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From the review's web site at http://www.rootsofyouthviolence.on.ca/english/ 

The Review of the Roots of Youth Violence was established in the summer of 2007 to help identify and analyze the underlying causes contributing to youth violence and provide recommendations for Ontario to move forward.

During the summer, the co-chairs, former Chief Justice and Attorney General Roy McMurtry and former Speaker of the Legislature Alvin Curling, along with a small secretariat, have been establishing processes and a framework for the Review. The Review will involve three key areas: research, targeted consultation and community insights.

• Research: reviewing Canadian and international academic research and other literature on the root causes of youth violence and community crime prevention strategies, and developing an inventory of Ontario programs concerning or addressing youth violence,
• Targeted consultation: meeting with representatives of social agencies, the justice community, youth groups and others who may offer advice,
• Community insight sessions: engaging with various communities across Ontario to hear first hand from community members, leaders and youth about the impact of youth violence and ways of addressing it at the local level.

Want to know more about the Review? ... read the Review description.

The Review will also ensure that all Ontarians have means of participating and providing feedback to the secretariat.

REPORT

volume 1 - FINDINGS, ANALYSIS AND CONCLUSIONS

volume 2 - EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

volume 3 - COMMUNITY PERSPECTIVES REPORT

volume 4 - RESEARCH PAPERS

volume 5 - LITERATURE REVIEWS

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From  Canwest News Service

Ontario at a 'crossroads' in dealing with roots of violence: Report

November 14, 2008 - Jordana Huber

TORONTO - Ontario will consider collecting race-based data, Premier Dalton McGuinty said Friday following the release of a report recommending the statistics be gathered in the education and justice systems as part of a comprehensive effort to address the roots of youth violence.

Former Chief Justice Roy McMurtry and Alvin Curling, a former speaker of the Ontario legislature, said poverty, racism, poor housing and a culturally insensitive education system are leaving some young people with a sense of hopelessness that can "all too often explode into violence."

The report's authors said they were taken aback by the extent to which "racism is alive and well" in Ontario and said black and aboriginals continue to suffer from a "seemingly more entrenched and often more virulent form of racism."

"I think we need to give this a new look," McGuinty said noting the collection of race-based data is a controversial issue. "They (report authors) explained to me it is really tough for us to target programs that are going to be effective unless we know what we are dealing with."

The report, commissioned last year by McGuinty in the wake of the shooting death of a Grade 9 student in a Toronto high school, said the province needs to make a more co-ordinated, comprehensive and community-focused approach to address youth issues.

The authors said the province is at a "crossroads" in dealing with the roots of violence involving youth as they made recommendations to move away from the "over-criminalization" of young people whose underlying issues are not being addressed in the justice system.

McMurtry said schools need to stop calling in police for "more minor offences" that could be dealt with outside the justice system.

He said there are almost three times as many youth offences laid in Ontario on a per capita basis than in Quebec. Still, he said Quebec does not have a more serious youth-violence problem as a result.

The authors acknowledged they offered no simple, or quick fix solutions but said one of the most "urgent" needs is a plan for a universal and community-based access to mental health services for children and youth.

The report also said schools need to become the "hub" of communities and should be open in the critical hours after school to provide programs and services.

That recommendation was also made by Julian Falconer in his report on school safety commissioned by the Toronto District School Board in the wake of the shooting death of Jordan Manners at C.W. Jefferys Collegiate in May 2007.

In a speech given Friday, Falconer said the report by Curling and McMurtry highlights the missing social supports that are critical to addressing issues of youth violence. Still, he said the government has not done enough to address the gaps they already know exist.

"Today, in November 2008 there are still only two social workers covering 13 schools in the north west area (of Toronto) and that was precisely the experience of the panel when it started in 2007," Falconer said during his speech.

Conservative opposition critic Julia Munro said the report shows a lack of government action on issues it has already studied. "The government has known about these things - have they done much in this regard in the last little while? No they have not," Munro said.

NDP Education critic Rosario Marchese said the report "states the obvious" and echoes policies the party has long called for. "This report speaks about a systemic effort to deal with issues of exclusion with issues of poverty, lack of housing and job opportunities and unless we do that in bad economic times it is going to be worse."

Courtney Betty, a lawyer who has represented the Manners family since Jordan's death, said he was pleased the report acknowledged the importance of addressing youth issues outside the justice system.

Still, he said he feared the issue of race-based statistics would become a "red herring."

"That may become the focus rather than all the other recommendations," Betty said. "I don't think it is really the pillar of what this report is all about."

John Campbell, Chair of the Toronto District School Board, said the issue of when to call police into a school is a "tough" decision that is made at the discretion of principals.

What one principal might think requires a call to police another might handle in a different manner, he said.

"There is an element in that assertion that there is an over criminalization but it is very difficult to find the proper line between what the principals should and shouldn't be doing," Campbell said. "They are charged with maintaining safety and order in the school and we have to provide them with the discretion to be able to bring the police in if they see fit."

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From the Globe and Mail editorial

Focus on the at-risk

November 15, 2008

It would be a shame if the useful and groundbreaking elements in a massive new report on youth violence commissioned by Ontario Premier Dalton McGuinty were dismissed too quickly because that report bears an unfortunate tinge of political correctness.

What is useful is the call for a vast effort to identify the most at-risk neighbourhoods of 400 to 700 people across Canada's biggest province and build up a wide range of supports (social, academic, psychological, job-related and recreational) for the young people in those neighbourhoods, in part by turning the schools over to community programs, once class lets out in the afternoon. Modelled on a program in Britain, and an extension of a more limited program in Toronto, such an effort would be far from a panacea for angry, alienated teenagers. But it is concrete, it need not drain the treasury, and it may reach some young people who are open, for better or worse, to external influence. Also useful in the nearly 2,000-page report and literature review by Roy McMurtry, a former Ontario chief justice, and Alvin Curling, a former cabinet minister, is the insistence on making mental-health services truly universal for children and youth.

Less useful is the focus on institutional racism, and the prescriptions that range from predictable to far-fetched. The far-fetched: Police officers should be "'assessed for competence' in matters of race." What on Earth does that mean? Put on the rack until they mouth the proper platitudes? Another is that school boards should put their black (sorry, "racialized") teachers and administrators in the schools with black (oops) populations. There is something incredibly condescending about that, from the standpoint of the teachers whose aspirations are no doubt as varied as those of their non-black counterparts, and of the students, who would surely benefit from good teachers of all hues. A far better idea, proposed by the Brookings Institution in the United States, is to give bonuses to encourage the best teachers to teach in the most at-risk schools.

In the first two months of the school year in Toronto, there have already been a stabbing and a shooting on school property; there was another one at summer school in July, and a fatal shooting in May that prompted this report. The authors are right to be concerned that, even though crime statistics are stable, public spaces are increasingly being ceded to violence, and there are major "concentrations of disadvantage" that nurture anger in young people. And too many black youth are being raised in just those conditions.

A segment of those youth see society as the enemy. Reaching the most disadvantaged young people early is therefore crucial.