The Winnipeg Free Press recently reported that funding for anti-gang programs in Winnipeg will be ending in March 2011, despite the positive role they play in our communities - particularly those in the inner city. Jim Silver, Elizabeth Comack, Lawrence Deane and Larry Morrissette are doing research on the issue and speaking with gang members in Winnipeg’s inner city to find out what can be done to help prevent our youth from following the same path. The following is an excerpt from a piece they wrote for the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives.
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Recent reports that federal funding for four anti-gang programs in Winnipeg will end in March raise the issue, yet again, of how our tax dollars are being spent. While concerns about street gangs, crime, and violence in Winnipeg’s inner-city continue to mount, the response of the Harper government is taking us in the wrong direction. Rather than building more prisons, we need to support the important work that is ongoing in these communities to address the root causes of these problems.
Our research has shown that community-based solutions are working. These are solutions that inner-city people themselves have developed, drawing upon their hard-earned practical experience. But adequate funding for such initiatives is a major problem. In addition, most funding is project-based, so that programs come and go with frequency, and community workers spend inordinate amounts of time applying for, accounting for, and reporting on a bewildering myriad of funding sources. It is, in every respect, an inefficient way to finance programs from which we all benefit. This was a major finding of a 2010 study on inner-city youth-serving agencies published by the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives–Manitoba (CCPA–MB). The agencies do good work; young people benefit; but the funding mechanisms are flawed.
But even more than this, what we have learned from our research with inner-city street gang members is that “if you want to change violence in the ‘hood, you have to change the ‘hood.” You have to change the conditions out of which street gangs inevitably emerge. This includes creating legitimate opportunities for young people by investing in creative educational and job opportunities, and providing young people with the means and social supports that will divert them from lives of crime and violence, and put them on a much more productive path.
In the U.S., a solution similar to the Harper government’s “get tough on crime” approach has been in operation for decades. Vast numbers of people, especially young African-American men, have been imprisoned. The results are truly staggering: it is estimated that one-third of all Black males in the United States will experience state prisons in their lifetimes. But crime and violence persist. Imprisonment doesn’t solve the problems.
The Harper government is going down a simplistic and dangerous path by cutting funds to anti-gang programs, and even more, by failing to invest in more constructive alternatives. Far from cutting anti-gang programs, we should be investing heavily in safer and healthier futures for all of us by promoting the creative educational and employment initiatives that will open up different paths for our young people.
So if we want to change violence in the ‘hood, we have to change the ‘hood. Like so many things in life, that is best done by investing in the future of our young people.
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The authors also produced the report, If You Want to Change Violence in the ‘Hood, You Have to Change the ‘Hood, published by the CCPA-MB in 2009 and available at www.policyalternatives.ca.
You can also pre-order Jim Silver’s new book, Good Places to Live: Poverty and Public Housing in Canada here.