What to do with the city’s high-risk youth?
John Howard Society’s gang exit program YARD struggling to find funding
A 17-year-old boy is shot in the back of the head, left for dead in his family’s car.
Three other teen boys — two 16year-olds and a 15-year-old — are allegedly seen running away into the dense forest off Patterson Road in Dundas.
They are arrested when they emerge from the woods on York Road. Police find the gun they believe was used in the slaying.
The violence and young ages of all involved are shocking.
It also leads to more questions: What were the boys doing in that car? With a gun? What else was going on in their lives?
Hamilton police Chief Eric Girt said the teen’s death is “very disturbing to the community.”
However, this level of violence among young people, especially with a gun, “is infrequent and that’s why it’s so shocking.”
Statistically, crime involving young offenders — youth between the ages of 12 and 17 — has declined in Canada and Hamilton.
Last year saw an overall 14 per cent decrease in youth crime, Girt said. This was largely led by a 19 per cent drop in property crime.
Violent crime, however, increased by a little more than seven per cent.
Girt said this was largely due to a rise in low-level assaults. Most violent offences, such as the latest homicide, still remain rare in Hamilton, he said.
At the same time, the city is dealing with a spike in shootings this year.
Of the 20 so far in 2019, three involved teen boys being shot,
including the homicide of Abdalla Hassan on April 15.
The three boys, charged with first-degree murder, cannot be identified under the Youth Criminal Justice Act.
In another case, a 16-year-old Hamilton boy faces firearm and robbery charges after a 17-yearold was shot at an Upper Ottawa Street townhouse complex earlier this month.
In many shooting investigations, suspect descriptions have not been released and no charges have been laid.
The spike in shootings led police to create the Make Safe task force, which is investigating gang links in at least six of the shootings.
There were 25 shootings last year and 41 in 2017.
Hassan’s death is not the only homicide in recent years involving young victims or offenders.
Natshon Defreitas was just 19 when he was gunned down at an industrial property on Beach Road, where an after-hours party was being held Sept. 23. No one has been charged in his death.
In December, 17-year-old Joshua Leo died after being stabbed in the chest during a fight that began in his mother’s car. An 18year-old, Dawson Farr, and 27year-old Tae Yoon (Dan) Park were charged with manslaughter.
For Ruth Greenspan, executive director of the local John Howard Society, the rise in youth violent crime is concerning.
It’s happening as the agency struggles to maintain its Youth at Risk Development program due to a lack of funding.
Known as YARD, it has been the go-to agency for police, schools, families and children’s aid societies for the most at-risk youth. The program, which works with young people involved in gangs, crime or who are at high risk of becoming involved, has been gutted down to just two staff from 15.
“The reality is we have an increase in gun violence in the city with youth,” Greenspan said. “I can’t corelate it, but I can certainly say we have no funding for YARD, gun violence is up, both are very troubling.”
The program was funded in 2013 with a one-time, five-year federal grant that ran out in August. Funding for the two remaining staff has been scraped together with emergency money from the Hamilton Community Foundation, City of Hamilton and the Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic
District School Board.
Greenspan said the organization is lobbying at every level of government and is even considering a major fundraising effort to bring back the full program, which has been proven to work.
The power of YARD is that it’s voluntary and helps young people reshape how they think about community and their accountability.
Donna de Jong, John Howard’s manager of adult justice and administration, said the two remaining YARD workers are doing remarkably well. They’re still responding to the most highneeds cases and running some groups in schools.
“We get calls and referrals every single day.”
The organization has had to evaluate priorities, de Jong said.
This means it no longer offers group sessions at John Howard, can’t run its mentorship program and refers all but the most vulnerable to other agencies.
Take the Abdalla Hassan homicide case. There are four families in need of support.
“There is a ripple out ... there are four families that are never going to be the same and all of those families are going to need support,” de Jong said.
That a young person could gain access to a gun is upsetting, but not surprising to John Howard staff. A gun can cost as little as $2,000 and is easily accessible, Greenspan said.
Young people involved in a criminal lifestyle often know who has a gun and can borrow one. Often groups — or gangs — will come together for this purpose.
That makes “gang” a hard definition to nail down, as gangs are ever-changing. They no longer have turfs, colours or even names, and generally just involve a group of young people working together to commit crimes for profit.
“It’s very, very fluid,” de Jong said, adding she and her colleagues tend to use the terms “gang-affiliations” or “associations.”
“What we’ve been seeing over the last little while is an increase in the fluidity of associations,” she said. “We see groups coming together for a single purpose, will disperse and not work together again.”
They’re looking for quick cash, drugs, or girls and women for human trafficking.
David Hoy, manager of social work services for the HamiltonWentworth District School Board, said they “really miss” YARD.
The school board has resources to respond to students who are struggling, but when it comes to the most at-risk kids — those involved in or about to become involved in criminal activity — there’s nowhere else to turn, Hoy said.
“Our schools are struggling to deal with this.”
Now the options are often suspension or expulsion, or getting the police involved.
Hamilton police previously negotiated for a grant to temporarily fund one YARD position. Girt said police are interested in doing so again.
The police service has youth officers, such as those who liaise with schools to develop relationships with students.
“You have to be careful about the demonization of youth,” Girt said, noting only a very small percentage are at high risk.
The same things that make young people vulnerable to criminality can also make them vulnerable to human trafficking or recruitment by terrorist organizations, he noted. And the best way to get them to safety is often by having a caregiver or adult willing to help.
Among developed countries, Canada still has a high rate of youth incarceration — something Girt says Hamilton police want to change.
Last year, 109 youth cases were diverted in Hamilton. Either before or after charges were laid, kids were referred to John Howard to find a better way to make amends instead of going through the court process.
Kim Gibson-Chalmers, manager of youth services at the local John Howard Society, said there is no typical way diversion is handled by the agency.
It’s also not a “slap on the wrist.” In some cases, depending on the victim’s wishes, a restorative circle might be held, where everyone meets to talk about what happened and how to make amends.
In every case that John Howard gets involved with, there is some sort of trauma and, in some cases, addiction or mental-health issues. That’s why early intervention and prevention are vital.
Missing school, changes in behaviour or peer groups, staying out later, becoming isolated from families and other “loss of prosocial connections” are all warning signs that something is going wrong.
“The scary part at this point is it seems that money is not being put into prevention,” Greenspan said. “And the earlier we can access these young people and the quicker we can get resources to the family, the better our success.”