The Agenda with Steve Paikin (Audio) - What is Causing a Rise in Youth Violence?

Episode Date: October 11, 2024

Statistics show youth violence is on the rise in Ontario. The Agenda looks at what's causing the spike in youth crime, the severity of the offenses, and what solutions could put young people on a brighter path.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Statistics show that youth violence is on the rise in Ontario. High profile incidents including the swarming death of a homeless man by a group of young girls and a 13 year old boy charged with first degree murder. What's causing young people to commit such horrific acts of violence? Joining us now to discuss this troubling trend we welcome Scott Wortley professor of criminology and socio-legal studies at the University of Toronto and former Research Director on the Ontario Government's Roots of Youth Violence Inquiry. Lena Audrumary, Chair of the Ontario Youth Justice Task Force and co-founder of Stop Now and Plan,

or SNAP, an early intervention mental health and anti-violence initiative. Devon Jones, founder of Youth Association for academics, athletics and character education or YACE. And Michael Coristine, former senior crown attorney, now founding partner and a criminal lawyer at Michael Coristine Law. Welcome everyone to studio. Thank you so much for joining us.

I'm gonna start off by showing some data. This is the youth crime severity index in Ontario from 2003 to 2023 based on the Uniform Crime Reporting Survey. The crime severity index is a tool that takes into account the amount of crime that's happening and the severity of it. Here in terms of youth crime in Ontario, we can see a steady decrease in the early 2000s and 2010s, but there just at 2021 you can see a spike. Now looking specifically at youth violent crime, there was less of a reduction over the past 20 years and some clear recent spikes. Lena, I'm going to come to you looking at that data. How do you react to those trends? So from 2004, we saw a huge decline, like 65%, 67% decline. But then what we saw is in 2021, we

start to see an upward spike a bit. 6%, I think, what we're finding is that it's more accused of a violent crime. But it is going up. And we need to be cautious of that. And we need to be watching it. Do we know why? There's lots of reasons why.

I think the pandemic had a major impact. We had kids being isolated. Kids were social beings. And so here they are isolated. They weren't, they were, you know, kids are, we're social beings. And so here they are isolated, they're not going to school in person, and their social world is at home. That's all they're doing. And so I think what we've seen is parents reported

that up to almost 80% of parents reporting that their kid's behavior was getting worse, especially those kids who already were experiencing issues. And about almost 60% of those parents whose kids were not, they were seeing some major issues with their behaviour. Okay. Scott, I want to talk to you. This is obviously something that you have looked at for quite a while. You worked on the Roots of Youth Violence Inquiry in 2008.

Has anything changed since? Is this data concerning? Is this something that is different from what you were looking at earlier? I think the data differs significantly from public perception. When you talk to people and when you poll the Canadian population, there tends to be this feeling

that crime is out of control, that it is always increasing when, in fact, as we've seen, the long-term trends are downward with spikes of violence here or there. And any violence is of concern. Any violence needs to be dealt with and is tragic. But I think that we've, first of all, got to address the fact that in the long term,

things are actually going down. with these moral panics that are often driven by very high profile sensationalistic cases that create public concern. That being said, there are some disturbing trends that I think we have to monitor if we're not going to become more like the United States. We have increasing economic inequality that is often divided by racial lines.

We have a shrinking middle class and a higher proportion of young people living in poverty, as well as an increasing wealthy class who is not necessarily interested with the problems that are taking place in the lower echelons of society. What we're finding is that this is creating a sense of alienation and disillusionment among young people, that they don't feel a great deal of hope about the future and are kind of removing themselves from the mainstream and taking place in subcultures that can be conducive to illegal activity,

including violence. And I think that trend we have to watch. Particularly profound is the disillusionment that we experience when we interview young people about their future. Many of them feel that they're not going to be engaged in the mainstream economy. And interesting about youth, what we're finding

is that overall, the young offenders, under 18, still a steady decline. Where we're seeing a concentration is among young people, 22 to 32, who have not been able to engage in the mainstream economy. It's almost like they leave the protection of high school. They leave the protection of being youthful and becoming an adult.

And they have nowhere to go. And they become increasingly frustrated and more willing to engage in the illegal economy. All right. Davon, I'll get you in on this. In terms of that recent spike that we have seen in that last chart there, what's causing that recent spike in youth violence? Yeah, I would say it's an issue that's been ongoing for some time. And one thing about violence is the fact that it's over time. It's an evolving phenomenon.

So a lot of the issues that you see playing out in today's situation were in the process from some time. So with that said, you now have social media that leads to proliferation of this where, you know, in the past I would, you know, I would know where you are. Now I can see you in real time. We can engage in each other in real time.

And it's just a random, for me, teaching in Jane and Finch, or taught in Jane and Finch for over two decades, it's the random indiscriminate nature of retaliatory violence that concerns me. Someone puts a post up, and someone is going to act on it because they feel somewhat disrespected. So it's now my duty or my right to go to that community and act on that post.

So those are some of the issues that concerns me, just the random indiscriminate nature of the violence. And systemically, there's a level of apathy and the lack of reaction in real time by levels of government, school boards, etc. So if we have this issue that is escalating, how do we address it as at the federal level, the provincial level, the municipal level, and at the school boards? So if we have young people engaging in this culture of retaliatory violence, how do we act?

And what are those strategies that we put in place? And I think the lack of, or the inability of, stakeholders to act and government to act is what's leading to this proliferation. All right, Michael, coming to you. You've been on both sides as prosecutor and defense. You can see this on both ends. But talk to me a little bit about the nature of this,

the nature of youth violence. How is it changing? Are we seeing a change in that? Well, the spectrum of what you would consider violent, I guess, can be anything from the proliferation of schoolyard beatings or bathroom-type group assaults that are a direct function of social media. I think a lot, phones in schools, audience clout,

things of that nature have become more prevalent. The social media factor, which I agree, is gangs, for example, are operating at a very high level on social media through rap videos, posts that may or may not antagonize other rivals. And the reach for that message is getting out a lot easier. And there is that young person mentality of respect and my reputation and the neighborhood or my group's reputation. At least in the more serious violent crimes that we've seen an uptick in. The youth becoming part of that, that type of, I guess, reaction is something that has exploded recently.

And I think that there isn't much we can do but look to social media for that. But I would also say economically, the pandemic had a direct impact on the types of crimes that started to creep up. And I mean, we all know the auto thefts, carjacking, street type armed robberies are a direct result of the juice being worth the squeeze for groups to commit these brazen acts in broad daylight

or follow people to their homes or home invasions to get the car keys and things of that nature. And they're not going to enlist adults to do that. They're going to enlist young persons, as gangs have always typically done. And I say gangs, but any criminal organization or any type of group that's engaged in that type of activity. So explain that for me a little bit.

Why would criminal gang members, whatever it be, go to someone who is younger? Well, I think anatomy itself is, of course, whatever it be, go to someone who is younger. Well, I think, and that in itself is of course not a new phenomenon, I mean, that's always been the case, but I think there are two main reasons in my experience. One, the, at least in Canada, the youth justice system, it's well known that because of the laudable goals and the structure is obviously more lenient on youth. So there's a perception of less risk to convincing let's say someone under 18 to get involved in something maybe more upside.

You'll make a lot of money doing this and even if you get caught the penalties aren't as bad and your record will be sealed and things of that nature. There is that type of element. And I'm not suggesting that proactive thinking is a hallmark of the criminal system. Obviously, there's not always that much thought that goes into it. But it is certainly a factor as far as why 14-year-olds are

the gunman in a carjacking and maybe the adult is the driver or the lookout. I would say also the other aspect is control. Someone who's an adult in the neighborhood and the young kids are working for them, so to speak, they're going to keep their mouth shut. They're going to do what they're told, and they're going to be loyal because they're more susceptible to the intimidation.

And I don't think I'm saying anything revolutionary in that regard, but it still holds true from my perspective. Scott, I want to get your take on what Mike said right now. Yeah, I mean, I think there's truth in the idea that some organizations, particularly those involved in high-end economic crimes like car theft, will recruit young offenders because they can sell it. Even if you do get caught, you will have an easier penalty

than if I get caught. I also think we can't take attention away from also the disillusionment and the alienation and the feeling that you don't have a fair shake in society. I think they both feed this kind of system and this kind of thinking. I also think there's a lot of violence, and Devon would probably echo this, that is more related to reputation than to organize criminal activity. So a lot of the beefs that we've seen, a lot of the gun carrying, we've just interviewed 400 individuals

from some of our most disadvantaged communities. And some of them carry guns, but they're not involved in gangs. They feel that they need a sense of protection. They don't trust the justice system. They don't trust the police to be concerned about their protection or feel that they can't be there every day. So they're grabbing almost an American style,

I want to arm myself in case I need it. And that these, once arms are prevalent, these beefs break out. So I do think that some of the violence is related. Car jackings barely have a utilitarian purpose. But there's other violence that is more emotional, more based on reputation, and the facilitation of these types of incidents through an increase

in gun availability, I think it's also... Well, I want to pick up on that. I'm hoping, Devon, you can add to this. Toronto Police reported that this year there have been more than 100 youth firearm arrests. That's up 75% from last year. Walk me through what explains the rise in youth gun violence. I know there's a particular case that feels like it's growing right now in the Truthui Black Creek area that we've seen where there is a case of a young boy who was scared to go to school,

who was seen in a rap video and it seems every other week now there's a shooting in and around that area. Hard to believe this is all connected in some sort. All doing, comes back to a video that may have been on social media. Yeah, so let me give this some context. Scott's point. So the issue of polarization, it's an ongoing phenomenon. So for example, I teach in a work in Jane and Finch.

And I'll touch on the Black Creek Western Road dichotomy in a second. So you have the kids north of Finch, the kids south of Finch. And for some time, they've been engaged in this culture of back and forth. So to Scott's point, I don't want to be involved in this stuff. But if I'm walking home from school and I'm getting shot at, or folks know that I'm from this area, from this postal code,

then it makes me an enemy. So you have young people who want nothing this area from this postal code, then it makes me an enemy. So you have young people who want nothing to do with this issue, who are pretty much forced in it just based on their postal code. So it's so frightening where you have kids are now asking for police presence. You have kids who are now saying, we want police presence. Kids won't play outside or engage unless the neighborhood police officers are present.

This is Canada. Just imagine a community just based on the volatility, based on the indiscriminate nature of gunplay, where kids can't play outside. And then we have to ask ourselves, what are the mental health implications of these issues, as it relates to the constant exposure to violence, the issues around PTSD, the issues

around a concurrent psychological disorder. And these young people or these students from the lowest achieving schools, the lowest achieving students, they're from communities who are predominantly poor, under-resourced, under-serviced. Only 3% of kids from Jane and Finch, income level 36,000 lower, family income 36,000 lower,

who has a chance to play organized sports. Organized sports is such an ecosystem to engage and provide opportunities. But they've been pretty much priced out of the market. So these young people can't do much. They don't have much to do. They can't engage in anything constructive. And then you're dealing with this culture

of back and forth violence, where it's random, it's indiscriminate, and for someone like myself that work in that community, I can get in my car, get in the 4-1, and it's gone. For those young people they're navigating this violence each and every single day. Just imagine your children, our children living in that reality and dealing with that every day and just imagine How depraved it would would the impact must be? All right, Lena, I want to get you in here. You work with young kids from an early age What are the signs you're looking for for a young person who may unfortunately be on a path towards violence? That's an indicator for you.

So what Devon said was right on, spot on. What happens to you matters. And the neuroscience shows that your brain actually gets impacted. So kids who engage in disruptive, antisocial behavior, the neuroscience are finding that their frontal lobe is impacted. And so we need to think about how do we help these kids alter

it, because it's fight, flight, and freeze. If they're living in these extremely traumatic scenarios or situations in their lives, which they are, their brain is being disrupted. And so we need to think about how do we do this. So one of the things that we have been doing is we developed a program called SNAP, which stands for Stop Now and Plan.

It teaches kids how to stop and think before they act and make better choices in the moment. And what if I told you the research, University of Toronto, SickKids, Steve Waltering just did something, they found that in, sorry, Dr. Nathan Koala did, they found that we can change structural changes in the brain in just 13 weeks.

So it's like pruning a tree, right? So the more you get these kids to practice the strategy of SNAP, for example, you're building new synapses. And so instead of being constantly in that fight, flight, and freeze, I call that your lizard brain. You're moving that processing to your wizard brain. And the kids are able to stop and think before they act and make better choices in the moment. So and if you and I, you know, this is Alex Baccaro will tell you, if he had to put his

money on anything, he would put his money on teaching kids. It's the importance of self control. Okay. I want to follow up on that. We're talking about kids, youth. And one thing that we haven't talked about is parents. Yes. And it's one of the criticisms that I think we hear when we talk about the Youth Criminal Justice Act is

we see all this, but where are the parents? What are the roles of parents and guardians? How do you answer that? Parents and caregivers are critical. Especially when these kids are young, it doesn't matter how young they are, or they're teenagers or young adults. Parents play a critical role in their child's life. And so therefore, we need to be engaging our parents. So in the program, the SNAP program, for example,

we just don't work with the child. We work with their caregiver and their parent. We work with their schools. We work with the community. Because parents are the critical piece in that child's development. And so therefore, we can teach the child how to use SNAP, but we also need to teach the parents how to use SNAP,

but also improve their effective parenting, and give them strategies that can work. Also help them deal with the school, because a lot of these kids have difficulties and issues at school, so we wanna be able to work with them, so that they, because a lot of these kids have difficulties and issues at school. So we want to be able to work with them so that they, and we have to also be fair to parents and caregivers. There's a lot going on in this world.

That's a good job. I'm a parent. I can't tell you how many times my kids will say, mom, I think you need to read some of those books you're writing. It's normal to react, but it's how we react, how we handle a scenario. And I think that's where that effective parent strategies, but also teaching children and parents and caregivers

how to use calming strategies to improve their self-control, emotion regulation, self-control. All right. Michael, I want to bring you in here a little bit about the perception of the Youth Criminal Justice Act. There's lots of criticisms of, is it too lenient? But I also want to pick up also on what Devin had mentioned about how does public mistrust of police

in racialized communities factor into the rise of youth violence? Well, I mean, obviously, if you're not likely to go to the police for disputes or things that I guess you could say taking matters into your own hands is really what we're talking about because there is at least what's reported and certainly I see some of that in our clients and from as a as a Crown attorney that there there just isn't there isn't that relationship with a lot of the communities and our police despite efforts and despite laudable goals on on at least the part of the government to change that.

But we see this all the time where if someone is assaulted or in other ways offended, they're going to take matters into their own hands and not get the police involved. And that isn't always related to a mistrust in the police. Some of it ties back to societal and sort of peer pressures where you don't want to be seen as someone that goes running to the police. The Christopher Husband's case is a classic example where he had been the victim of gang

violence and he armed himself for protection and countered his assailants in the food court. Would have been better to call police to try to help, but that wasn't his experience and it wasn't the way he chose to react. But that's not an uncommon reaction. And certainly in a trial I finished earlier this year, both accused persons had been shot and gravely wounded. And unfortunately, according to the jury at least, were guilty of acting that out against someone that had been involved in violence against them.

So I think that that's part of the reason as well as just the relationship is we're still recovering from a lot of the carding controversy and other systems of the years past that communities at large have said we don't agree with, not just the so-called inner city communities that have the sort of complicated relationship with police. Scott, I want to get you in on that as well. Yeah, it's one of the issues that we've been asking youth, if you happen to be the victim of a crime or if you were the victim of a crime, would you report it to the police?

And hearing their responses are very nuanced. They're rational thinkers. They will often say, I don't record to the police sometimes because I don't want to be labeled a snitch or a rat. In my community, if you cooperate with the police, you're going to be looked down upon. But you also get individuals who say, I don't trust the police.

I've called the police in the past, and I've been treated as a suspect, not as a victim. Or there's kind of a realistic view that the police, even if they wanted to help, couldn't be there all the time. They can't be my 24-7 bodyguard. I've got to live in this community. This is the building I live in.

And these are the issues here. So they have kind of a realistic view. I do find sometimes with witnesses, what we see is a kind of live by the sword, die by the sword mentality. So they'll say, I'm not going to risk my own safety for somebody who's been involved in the game or is selling drugs or is involved in the gang, I'm not going to risk my own safety by becoming involved.

So for a lot of people living in the community, it's not that they don't want to help, it's they feel that by helping or by reporting to the police, their situation could deteriorate. So I do think that these are profound issues that sometimes I think that we need to work with the police to understand where communities feel about their interactions and why they don't cooperate. I think a lot of community policing initiatives in the past have been focused on helping you feel better about the police.

I think we can also use these kind of platforms to help police learn about the communities and humanize the communities that they engage with. Lena, I want to talk about a case that is going through the courts right now is one that a lot of people were alarmed to see. December 2022, 18-age girls were charged with the murder of a homeless man in Toronto. Shocking to many of course, especially because these cells were female. I'm wondering if you can walk us through that the gender line, how has the gender breakdown in youth violence, have we seen changes in that as well? Gender plays an important role and we need to really think about how we treat males and

females, boys and girls for example. When we started, when I started this work over 39 years ago, when Canada raised the age of criminal responsibility from seven to 12, great move by the way, we found that it was like 75% boys and 25% girls were coming to our attention. And it slowly started to increase to more 30% girls. So we started to see an increase, a slight increase, but boys still outweigh girls hands down. You know we need to look at something that I've been

learning about researching which is seven years of warning, seven-year incubation period. We need to think about kids who end up in court at 14 and a half for committing a serious violent offense. When you go back into their records, any kindergarten teacher can tell you, I'm concerned about this child. By the time they're nine, 9.5, they start getting more involved in delinquent activities, maybe theft shoplifting. And then just before their 12th birthday, they commit their first serious delinquent offense and at 14 and a half, they're in court for a serious violent offense. So when it comes to the pathway, we

need to be able to think about how many individuals cross that child's pathway. So when we think about these girls, lots might be happening. First of all, it happened right after or during the pandemic or after. And so again, I talk about isolation. I talk about relationships.

Relationships is critical when it comes to these kids. We talk about the Kitty Genovese case, the bystander apathy. Why aren't people intervening? Why aren't they helping? Or why are they engaging when something like this happens? So I think we need to really look at gender. We need to think about how to treat genders differently,

if need be. There are really good risk-need assessment tools that we have to think about, and we talked about that earlier a little bit, that we really need to be able to catch these kids early, be able to assess them for their level of risk and need, and then be able to ensure that we have the right treatment approaches. And I know the Ontario government is looking at the custody facilities and the youth justice system as I speak. I'm chairing that task force, the voluntary task force, and they've asked us to look at,

interview the kids, the youth, interview the staff, interview the caregivers and the parents, and also all the engagement, all the experts out there, to determine how to bring the system to a modernized system, and how do we formulate recommendations to the minister, Minister Parsa for Ministry of Children, Community, and Social Services, to help improve what might be going on, and how do we improve the system. And that's the system for both boys and girls as well as males and females. All right.

Well, we're going to have to leave it there. 27 minutes goes by really quickly. Michael, Lena, Devon, Scott, thank you so much. Really appreciate you guys on the program. Thank you.