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Aboriginal gangs and their (dis)placement: contextualizing recruitment, membership, and status.

Article Excerpt
Introduction

Gang research in the United States abounds (Chesney-Lind and Shelden 1992; Fong 1990; Fong and Buentello 2001; Huff 1990; Klein 1971; Sanchez-Jankowski 2003; Spergel 1995; Spergel and Curry 1995, Yablonsky 1959), but there is a relative paucity of Canadian research on the topic. Until recently, most of our policies and programming for gang prevention and intervention was informed by either media accounts of gang activities or information from the United States. Yet media sensationalization and differences between the countries in history, ethnic and cultural composition, government policies, health and educational apparatuses, gun control, drug legislation, and policing testify to the inadequacy of relying solely on these sources of information.

This is not to detract from Canadian studies on the topic. The first recorded work was a study of juveniles in street gangs in Toronto by Rogers (1945); since that time, several works have added to the growing field (Fasilio and Leckie 1993; Gordon 1995, 1998, 2000; Joe and Robinson, 1980; Kelly and Caputo 2005; Mathews 1993, 2005; Young 1993). Much of the academic work conducted in the area emerged in the early 1990s (Fasilio and Leckie, Gordon, Mathews, Young). One of the more recent contributions to the field is the creation of a typology by Gordon (2000), which delineates six types of groups that fall under the gang spectre.

These studies establish the fact that gangs are not new to Canada, and that the current concern expressed by communities, governments, law enforcement agencies, and criminal justice system personnel is symptomatic of the latest in a wave of gang concern (Young 1993). Public concern may partly explain the number of government research projects and publications on the topic of gangs, which adds to the cumulative understanding of youth groups, gangs, offenders, prison life, and factors that contribute to delinquent behaviours (Fasilio and Leckie 1993; Gordon 1993; Jones, Roper, Stys, and Wilson 2004; Mathews 1993; Mellor, MacRae, Pauls, and Hornick 2005). In addition to the media focus, there is evidence for this latest concern in the number of specialized gang units created in police detachments across the country in recent years (Gang Unit 2005; Symons 1999), and the passage of Bill C-24 by the federal government in 2002 that provides a legal definition of a criminal organization.

This growing concern seems at least partly based on an increase in gang-related activities. The Correctional Service of Canada and law enforcement agencies nationwide report increasing gang membership and activities on the street and behind bars (Correctional Services Alberta 2003; Gang Unit 2005; Mellor et al. 2005; Nafekh 2002). Media reports, however, fuel the concern by sensationalizing the criminal activities of these groups (Fasilio and Leckie 1993), and the popularization of "gangsta" imagery by movies, television, and music hold the public at once fascinated by and terrified of gang activities. Gangs warrant our attention because people are being victimized, and youth are being lost to organized and not-so-organized groups that lead to lives marred by crime, violence, injury, jail time, and sometimes resulting in death.

While the body of research on gangs is slowly growing, information on Aboriginal gangs in Canada is virtually non-existent, with the exception of a handful of research studies produced through government agencies (Dickson-Gilmore, Dickson-Gilmore, and Whitehead 2003; Mercredi 2000; Nafekh 2002) and a master's thesis from Simon Fraser University (Giles 2000). Ovid Mercredi provided the federal government with a critical report on Aboriginal youth gang members in the federal correctional system, while the Royal Canadian Mounted Police released a report describing the infrequent occurrence of organized crime among Aboriginal groups in eastern Canada (Dickson-Gilmore et al. 2003). The lack of research on Aboriginal gangs is a glaring omission in the literature. Particularly disturbing is the reported link between Aboriginal street gangs and their prison counterparts (Gordon 1998; Kelly and Caputo 2005; Mercredi 2000).

Aboriginal over-representation in Canadian prison populations is a long established fact, with approximately 3% of the general population representing about 17% of the federal carceral population (Bell 2002; Hamilton and Sinclair 1991; Linden 2000; Royal Commission on Aboriginal Peoples 1996), as is the existence of Aboriginal prison gangs (Correctional Services Alberta 2003; Gordon 1998; Kelly and Caputo 2005). High recidivism rates combined with over-representation of Aboriginals in prisons suggests that the prison-street gang link for this population is significant and literally institutionalized. Institutional authorities have taken steps to deal with street and prison gangs without the benefit of academic scholarship to guide intervention. Early intervention led to the unintentional officially induced proliferation of gangs across the nation. (1) Any efforts to address Aboriginal (or other) street gangs must also take into consideration the strong links between the two types of gangs, especially in recruitment.

The ways in which the gang threat is portrayed and constructed in the media and by agents of social control affects gangs, their members, and members of the public. Part of the construction of gangs in the media and by politicians is stereotyping by ethnic group. We read and hear of the Asian gang problem, the problem of Jamaican Blacks in the East, and Aboriginal gangs in the Prairies. We do not often hear of Caucasian or white gangs. The White Boy Posse in rural Alberta never makes newspaper headlines. Racial and ethnic stereotyping leads to racial profiling and creates increased misunderstanding, labelling, mistrust, and hostility between groups.

However, by lumping these groups together and referring to them as pieces in a multi-ethnic gang mosaic (i.e., whether they are Asian or Aboriginal, society is faced with ethnic hoodlums wreaking havoc on mainstream society), we conflate the uniqueness of each group. It may be that the ethnic gangs referred to, and the white gangs we seldom

hear of, are at base caused by different processes and express themselves differently. Lumping all these groups together, and attempting to deal with them all in the same way, may prove futile.

This paper briefly explores the definition(s) of gangs, describes characteristics of several Aboriginal gangs in Canada, and places these groups into a typology of gang types. In the process, we posit causal explanations for Aboriginal gang recruitment and membership and suggest that the interaction of risk factors (and corresponding lack of protective factors) make Aboriginal youth more susceptible to gang recruitment than other at-risk youth. Prison over-representation for this group compounds the situation, making gang affiliation an almost expected outcome for increasing numbers of Aboriginals, particularly since the street gang-prison gang connection is pronounced for this population. Our objective in explicating the links between extreme marginalization and gang involvement is not to dismiss the situation as insurmountable but rather to illuminate specific risk factors as a first step toward the creation and implementation of prevention and intervention approaches that directly address the needs of Aboriginals. Finally, we suggest that the use of typologies in conjunction with recognition of the importance...