I'd like to echo what Dr. Henry and Mr. Tu'Inukuafe said. We are seeing a lot of people in the emergency department. Methamphetamine addiction has become a significant issue, as well as fentanyl, and street trade drives a lot of this crime. We're seeing people released from prison into the community again with no psychiatric treatment. They're often not competent and able to take care of themselves, and they quickly revert back to criminal activity as well as drugs.
What I saw in the research, in particular with handguns, is that the unemployment rate and the poverty indexes were all associated with handgun homicide. This is not surprising. It's the weapon of choice of gang members; it's easy to conceal. In most crimes, when the police find firearms afterwards, it is handguns that are being used.
If we want to target some of these issues, I would suggest diverting youth at an early age, when we know they are starting to run into problems with the criminal justice system, as well as when we find mothers who are reaching out for help, either in the emergency department or in the community. When they have no support for their children, when the children have no psychiatric support, it takes sometimes months for a referral from me to a psychiatrist for these patients to be seen.
I would strongly recommend that you divert money towards psychiatric care as well as some of these anti-gang initiatives. I would suggest you speak with the directors of Wraparound Milwaukee for further information as to how to successfully set up these anti-gang and youth programs in Canada.
Once some of these people are entrenched and become older, they are no longer receptive to a lot of these programs, so I would suggest we target an early age.