COLUMN: Forget about slapping a made-in-the-USA label on our gun problem:
Date: Aug 15, 2005 8:45 AM
PUBLICATION: GLOBE AND MAIL
DATE: 2005.08.15
PAGE: A13 (ILLUS)
BYLINE: ANTHONY DOOB AND ROSEMARY GARTNER
SECTION: Comment
EDITION: Metro
WORD COUNT: 1037

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Aim at crime’s cause Forget about slapping a made-in-the-USA label on
our gun problem: Gang violence is homegrown, and Ontario nurtured it
with poor social policies, say criminologists ANTHONY DOOB and ROSEMARY
GARTNER

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Why is Toronto experiencing so many shootings right now? And what can be
done? The first question assumes that there is, in fact, an upward trend
in gun violence rather than simply an unusually large number of
incidents in a concentrated period. It’s too early to know whether the
events of the past few weeks signal the start of a sustained upswing. In
1991, there were 89 homicides in Toronto, a record high, and concern
that we were entering a new, violent era was widespread — yet Toronto
has come nowhere close to that level of lethal violence since.

For the sake of argument, however, let’s assume incidents of gun
violence are beginning a sustained rise.

If so, why? Let’s consider what’s known about the causes of crime, and
then look at changes that have occurred in the past 10 years in
Ontario’s social policies, particularly those that affect children. Very
simply, policies put in place during this period had a high likelihood
of increasing levels of violence. We don’t believe, of course, that
increasing crime was the goal. Rather, it seems that our political
leaders at the time simply ignored widely accepted evidence about social
sources of crime.

One of Ontario’s most dramatic changes in the mid-1990s was the large
cut to welfare payments for families with children. It is well
established that cities with low welfare payments (measured as the
amount received by each poor family, or the per cent of poor families
receiving some form of assistance) have higher rates of violent and
property crime, and that children who experience long periods of poverty
between the age of 5 and their early teenage years are more likely to
commit crime. We also know that communities with higher levels of
economic inequality are likely to have high levels of violent crime.
Even Japan, a country with a generally low level of violent crime, has
found that homicide rates and robberies go up when income inequality,
unemployment, and poverty increase.

When we move from broad economic policies to policies that affect
children directly, we find additional factors that account for a rise in
crime. For troubled and troublesome young people, the school can be an
oasis in an otherwise difficult life. And attachment to school –
finding something positive and personally rewarding — can reduce the
likelihood that troubled youths will commit violent crimes. Getting
young people to see education as a good thing can be a challenge, but we
do know a little about making school a positive experience. What matter
most for disaffected youths are a school’s extracurricular aspects and
the particular attention paid by a teacher who takes the time to help a
difficult student.

But in the 1990s, the Ontario government told teachers that every minute
that they spent that was not in front of a classroom was wasted,
frivolous time — never mind the “extras” that made their jobs more
rewarding and their students more interested in staying in school.
Second, it told schools to deal with troubled and troublesome students
through zero tolerance, by suspending and expelling them.

Provincial policy dictated that the one institution, the school, that
was available to everyone and that could make a difference was stripped
of that opportunity, while teachers were told that it was not their role
to help troubled children. Fortunately, many school boards, school
administrative officers, and teachers didn’t listen; they did what they
knew to be best. But their resources were limited.

As well, Ontario demoted public health to the status of unnecessary
frill (remember the Walkerton drinking water disaster?).

What does public health have to do with crime? Plenty, it turns out it,
especially for the poor and disadvantaged. Something as simple as
regular home visits by public-health nurses to poor young mothers, from
the early stages of pregnancy until the child’s second birthday, not
only has important health benefits — 15 years later, these same
children are less likely to be involved in crime.

Homelessness, a problem whose roots go back at least 20 years, is
another factor. Children who are forced to move from temporary home to
temporary home throughout their school lives are considerably more
likely to feel no roots in the community and be involved in crime.

Yet all these changes in social policy were justified because they gave
people like the readers of this newspaper lower taxes.

What about the proposed solutions to Toronto’s gang/crime problem? No
quick fix will reduce it. It will do no good to increase prison
sentences, to institute more mandatory minimum sentences, to implement
curfews, to sweep the streets clean of disorderly people, to create boot
camps. Indeed, looking for solutions to crime within the
criminal-justice system is largely counterproductive because it
distracts us from effective responses and depletes scarce resources that
could be used earlier and more productively.

Toronto has been promised new police officers to deal with crime.

Adding to police strength, alone, will not solve the problem either,
however. With each police officer costing about $75,000 a year, we
should be asking what our other choices might be, within police
departments or elsewhere. In a coldly statistical way, let’s look at
what is the best way, per million dollars spent, to achieve a long-term
impact on violent crime? For the most part, we already know. It’s
sometimes referred to as an investment in social programs. These
programs are designed to create an educated, healthy, productive
society. They also have indirect benefits — they create peaceful
communities. We may have learned in the past 10 years or so how to
increase violent crime in our communities. The question is whether we
will use what we’ve learned to reduce it.

Anthony N. Doob and Rosemary Gartner are professors of criminology at
the Centre of Criminology, University of Toronto.