N.B. SEEKS SOLUTIONS TO COMBAT CRIME
Highest rates in country
Nearly one in three youth in North Battleford was charged with a crime last year — three times the provincial average.
The adult crime rate in the city is also three times as high as the provincial rate, at one in six.
Since the inception of Statistics Canada’s Crime Severity Index, North Battleford has topped the list, saddling it with the label of the crime capital of Canada.
It also has the highest rate of non-violent crime in the country.
Its traditional rival for the title, Thompson, Man., has the highest rate of violent crime, while North Battleford places third on that scale.
The numbers perplex Mayor Ian Hamilton, who says the city is safer than its reputation suggests.
“I’ve lived in this community for the last 40 years and I know this to be a safe community,” Hamilton said in a recent interview.
He doesn’t know the exact causes of the high crime rate, but he noted North Battleford is a hub for the north. While its population is about 14,000, about 4,000 more live in the neighbouring town of Battleford. North Battleford serves up to 60,000 people in the region, Hamilton noted.
He said it’s a major challenge to provide services to outlying communities, including many First Nations with nagging social issues that trickle down to the city.
He believes the solution lies in grabbing the attention of young people.
Struggle with system
Ray Fox admits the crime numbers don’t look good.
But Fox, who works with North Battleford’s tribal council and also sits on city council, says there’s more to the situation for aboriginal offenders.
“They’re cold hard numbers and they’re cold hard facts. But underneath that is what needs to be fixed, and a lot of the time ... the studies have said aboriginal people are not well served by the justice system. I think we forget that when Stats Can comes out and says we have a bad crime rate,” he said.
Studies show aboriginal people are more likely to be denied bail, spend more time in pre-trial detention and are more likely to be accused of multiple, systemgenerated offences such as missing court, Fox noted.
“So what starts to happen is, if a person doesn’t have transportation — which is not hard to imagine on some of the First Nations — they are then breached for not being in compliance and they’re charged with not appearing in court. What is a guy supposed to do, start out the day before?”
One solution has been to hire a court worker to help guide people through the legal system, but the position is understaffed, Fox said.
Aboriginal elders and spiritual leaders also aren’t given the same institutional status as Christian ones, he said.
“We are now at a point where we’ve tried to talk to the powers that be to say it’s a little bit different for aboriginal people. I understand a law is a law ... but there are some disparities we carry around with us as aboriginal and First Nations people in particular that need to be understood as well when we’re being pushed through this kind of system.”
Fox said poverty is a factor in the crime rate. And while the city does have Sakewew High School, some students have to leave home to attend. They “couch surf” while trying to finish their education, but end up back home and disappointed.
The difficult part is that these sound like excuses, “and people don’t want excuses,” Fox said.
Life lessons
Perhaps all North Battleford’s criminal element needs is a good coach — the kind of person who once saved Christopher Passley’s life.
“All along the way, I always had someone screaming in my ear who was a coach. I learned a lot of lessons in life from a coach. I’m almost getting choked up talking about it now,” the youth worker said.
As a teen on the 1990s, Passley was exposed to a rough life on the downtown streets of Winnipeg. He witnessed shootings and stabbings, and was even stabbed himself.
But it was his junior national basketball coach who kept him out of a life-changing tragedy.
On his birthday one year, Passley and a friend had planned a trip to celebrate. His friend ended up paralyzed in a car crash, but Passley wasn’t there.
“My coach said to me, ‘There are no excuses.’ I had to be at junior national team practice; I wasn’t allowed to go on this trip with my friend,” he said.
“We got all the way to the championship game. I try to take all these lessons with me and pass them on to youth.”
Passley has combined his experience as a youth worker since 1999 with an entrepreneurial course he took in Saskatoon last year to form a private youth wellness company.
He’s come to one of the best places in the country to set up shop.
Passley has been contracted by a North Battleford group, Concern For Youth, to carry out a feasibility study for a new youth centre. At the same time, he’s running programs.
Most of the kids he works with are from First Nations backgrounds.
“Coach Chris,” as the kids call him, saw about 300 male youths come to a basketball and healing program this summer.
“The gyms were packed; the numbers were overwhelming,” he said. “It showed this was something they want; the kids need meaningful programming.”
Were they not in the gym, they might have been up to the same things he was doing at their age.
“I can think back to when I was a youth, and I wasn’t in the gym playing basketball I was trying to break into that gym to play basketball,” he said.
“You don’t want to say property damage, but they’d be doing a lot of searching. When kids are searching for things to do, they tend to get distracted by other things.”
His observations reinforce Statistics Canada’s numbers.
“I’d say approximately 65 to 80 per cent of the youth who walk through our doors have been involved in the justice system. I’d be even so bold as to say it’s 85 per cent,” he said.
Steering kids out of crime
Statistics Canada’s figures don’t account for reoffenders, RCMP Sgt. Kurt Grabinsky notes.
“If we can try and reduce that — we’ve definitely reduced even some of the numbers that could have been up here by using this hub approach and just doing some of the preventative work were doing,” he said.
The hub approach calls for various agencies to work together on the root causes of crime. In January, the province committed $700,000 for seven officers to help.
For example, some youth committed 29 break and enters into schools over May and June. In those cases, families were provided as many services as possible, such as probation and housing solutions.
“Now, I’m not saying all these times we tackle these problems with local clients that we address all these issues, but we are definitely making a step forward to work with the community,” Grabinsky said.
As he puts it, North Battleford does not choose to top the list, “but we have been for four years in a row, and we are continuing to dedicate our resources to try and get off that list.”
North Battleford is a busy northern hub, and Highway 16 brings lots of traffic from Alberta, he noted. Various gangs pass through alongside the legitimate traffic.
At the same time, the region is experiencing an economic boom tied to agriculture and resource industries. According to the city’s website, North Battleford issued $43.3 million in building permits last year, and expects major projects to bring hundreds of new jobs and more than $1 billion of investment.
A wide variety of crimes happen in the city, and that’s not easy for the police force to tackle, Grabinsky said.
“I think police work is always a challenge. You have to combine being reactive to the calls for service with a plan to always try and be proactive and solve these issues before they do occur. It is a challenge to police in a medium-sized detachment.”
Battling boredom
Passley has met the couch surfing youth.
“They get kicked out of the place they’re supposed to stay, they mess up; they just don’t want to go home because there are rules at home. There’s nothing to do, so they roam the streets late at night and they know they can’t go home because mom and dad might be drinking, it might be a bad, violent situation,” he said.
The city could use a safe shelter for those kids, but it also needs to give them something to do in the city, he said.
To that end, the city has spent $60 million over the last year or so, building infrastructure for kids and families. That includes an aquatic centre, a field house, a six-sheet curling rink and a 378-seat performing arts centre.
“It’s a major investment and I’m very heartened by the uptake on it,” Hamilton said. “There’s a lot of things happening in North Battleford, and I do believe we will see results.”