How to gang up on thugs

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 16/02/2008 (6479 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

I attended last week’s public forum with Michael Chettleburgh, a Canadian expert on street gangs, and despite the gravity of the subject matter, I left feeling remarkably hopeful.

For the last decade, Chettleburgh has researched the issue extensively — in addition to writing 2002’s Canadian Police Survey on Youth Gangs for the federal government, the first national study of its kind, he’s also worked with policing agencies across the country to develop officer training programs and crime prevention strategies.

In town on the heels of the recent release of his first book, Young Thugs, Chettleburgh used the event to share his thoughts about street gangs — and how to effectively deal with them.

It’s a message that deserves to be heard loud and clear, particularly here in Winnipeg.

Our city has the highest per capita concentration of youth street gang members in all of Canada — Chettleburgh estimates as many as 3,000 young men in are now gang-involved, with at least as many young women loosely affiliated through romantic relationships. Considering that Winnipeg has the largest urban aboriginal population in the country (a demographic that’s over-represented in youth gang membership for a variety of reasons, and one that continues to grow), it’s safe to say our gang problem is not going away any time soon.

But some Winnipeggers already knew that. Some have known for years, even before 2005, when Philippe Haiart was killed and the rest of us finally started paying attention.

If experiential knowledge counts — and I would argue it most certainly does — then Chettleburgh wasn’t the only gang expert in the room last week. The audience included social service providers, corrections officers, youth workers, community volunteers, and several people with an intimate connection to the issue, such as Nancy Flett, the mother of Joseph (Beeper) Spence, who was shot to death in 1995 at the age of 13 by gang-involved teenagers who mistakenly thought he was a gang member.

Those who live and work on Winnipeg’s front-lines have a wealth of wisdom. Some used the question-and-answer portion of the evening to share a few thoughts of their own.

Interestingly, policing strategies were hardly mentioned. Instead, over and over again, those who spoke linked the proliferation of gangs to poverty. Winnipeg, one woman said, doesn’t have a gang issue — it has a poverty issue.

Some people voiced their frustrations about low social assistance rates and the lack of affordable housing, while others lamented the damaging effect that continued tax cuts have had on social and recreational programming in the city’s poorer neighbourhoods.

While police efforts were acknowledged as valuable, everyone seemed far more interested in exploring collaborative, sustainable prevention strategies — including Chettleburgh, who’s come up with a 16-point gang-prevention plan of his own.

He advocates more localized research to help define the nature of gang activity in individual communities; increased community mobilization; a focus on early intervention; training and support for parents; more after-school programs; more youth centres (and the support to keep them open and running); economic opportunities for at-risk and gang-involved youth; an increased commitment to mentoring programs; engaging youth through active outreach work; more investment in alternative school programs; gang-awareness education through social marketing campaigns; targeted suppression activities (that is, taking out the most violent gang ringleaders and giving “salvageable” youth a chance of redemption); enhanced community policing efforts; the revitalization of social housing; more investment in mental health services; and continuous evaluation via social science research to figure out what actually works.

The solutions have been laid out in front of us — a recipe for fewer gangs, to be sure, but also for a healthier city. And while many of Chettleburgh’s suggestions are already being implemented locally (albeit in piecemeal fashion), it’s exciting to imagine the changes that could result from a concerted, focused, well-funded effort.

At the very least, Young Thugs should be required reading for all of us.

Marlo Campbell is a writer with

Uptown Magazine.