Quebec, according to one study has only 533 youth gang members.*
That's a tiny number compared to other provinces.
It might seem paradoxical because Quebec's incidence of single parenthood is higher than the provinces that have higher levels of youth gang membership.
One would assume that having only one parent would increase the likelihood of a youth joining a gang.
Ontario has about 3,500 gang members, which is almost seven times more than Quebec.
Quebec has 0.07 youth gang members per 1,000 residents while Ontario has 0.29. .
B.C. has four times our rates, Alberta three times our number, and Saskatchewan 19 times what we have.
Conventional wisdom has it that kids join gangs due to a lack of family support, and yet Quebec's single parenthood number suggest a poor family safety net.
According to the 2011 census, 13.2 percent of Quebec families are led by a female single parent, whereas in Ontario that rate is only 12.6 percent. B.C. and Saskatchewan all had similar numbers to Ontario and Alberta had only 11.5 percent single female parenthood.
Quebec led all provinces with the highest percentage of male single parent families, with 3.4 percent.
No point in sugar coating it: being raised by a single parent is a raw deal for a kid.
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Children of single parent homes have been proven to have higher incidences of depression, mental illness and school failure but Quebec's numbers suggest that there's no correlation between having one parent and gang membership. .
Another difference: Quebecers, on average work fewer hours per week than worker in other provinces.
, So one might postulate that having workaholic parents might be more of contributing factor in a teen joining a gang than single parenthood.
Anyhow, Quebec recently announced $19 million over three years into helping kids stay out of gangs. That seems like a good thing but it might be overkill considering that there's little evidence of widespread gang membership here anyway. That works out to something like $10,000 per gang member if you were to distribute it to them directly.
One Canadian study from 2009 even argued that prevention attempts will do nothing and might even worsen the problem. The real problem luring kids into gangs is a lack of economic opportunities, so the author argues that must be addressed if we want to solve the problem.
Quebec has done well to keep its kids from becoming career criminals through a soft-on-youth-crime approach. There's a lot less youth incarceration here than in other provinces and the result is a very low rate of recidivism.
There are many issues with young people in Quebec, but many things are improving. The suicide rate among young people, once the highest in the world, has dropped precipitously, although Quebec still leads all provinces for suicide.
It's worth fighting to keep kids out of youth gangs for many reasons, including the fact that it creates victims and builds an oppressive atmosphere of fear, lawlessness and intimidation.
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Those who are in gangs are victims as well.
Recent data shows that those involved in youth gangs often suffer serious psychological damage.
A massive British study released last July demonstrated that many youth gang members had developed psychosis, PTSD and a very high percentage had attempted to kill themselves.
The assumption is that those from visible minority communities are more likely to join such gangs. (One quarter of all of Canada's gang members are black, 21 percent First Nations and 18 percent Caucasian) and so young Jamaicans or Haitians in our neck of the woods might be the most likely to go down that road.
So if you ever get a chance to hire or help a young person from those groups, take it.
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*The 2002 study that reported this total acknowledges that it was based on an incomplete report, so the number would be higher but it's unclear how much.
That's a tiny number compared to other provinces.
It might seem paradoxical because Quebec's incidence of single parenthood is higher than the provinces that have higher levels of youth gang membership.
One would assume that having only one parent would increase the likelihood of a youth joining a gang.
Ontario has about 3,500 gang members, which is almost seven times more than Quebec.
Quebec has 0.07 youth gang members per 1,000 residents while Ontario has 0.29. .
B.C. has four times our rates, Alberta three times our number, and Saskatchewan 19 times what we have.
Conventional wisdom has it that kids join gangs due to a lack of family support, and yet Quebec's single parenthood number suggest a poor family safety net.
According to the 2011 census, 13.2 percent of Quebec families are led by a female single parent, whereas in Ontario that rate is only 12.6 percent. B.C. and Saskatchewan all had similar numbers to Ontario and Alberta had only 11.5 percent single female parenthood.
Quebec led all provinces with the highest percentage of male single parent families, with 3.4 percent.
No point in sugar coating it: being raised by a single parent is a raw deal for a kid.
Children of single parent homes have been proven to have higher incidences of depression, mental illness and school failure but Quebec's numbers suggest that there's no correlation between having one parent and gang membership. .Another difference: Quebecers, on average work fewer hours per week than worker in other provinces.
, So one might postulate that having workaholic parents might be more of contributing factor in a teen joining a gang than single parenthood.
Anyhow, Quebec recently announced $19 million over three years into helping kids stay out of gangs. That seems like a good thing but it might be overkill considering that there's little evidence of widespread gang membership here anyway. That works out to something like $10,000 per gang member if you were to distribute it to them directly.
One Canadian study from 2009 even argued that prevention attempts will do nothing and might even worsen the problem. The real problem luring kids into gangs is a lack of economic opportunities, so the author argues that must be addressed if we want to solve the problem.
Quebec has done well to keep its kids from becoming career criminals through a soft-on-youth-crime approach. There's a lot less youth incarceration here than in other provinces and the result is a very low rate of recidivism.
There are many issues with young people in Quebec, but many things are improving. The suicide rate among young people, once the highest in the world, has dropped precipitously, although Quebec still leads all provinces for suicide.
It's worth fighting to keep kids out of youth gangs for many reasons, including the fact that it creates victims and builds an oppressive atmosphere of fear, lawlessness and intimidation.
Those who are in gangs are victims as well.Recent data shows that those involved in youth gangs often suffer serious psychological damage.
A massive British study released last July demonstrated that many youth gang members had developed psychosis, PTSD and a very high percentage had attempted to kill themselves.
The assumption is that those from visible minority communities are more likely to join such gangs. (One quarter of all of Canada's gang members are black, 21 percent First Nations and 18 percent Caucasian) and so young Jamaicans or Haitians in our neck of the woods might be the most likely to go down that road.
So if you ever get a chance to hire or help a young person from those groups, take it.
--
*The 2002 study that reported this total acknowledges that it was based on an incomplete report, so the number would be higher but it's unclear how much.