It's time for snitches to rat out jail culture

Winnipeg's murder rate is higher than it was at this time last year. Once again we will be the crime capital of Canada. If nothing is done, we will soon surpass murder rates in the U.S. There is no easy answer to high crime rates, but we need to do things differently. To support the police and agencies in their seemingly never-ending task of protecting the people who live in Winnipeg, specifically the inner city, we must find new modalities. One of them is taking on the jail culture.

A small percentage of inner-city folk have been to jail. They have, however, brought the jail culture out with them. The second-worst insult that gets thrown around is "You're a rat!"

When Chris and I were raising our three kids on Dudley Avenue we were surrounded by snitches. Our kids were convinced we had radar eyes, since we instantly knew when they were sliding down snowbanks onto the road or sneaking a cigarette. Our wonderful neighbours felt they were surrogate parents to our kids and contributed to them growing up as positive citizens. When a motorcycle gang rented a house on our street, there must have been 10 neighbours who called the police to alert them. It wasn't ratting, it was being part of a healthy community.

When I worked in the Manitoba correctional system, it was clear the second-lowest inmate in the jail was the snitch, only rated slightly above the child molester. Anyone identified as a rat or a snitch was in danger of serious physical harm.

Keith McCaskill, when he first became chief of police, identified the need for community support to prevent crime. Unfortunately, McCaskill and other senior police officers did not take into account the fear of being identified as a "rat," which limited community participation. Most poor people are honest. Most inner-city people are honest. Most aboriginal people are honest. Most people hate crime. Since most people hate crime, why are they not involved in identifying criminals? They are afraid of being labelled a "rat."

It is not an easy task to overcome such an inculcated culture. New men return from jail to reinforce the no-ratting value. They also spread fear, which is hard for most people to understand. When we started cleaning up North Point Douglas, we learned quickly that we needed a counterculture, another, stronger culture to counter the jail culture. We learned even some of our toughest drug dealers had kids and they didn't want "bad guys" around who would threaten their kids. One of our aboriginal elders defined the term: "our turf."

Slowly we encouraged people to say, "Hey, around my house is my turf. It's not ratting to get rid of gangers and dealers around my turf."

We have made it clear we are comfortable ratting. Just the other day, one of our Citizens On Watch indicated his fear of ratting. I pointed out to him that he was buying into jailhouse values.

There was a pause. "Hey, we gotta stop that," he said.

My wife Chris, the indomitable retired kindergarten teacher, often refers to herself as "The Mother Rat." Pretty hard to undermine someone with such a wonderful smile and a backbone of tempered British steel.

I was called a rat recently. The jail culture still lives. However, if we are ever going to break the horrible cycle of inner-city crime we need to take on the jailhouse culture.

Long live rats and snitches.

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition June 18, 2012 $sourceSection0