What is Crime All About: Do our Political Leaders even Know?

Ah, crime, the easy favourite for political leaders and parties to make empty, uninformed promises for fixes. In my life and work, I’ve probably met more criminals than most people would ever hope to meet in a lifetime. I’ve learned some things about criminals and why they choose crime as a career path. It might be difficult to think of it as such, crime as a career path, but in many respects that is what it is. For some, they are raised in criminal families, or those, who espouse and socialize their offspring to naturalize anti-social values and criminal behaviours. For many of these families, this is simply survival, pure and simple.

The hidden issues behind crime are what get ignored by the politicians, who sell a “Get Tough on Crime” ethos which is really just inadequate, shame-based and ineffective and panders to middle class fear. Meanwhile, the real issues of crime go unmentioned, until now of course. These are the real issues behind crime:

Abuse and neglect of children – I have yet to meet a criminal, child, youth or adult who did not have an indescribably horrific history and background of abuse and/or depravation. We’re talking abuse in every possible way – physical, mental, emotional and sexual – girls and boys.

Neglect – deprivation of the most basic necessities of material, emotional and psychological life. If most citizens were to read the forensic assessments of some of the children before the courts, they would understand the difficult lives most criminals start out this world in.

Mental health & Psychiatric Disorders – When children are abused and neglected they experience long-term mental, emotional and psychological damage, only instead of most receiving timely assessment and counseling they get labeled with ADHD, opposition-defiant disorder, and a host of other things. They don’t get labeled as victims and survivors. These kids are often stigmatized and rejected in school and community. Then they come to internalize themselves as unworthy, as outside the norm of their peers. People wonder why the Downtown Eastside exists, well, one reason is that no matter who you are, what you are, or what you do, you will find a community of belonging, which is often more than you can find anywhere in the rest of the world.

Canada now has a Mental Health Commission. Part of their role is to create a national strategy. As the Commission points out on its’ website, Canada was the only G8 nation that did not have a national strategy to address mental illness. So far, they’ve got lots of reports and have made public appearances, with little to show in that way of a strategy. Canadians deserve better and some real action.

Here in BC, one thing we can take pride in is that we created the first Child & Youth Mental Health Plan in Canada

This is an example of best practices and improving outcomes:

Parent resource centre targets troubled youth
Cheryl Rossi, Vancouver Courier. Published: Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Poverty – No-one will ever be able to claim that being poor is always the impetus for engaging in criminal behaviour. However, one man I knew told me his first criminal acts began when, at age 8 years old, he began breaking into houses to steal food. As an adult, he has a long history of crime and addiction, which started as a child whose strength to survive was so strong he had to steal food to eat, in a country where he was surrounded by wealth that denied him the basic necessities of life.

Fetal Alcohol Spectrum Disorders & other Developmental Disabilities – Canada has a shameful and negligent history and a profound failure of leadership to address the holistic needs of boys and girls with FASD and other DD’s. There is a saying amongst those working with and parenting FASD populations – “the boys get locked up, the girls get knocked up.”

Have you ever seen a newborn baby kicking heroin, or crack cocaine? I have. More than one or two. If the first thing you have to do when you come into this world is detox from dope, your life will ALWAYS be an uphill climb. If your government (federal and provincial) fails to provide you the support you need for your invariable special needs and developmental disabilities, your options in life are significantly reduced. Last time I checked, you don’t need a university degree to sell crack.

If politicians want to make a difference on youth AND adult crime then they better fund and create a national strategy for addressing FASD and other Developmental Disabilities and not leave it up to the provinces to take leadership on this.

Addictions & Residential Treatment – Again, no national leadership and patchwork provincial addiction systems and a lack of treatment beds specifically for youth. The younger you are addicted and entering the anti-social lifestyle associated with addiction & crime, the worse your health, the lower your life expectancy, and often, the more chronic and prolific offending takes place to feed the monkey.

I’ve known a few of those so-called “prolific” or chronic offenders. Their need for dope and the high of crime is insatiable. Even when they go to prison for longer stretches (where they don’t have access to any rehabilitation programs), detox off dope, they are back to the life within a short span of time. Usually they’re released from prison with the clothes on their back, if they’re lucky they get onto welfare before they’re out (most of the time not), no housing and few supports in the community. It isn’t rocket science why they get back into crime again.

Labour, Vocational Training & Apprenticeship Programs – Again, something that falls to the provinces, but the federal government takes very little leadership on this, although headlines across the country are already screeching at us about the current labour market recruitment & retention problems.

It’s all well and good for middle class kids going into the trades. But, it takes some effort to convince a kid who grew up in abject poverty, has no education, maybe doesn’t even speak, or write, English to be employable, who can make the same amount of money, or more, selling crack, meth and heroin and driving a Hummer.

Canadian economy crippled by skilled labour shortage
Eric Beauchesne, Canwest News Service
Published: Tuesday, September 23, 2008

Support Services & ESL classes for Immigrant Children & Youth – It is no coincidence some immigrant youth fall into criminal lifestyles. In many respects, their options are for employment are limited. There was an excellent story in a recent issue of the Vancouver Courier that outlined the issue very well. It told the story of young Vietnamese refugee who came to Vancouver, who was illiterate in both his native language, and English. With the pressures on him to work and support himself here (in one of the most expensive cities in North America) and send money home to his family, school and literacy, by virtue of survival had to become a secondary thing. His employment and career options are limited as a result.

Canada’s statistics on literacy rates are staggering for a nation that requires an abundance of “skilled and knowledge workers” for our countries’ future survival. I don’t see one iota of attention being paid to issues of literacy, access to education and ESL education by the party leaders in this election.

"More than 40% of working age people in British Columbia have a hard time with the everyday demands of reading, writing and using numbers. This means they may have trouble finding and keeping jobs. It means they may not be able to get the information they need to protect their health, safety or legal rights. And it means they may be unable to read to their children". (Literacy BC)

"Close to 33% of employers reported training problems because some of their staff were functionally illiterate". (ABC CANADA)

Continuum of Housing Options & Transitional Supports for Youth – In a province such as BC, where the provincial government is set on privatizing and devolving the child protection system, youth aren’t just falling into cracks, they are being swallowed up whole by crevasses where social services and the government used to exist to provide them supports, such as housing, and life skills as they transition into adulthood. It would be lovely and put a smile on all of our faces if all youth got launched into the world from well appointed and nurturing nests, with parents who are there to catch them when they fall. That isn’t the case for a very problematic minority, who become all of society’s problem when they are forced out, or dumped out onto the street before, or after the age of majority.

The Representative of Children & Youth, Mary-Ellen Turpel-Lafond reported that in BC, more youth from foster care “graduate” to prison, than actually graduate from high school. That is a failure of all levels of government, because a statistic like that can be replicated in every province. The outcomes of children & youth from care, a most vulnerable population, are well known and established in the research. Yet at a national level, since the Honourable Senator Landon Pearson, no-one stands as a National Champion and Advocate for Children & Youth. That is an international embarrassment for Canada, a signatory to the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

BTW, Stephen Harper might want to peruse the UNCRC before making all of his “get tough on youth crime” proclamations. His anachronistic and ridiculous campaign promises fly in the face of more progressive and intelligent responses to issues of youth crime.

Youth Crime Prevention – I’d like to know the total Canadian dollars the Conservative government has invested in Youth Crime Prevention initiatives and programs since they became the minority government? I am underwhelmed when I look at the GOV page for youth crime prevention and the meagre findings that turned up when I searched. I strongly suspect that it isn’t enough, especially for Aboriginal youth, who continue to be over-represented in every aspect of the legal system, whether that is arrest, charge and incarceration rates.

I remember one particular immigration mentoring program that went under in Metro Vancouver, losing their government funding and it was just so maddening to think how short-sighted governments can be sometimes in helping youth settle in with peers who can help them find a positive path.

Good Youth Crime Protection programming includes gang prevention activities. But education only goes so far, real efforts and dollars have to go into increasing opportunities and supports to vulnerable youth.

Implications on the UN Convention for Crime Prevention

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So, after all of this, if doing the right thing still isn’t enough to convince our leaders, maybe appealing to our collective self-interest is:

Meet Carl, he’s an 19 year old kid, he was taken away from his alcoholic, neglectful parents when he was around four years old. One of the only things he has pride about is that he used to be the protector of his younger siblings when the parties happened, but no-one was there to protect him. He was abused and neglected in every way a human being can be violated.

The government sends him to the United States, where he stays in a foster home for most of a decade, with no contact with any natural family. He's also abused and neglected there. He’s kept at home, he’s also been taught how to shoot and collect guns, and begins to do break-ins with his other foster siblings, mostly for food. He’s hustled out of the country after he shoots and kills a cow and some other animals and causes some other problems. He has little to no education, is barely literate and unsocialized.

He’s back here in Canada and he is before the courts on a violent crime, it’s just a series of offenses, escalating over time, as his world is crushed over and over and he has NOWHERE and NO-ONE he belongs with, or to. His family can’t cope with him, especially after he assaults one of his relatives. He’s dabbling in pot and trying to stay off alcohol, he knows what it does to him, but it also makes the pain go away, for a little while anyways. He’s also managed to collect some knives. He pulls a kidnapping, while on probation, so he goes away again. He’s still only 16. He drifts to another town. Commits an armed robbery and another kidnapping, more time, now he’s doing adult time. Bigger tricks of the trade, meaner and rougher in-mates and more abuse.

No family, no community, no job, no income, no home, can’t read or write, he’s got addictions, has years of committing violent and sex offenses and mountains of disabilities, special needs and mental health issues no-one has ever been able to help him with.

He is getting released into your community after his time is up. What do you think is waiting for him? Is this the kind of Canada we want for Carl, or ourselves? It isn’t what I want. Carl isn’t theoretical. He was a living, breathing child-man who was thrown away by our society, but he meant something to me. And so do all of the other Carl’s and Carla’s out there.

This time around, we need to choose a better government, one that will seriously commit to helping the Carl and Carla’s in our country. That is the kind of Canada we should strive to be.