Young men and their inclination to engage in violent acts are much in the news these past few weeks. If they aren’t shooting each other in Surrey, they are carving each other up in Whistler.
A fair amount has changed since I was that age. Many one-time exclusive preserves of males have been invaded by women, including the fields of medicine, law and architecture.
Where young men and boys still hold the unchallenged field however is in the area of violent crime. Women don’t even come close.
In spite, however, of the recent increased frequency of the incidents of bloody combat hereabouts, I am assured “the sky is not falling.” This comes from Robert Gordon, an SFU criminologist who specializes in the life and crimes of young offenders and youth justice.
Exactly what a “youth” is may be debatable. You don’t enter the criminal justice system until you are 12 years of age. In this province, you can vote at age 18. One year later, at 19, you are considered an adult. That’s why, if you have been in foster care, at 19 the government turns its back on you. But then you have the legal right to drink, too.
All that said, Gordon notes that the period during which males are most likely to engage in violent criminal acts is between 14 and 26.
Driven more by what is between their legs than what is between their ears, it has been that way, Gordon would say, “forever.”
In times of war, it is roughly this age group that is recruited and sent off by much older men as cannon fodder. In time of peace, for too many, all that energy is directed towards predatory street crime and outright violence.
Although, Gordon points out, violent crime is most recently on the decline.
That is not primarily because we are adding more cops; adding another 100 Mounties out in Surrey may make the folks there feel safer. But the fact is that particular age group is also declining in relationship to the overall population.
While the perpetrators involved in the Whistler stabbings and the Surrey shootings all fit the profile, both Gordon and Surrey School Board gang expert Rob Rai point to some significant differences.
The Whistler killing and a subsequent non-fatal stabbing were the least planned of the incidents, although they were both likely fuelled by booze or drugs or both.
The killing was described by the police for reporters this way: “This was a situation where a group of young people who knew each other had a dispute that turned deadly.” Three 17-year-olds were charged with the death of a 19-year-old who had just graduated high school a year earlier and was on his way to studying to become a plumber.
While Gordon describes Whistler as “a party out of control,” he sees the Surrey gunplay as far more deliberate and planned. The participants are “not school kids generally speaking.” And the motivation for the confrontation is economic, not unlike, say, one retailer trying to drive another out of the market place. Think Pepsi at war with Coke.
Only here the market takeover isn’t about soda pop, it is about illegal drugs. The weapons aren’t advertising campaigns, they are guns.
The young men who control the drug trade in that region are Indo-Canadian, part of the community Rai says he grew up in. They are, as he describes them, from “affluent homes” showered with money and expensive cars and attracted to the gangster lifestyle because it is “cool.” And it is easy. They “don’t need any strong discernable skills” schooling could provide.
Their competition, newly arrived young men from Somalia, are, he says, driven by poverty and the lack of legal economic opportunity to acquire the material goods they see all around them.
Both rich and poor are part of a culture that demands instant gratification. For the Somalis, taking over the drug trade becomes the default option.
Now that the cops are on the case, the open war has subsided for the time being. But short of an as-yet elusive, effective diversion program, the inclination of boys and young men to engage in violent criminal acts will still be there “forever.”
