Thank you.
Matt Logan. I've been a member of the RCMP for twenty-eight and a half years, and I'm happily retired. For the last six years, I've been the operational psychologist in major crime.
I just want to say, to wrap this up, that my take on it is certainly in keeping with everything you've heard, but I want to go one step further and talk a little bit about the makeup of the individuals in the gangs.
First of all, what we have in gang membership is a combination of anti-social personality disorders and psychopathy. Now, psychopathy is a much more constricted group, probably 15% to 20% of offender population, whereas anti-social personality is about 85% of offender population.
What we're saying here is that the psychopaths have no conscience. They could care less who is hurt by any action they take. Their entire life is need gratification. I believe that the courts should actually look at these people at sentencing, with that psychological perspective, understanding that rehabilitation is probably not likely to happen with that particular group. Also, with the anti-social personality disorder, not as a means of...this is an excuse for what this person is doing, but to say that this person is not likely to be rehabilitated, and the sentencing should follow.
The most important thing I want to say today is in keeping with my belief about fishing upstream. We have an opportunity and a mandate to protect society and certainly to protect our children. One of the things that I think we really need to be aware of is that we're pouring a lot of money into the salmon that's belly-up in the federal system.
We need to start early. We could start at age four. The diagnosis of conduct disorder and oppositional defiance disorder can be made at four. Certainly by the third grade of elementary school, there is an opportunity to really take a look at which of our children are going to be life-course persistent offenders and which are going to be merely adolescent-limited offenders.
Probably one of the largest bodies of research on the child studies that have gone on over 40 years, longitudinal studies...the main two areas being Pittsburgh and Dunedin. This vast amount of research is telling us that about 5% to 6% of our criminals have been that way since childhood. We have another approximately 43% of criminals who are adolescent-limited. They are pulled over to the anti-social side between the ages of 12 and 21.
Now, one thing the research doesn't talk a lot about--and I think we really need to stress the importance of it--is that the 5% to 6% of life-course, persistent offenders--people who will continue right through their lifetime--are also influencers over a very susceptible group of adolescent-limited offenders. By paying more attention to the 5% to 6%, we not only look at those who are committing over 50% of violent crimes, but we also look at the influence they have over our pro-social children during certain ages.
Another thing we have to be aware of is that the influence process is most apparent in the early ages. So by grades seven and eight, these children need to have better role models. Now, some of the role models they're getting, unfortunately, are the people my colleagues are talking about.
What we have to do, even to the media, is call these people what they are, not have them referred to as heroes, people who should be emulated. As we move together in a multi-agency approach, with the police being involved with other agencies, we need to really focus on what we can do to build on the needs and strengths of our children and to fish upstream to prevent a catastrophe from happening.
Thank you.