Fast Facts: Reverse the Cuts to Anti-Gang Programs

While violence in the ‘hood, you have to change the concerns about street gangs, crime, and violence ‘hood.” You have to change the conditions out in Winnipeg’s inner-city continue to mount, the of which street gangs inevitably emerge. [...] Rather than building more people by investing in creative educational and job prisons, we need to support the important work opportunities, and providing young people with that is ongoing in these communities to address the the means and social supports that will divert them root causes of these problems. [...] One of the men pointed out the work in changing the underlying conditions that irony and the futility of imprisonment as the core produce the problems of street gangs, crime, and element of an anti-gang strategy: “They put us in violence. [...] Elizabeth Comack is a professor and Head of the Scarce dollars will be spent to lock up still more Department of Sociology at the University of Manitoba young people from low-income neighbourhoods, and a Research Associate with the CCPA-MB, Lawrence at a current cost of $147,467 per year per federal Deane is an Associate Dean in the Faculty of Social Work prisoner. [...] Unless that is done, it is likely that some of the The authors also produced the report, If You young men and women who would have benefited Want to Change Violence in the ‘Hood, You Have to from the continuation of these anti-gang programs Change the ‘Hood, published by the CCPA-MB in will soon return to or embark upon lives of crime 2009 and available at www.policyalternatives.ca.