heavy drugs for 13 or 14-year-olds.”
“People who don’t understand addiction could never understand what the withdrawal symptoms are like or how much it can actually numb you,” he said. “You will pull out a gun on your mother to make sure you can go get that pill.”
Missing Fathers
Mr. Wilson said he and “99.9 percent” of his fellow gang members had absentee fathers.When boys have their fathers in their lives, they are far less likely to join gangs or become violent, according to Mary Eberstadt, author of “Primal Screams: How the Sexual Revolution Created Identity Politics.”
Mr. Tu’Inukuafe said the need for such bonds is something he has seen in troubled youth across socio-economic boundaries. He recalled one boy from a middle-class home who said he struggled with low self-esteem and a lack of connection with his family.
Mr. Farrell said boys need a caring, strong male role model. And society’s negative portrayal of masculinity, often sweepingly called “toxic,” is “giving boys a negative image of themselves that is leading to a low self-esteem, that is leading to their needing compensations.”
No Quick Fix, a Years-Long Process
Mr. Tu’Inukuafe said a judge will often ask a young person who’s appearing in court if he has anyone in the audience who is there for him.“The kid looks, he looks, and then they’re like, ‘no.’ So imagine if you’re a young person and you had an adult or someone that was helping, where there was no judgment, where you only showed up and followed through. When that trust starts to build, you can start having the deep conversations about, ‘hey, is this a path you’re wanting to continue?’”
Some of the young men he’s worked with have seemed to get worse—they may go from provincial correctional facilities to federal. “From the outside, they can say ‘what you’re doing is not working,’” Mr. Tu’Inukuafe said. “But when that person is 30, something happens in their life where they’re ... sick and tired of being sick and tired, so to speak, and they want to make that change. Who do you think they reach out to?”
He said he would like to see more government investment in such organizations embedded in communities. He said federal policies should focus more on the illegal weapons smuggled from the United States and addiction treatment centres, especially for youth.
Mr. Wilson says when he was a gang member, it was merely a persona. “I wore that mask and I committed to it,” he said. But he always hated it. “It was never really me to begin with.”
When he first started trying to help young men leave gangs, he had some worry for his personal safety, but said any risk was worth it.
“People tried to kill me for years, and if they’re going to try to kill me now for doing something good, then so be it,” he said. “Thankfully, that hasn’t happened. I’ve actually gotten a lot of positive feedback, even from people who used to be my enemies.”
