Reply #270: here ya go

[iverglas]

http://ontarioguns.blogspot.com/2008/01/youth-weapons-and-violence-in-toronto.html

Monday, January 21, 2008
"YOUTH, WEAPONS AND VIOLENCE IN TORONTO AND MONTREAL"
May, 2006
Synopsis Prepared by: ...

Recently, attention by the media and public to the apparent increase in firearms related homicides in Toronto has tended to focus on "youth, guns, and gangs". The search for explanations and potentially effective interventions has also revealed how little research is available in Canada to address these issues. In contrast, the higher concern over guns, youth, and gang violence in the United States has prompted a spate of research over the past 20 years. Consequently, Canada is in a position to possibly over-draw from U.S. data and conclusions, lacking our own evidence on the scope and nature of the Canadian problem. In order to address this gap, the Department of Public Safety and Emergency Preparedness Canada partnered with researchers from the University of Toronto to produce a report on "Youth, Weapons and Violence in Toronto and Montreal"<1>. This synopsis summarizes the research on which the report is based, highlights key findings, and discusses resulting conclusions and recommendations. ...

The research was conducted using survey information obtained through the Drugs, Alcohol, and Violence International (DAVI) study, a joint US-Canada project on youth, drugs and violence that began in 1999<2>. ...

The sample is broken down into three groups: students, selected through a two-stage stratified probability sample; dropouts, defined as those who had left school for at least 30 consecutive days during the past 12 months, and detainees, youth serving sentences in secure custodial facilities. Students were surveyed in the school using self-administered questionnaires, and dropouts and detainees were surveyed using personal interviews. The student sample consists of 904 9th- to 12th-graders from Toronto (8 schools; n=456 students) and Montreal (8 schools, n=448) surveyed between April 2001 and May 2003. The dropout sample consists of 218 respondents; 116 interviewed in Toronto between July 2000 and November 2002 and 102 interviewed in Montreal between January and June 2003. The sample was obtained through referrals from service agencies, youth centres, and outreach efforts, and respondents received $15 at the end of the interview. The detainee sample consisted of 278 youth, 132 in Southern Ontario secure custody facilities whose family home is in Toronto, and 146 from secure custody facilities serving the Montreal area.

Students in the Toronto sample were more likely than those in Montreal to report problems with weapons in the school environment, with 77% (vs. 56% in Montreal) reporting that "some" or "a few" students carried weapons in school, 22% (vs. 7% in Montreal) reporting knowing someone who had brought a gun to school, and 33% (vs. 18% in Montreal) perceiving guns to be a "very or somewhat serious" problem in their schools. ...

At the time, high school in Ontario ended at grade 13; a student with a normal academic career would be 18 or 19 on completing high school. So unfortunately, there is no basis for determining the age of those self-reporting carrying a firearm to school (the study sample was aged 14 to 17) or of the other persons they reported knowing to have done it. The data also apppear to be old.

So it may be that in Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver or Winnipeg -- and more specifically, in very specific neighbourhoods in those cities -- there are youth in their middle teens with guns. My nephew was in high school in Toronto about a decade ago and my niece has just started high school in a small city outside Toronto; I'll email them and ask them about guns in their schools, 'k?

You do have to be careful of your sources ...

http://www.coav.org.br/publique/cgi/cgilua.exe/sys/start.htm?query=advsearch&search_by_section=107&search_by_headline=false&search_by_field=tax&from_info_index=21&infoid=214&sid=107&search_by_keywords=2&text=&UserActiveTemplate=_en&search_text_options=all&search_by_priority=all&search_by_authorname=all&search_by_state=all

September 2nd, 2003 – Toronto police belive that gun rentals signal an increasing gang presence on their city streets. "I don’t think that it’s something new. It’s something that’s resurging," said Sergeant Joe Gataveckas to the National Post. "Wherever there’s gangs, there’s guns."

Police believe that guns are rented out in nightclubs and private homes and have been used in two recent gang-related shootings.

Out of control

Toronto’s Police Chief Julian Fantino recently spoke out against "out of control" youth violence and has deployed special units to target gangs and guns. ...

Julian Fantino speaking to the National Post ... Fantino has been cited approvingly on occasion in this forum; he was not a fan of the firearms registry. He is now a member of Parliament for the governing Conservative Party, the right-wing extremists who have made "tough on crime" their vote-getting mantra in a decade when crime of all kinds in Canada, and especially youth crime, is declining in both numbers and severity.

Note, however, that the youth crime severity index did rise and peak in 2007 and has since declined sharply. The 2004-2007 period was indeed one when gang violence was perceived as "out of control" in a place like Toronto; a resident of any US city would have regarded the situation as utopian. (The 2005 "Summer of the Gun" in Toronto resulted in a total of 52 firearms homicides for the year in the city, a rate of very roughly 1/100,000.)

http://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/85-002-x/2011001/article/11523-eng.htm

Chart 1
Police-reported crime rates, Canada, 1962 to 2010


Chart 2
Police-reported crime severity indexes, Canada, 2000 to 2010


Chart 16
Youth accused of crime, by clearance status, Canada, 2000 to 2010


Chart 17
Police-reported youth crime severity indexes, Canada, 2000 to 2010