Justice committee  In our gang research, we spoke about why kids get into gangs. It's push and pull. Pull is an attraction. The push is pushing out all those things they don't have in their lives. We always tend to work on reducing the attraction, be it in law enforcement or by not glamorizing it.

Justice committee  I don't know if this will answer your question, but we label the kids, and the kids take those labels very easily. But very quickly they take those labels and mould them into new ones--for example, Fresh Off the Boat into Forever Our Brother. From my research in Saskatoon and Ed

Justice committee  No, it's not. They might have more members who belong to an ethnic minority group, but they are not predominant; it also includes white people.

Justice committee  I looked at it from the perspective of, well, if gangs are the problem, let's see what it is. Instead of going to the other side of the table, I asked the young people what “gang” meant to them. Some of the things they said were that it's a family, it's to fit in and belong, and

Justice committee  My research was limited to the adults who are in gangs, but I saw they joined the gangs when they were young people and they moved on as an adult. Not all of them move on, some of them get out when they've had enough. I cannot see that.... Well, maybe for those who have stayed fo

Justice committee  When I started working on the issue of youth gangs, my age criteria was below 18, so young people. But when I looked at the Criminal Code book, I was surprised that there is no definition of a “gang”. Being in a gang is not a crime. It actually comes under the umbrella of a crimi

Justice committee  From my experience with the kids.... My research basically focused on ex-gang members, so they had to exit the gangs to participate in my research. When they enter the gang early, at about 10 or 11 years old, they will exit at 15 or 16 years old. But those who enter late can go i

Justice committee  Yes, I hear a lot of stuff. During my research, I did hear from lots of young people. I myself am an immigrant, a first-generation immigrant and international student, and am a parent of kids who go to school. Yes, I do experience many things that other speakers have shared wit

Justice committee  Yes, I agree with Norma. I met a couple of people like her in Edmonton who had been with Hells Angels and working on the streets with Lebanese gangs. Those girls had at one time gotten out of the gangs, and one thing they said was that it had been long enough that they really wan

Justice committee  Okay. Clearly, there needs to be more investment in a response to the youth gang problem that takes a broad and holistic preventive approach as opposed to a reactive one, because the meaning of “gangs”, for a youth, is very much different from how the law views gangs. In the en

Justice committee  Good afternoon, everyone. Thank you for the invitation to be here. My presentation today will focus on whether youth gangs are progressing into criminal organizations. The level of youth gang organization varies from gang to gang. Therefore, the approach to dealing with them