The narrative of K.P., chronicled below, highlights gaping systematic issues with respect to processes of intake and reintegration. K.P.’s narrative is consistent with the youth voices interviewed for this report. A conversation and subsequent interaction with K.P., a 16 year-old youth in custody, highlighted the baleful consequences of incarceration and the complexity of reintegration, re-entry and recidivism. Describing his stay at the RMYC, K.P. stated, “Sir, if that judge thought I was a monster as he described us at sentencing, the world is going to see a monster when I get out of this hell hole – this place made me a monster, everyday day I am literally fighting for my life.” Those words have always resonated with me and, accordingly, I have often reflected upon the circumstances and experiences that relegated many like K.P to the fringes of society, and often ponder how do we bring them back from the fringes to the nexus of inclusion and hope.
K.P. was one of eight children/youth in my Boys to Men mentorship program, who on Saturday, September
10, 2005, stumbled across the bullet-riddled body of Andre Burnett, a 24 year-old man who was gunned down on a footbridge located at Jane and Driftwood Avenue. I scanned the faces of the children that were with me, ranging in age from 10-12 years-old, and the title of a book I had just completed came to mind: There Are No Children Here.
The killing of Andre Burnett on the footbridge was not the only tragedy that day. For over a decade, I have had courtside seats to the moral erosion of children exposed to the noisome of violence, apathy, racism and so forth. Jonathan Kozol’s book Death at An Early Age speaks to the impact of children and youth exposed to such violence and carnage. The day in question changed the way I approach teaching, curriculum, programming, and advocacy for children living in the city’s poor racialized and under-resourced communities. On Monday morning, September 12, 2005, when I reported to my teaching assignment (located 20 meters from the crime scene), there wasn’t a grief councillor to debrief the children about what they saw a few days earlier; indeed, there was no mention of the incident. Various public entities – including the Toronto District School Board, as well as the governments of Toronto, Ontario and Canada – have, to date, no coordinated mechanisms in place to discuss these tragic incidents with the children and youth who witness them. And here is a bizarre fact worth mentioning: portions of Burnett’s remains - meaning body matter and blood - were still on the footbridge on the Monday morning in question. Hundreds of children who make use of the footbridge were therefore exposed to the residual physical dimensions of the tragedy.
In addition to being demonized and maligned by the status quo, these children are victims of marginalizing processes fuelled by racism and apathy. The issues faced by these children are generally regarded as irrelevant until they come to the fore in the context of headline-grabbing incidents of gunplay: Yonge Street (December 26, 2005), the Eaton Centre (June 2, 2012), Danzig (July 16, 2012). The police in Toronto, for their part, claim to “address” gun violence by targeting children and youth from the city’s marginalized communities by engineering so-called gang raids such as Project Traveller, Project Kryptic, Project Marvel, etc. These raids usually net scores of arrests to supposedly rid society of individuals deemed crime-prone, but as Royson James states, “Yes, we may have smashed the Ardwick Blood Crew but we didn’t get the conditions that breed such deviants. In our hearts we must find the courage and empathy to ease the social conditions that incubate such evil” (Powell, 2010).
