Who Are Canadians Afraid Of?
The following is an excerpt from the report Fear of Crime in Canada: Taking the Pulse of a Nation, prepared by The Church Council on Justice and Corrections for the Department of Justice Canada. April, 1995. This document can be found, in its entirety, on the Access to Justice Network.
Tony Doob is convinced that the generic phrase, "fear of crime" is a polite, neutral, depoliticized term masking Canadians' real fears of very particular types of criminals. People don't fear crime. People fear criminals who do crime and, in Doob's view, there are specific kinds of offenders who people especially fear. Young offenders. Sex offenders. Those from another race or culture, for example the black community with Jamaican roots in Toronto. It is Doob's contention that we need to be honest about that in order to begin to unpack those layers of fear; perhaps in some instances, in certain locations, those fears are grounded in genuine risk of victimization but Doob knows well the statistics confirming that those fears often have less to do with crime rates than with prejudices, attitudes, ignorance and misinformation.
Fear of the Young Offender
"The way they (violent schoolchildren) express themselves is a lot more extreme. I don't think teachers walk around all day worrying about their safety. But there is a climate of concern which, in a lot of cases, is bordering on despair."
Richard Kollins Toronto Board of Education superintendent
"Why are we so afraid of our kids? What about society being responsible for its crimes against youth? It is so much safer to depersonalize people and make them into these evil creatures. Then you can feel like you're crusading against something rather than realizing they could be just sad little boys."
Adele McDougall Edmonton woman who works with young offenders and their families
There is a raging debate in this country about youth crime, who is responsible for it, and what should be done to young offenders. It has been an emotional debate not always grounded in reason, perhaps somewhat understandable in the wake of rare but shocking, high profile crimes which leave communities reeling and which echo across the land for months after the incident. In the words of Julian Roberts, criminology professor at University of Ottawa, there is no such thing as an overreaction for those who witness the murder of a family member. Their anger, their grief, their rage, are predictable and normal. But among other Canadians, the vast majority of whom have not suffered that horror, enough still feel threatened and afraid. They add their voice to a "law and order" chorus, supporting the current crackdown on young offenders. What is it that Canadians fear when they consider young offenders and their crimes? Do legitimate concerns give way to fear and why?
Consider recent developments: More homes are being broken into and a good number of the offenders are youth.
While many schools offer safe environments, some teachers report in several urban centres disturbing increases in cruelty and violence, even at the elementary school level with accounts of bullying, penny-ante extortion and the occasional weapon in use.
Altruistic fear for our children is high because of some knowledge of the pressures they face. Bhim Rana, a Toronto social worker, said: "Guys are carrying guns because other guys are carrying guns". Fred Matthews, who authored Youth Gangs on Youth Gangs, said: "The research says students are scared. I have to go to board people and teachers and say: 'What part of "I'm scared" is it that you don't understand."
A 27-year-old, British-born engineer out for a stroll on a Sunday night in Ottawa is gunned down by young offenders. An Edmonton woman investigating a noise in her house is stabbed to death by a young offender. An elderly Montreal couple is clubbed to death by three young teenagers who, according to news reports, murdered "for the thrill of it". These high profile incidents hit too close to home for many Canadians who are visibly shaken by the pain of the victim's families and can well imagine the same crime happening to them. What is more normal than a Sunday walk or getting out of bed to check on the children because a parent had heard a noise in the house?
Ken Hatt believes that there is a moral panic surfacing against our youth - an escalating cycle of fear that is somewhat self-reproducing and exceeds the evidence for the concern which is expressed. Some politicians during election campaigns can mirror and feed that moral panic.
Julian Roberts is not sure that the anti-youth orientation in the country is fear based, in the sense that someone would fear a young offender in the same way that he would fear a bank robber. He calls the "fears" more of a moral outrage. "The public turn on the television and they see a young offender, maybe just one young offender, laughing at the law and saying it is a joke," he explained. " That makes people mad. They say these kids don't respect us and society's laws." The frustration and powerlessness some parents experience with their own children also can sustain the outrage about youth criminal behaviour.
Of course, adults today are not the first generation to be concerned about delinquency or youth rebellion. It is written in the daily struggles of every generation. As legitimate as the concern about youth violence is, Vince Sacco thinks the country is in need of this historical perspective too.
Indeed perspective is what is required in any measured response to youth crime. Lou Golding, social worker with the Scarborough Youth Link social agency, said "most schools are safe. Ninety per cent of the students in even a rough school are adept at steering around risky situations."
Fear is also a two-way street, according to youth. Jean-Paul Brodeur referred to the chronic feelings of insecurity among our young. Kids resent being hassled by store owners and waitresses. People fear them or at least react negatively. "People put all the blame on us. They don't understand what it's like for us.... There are reasons behind what we are doing" commented a youth in a substance abuse program with Portage at Elora, Ont.
Fred Matthews has identified vulnerability factors in the young person's family and developmental history that would either predispose the youth to involvement in gangs or aggressive violent or anti-social behaviour - previous history of physical or sexual abuse or neglect, substance-abusing parents, criminal or dysfunctional family, unemployment, difficulties in adjusting to a new life in Canada, child poverty, undiagnosed learning problems or difficulties in school, and the presence of current or chronic life stressors.
It is the "us" and "them" world that breeds fear, and can foster scapegoating. Urban cities are built without places for teenagers to hang out. "They want a place to go and not be hassled," a parent commented. "But people get fed up with skateboarders blocking customer traffic at the mall, or littering the parking lot, or breaking bottles." The vast majority of law-abiding teenagers hang around on street corners or at shopping malls, a typical socialization process that is often misunderstood as representing a threat to the community. These groups can become involved in nuisance behaviour and, less frequently, in violent or other criminal activity based on situational factors.
It seems logical that the fears, frustrations and moral outrage directed at young offenders are partly responsible, along with the youth behaviour, for the current staggering number of cases entering the youth justice system. Police sources speak of pressures from parents or school authorities to charge youth. For example, Ontario locks up more kids than any other province; the number of 16 and 17-year-olds held by police has tripled during the last five years from 311 a day to 1,000 a day. The minor cases of the school yard fights, threats and petty thefts, including the failure to pay Toronto Transit fares, are making their way into court in greater numbers. One downtown Toronto youth court judge said he hears about ten cases a month of young people failing to pay transit fares. According to Dick Barnhorst, director of the provincial government's Office of Youth Justice, "there is the myth that the justice system can solve the crime problem, that the answer is more police, more court appearances, more custody. So we've done that, but now we have so many cases, the system is clogged, and when it's clogged, as it is now with both serious and minor matters, it makes it difficult to deal effectively with either kind of case."
