I know I've mentioned this before based on personal experiences and seeing old childhood friends fall into the wrong crowd, but this is the first time I've seen media mention it and I think it's a good start.
As with most problems, finding the source and true root causing the problem is key to solving it and I've always felt that people were omitting the fact that poverty, broken families, etc. are factors which are often not the reason for teens dipping into the criminal life.
VANCOUVER -- Amir Javid didn't climb into the dangerous world of Vancouver's street gangs to escape a rough childhood. He wasn't living in poverty, wasn't raised around crime and drugs.
Raised in a Christian home in Richmond, B.C., Javid didn't have the traditional warning signs that lead some to slip into the gang lifestyle: Poverty, a broken home, addiction, mental illness.
And he says there is an increasing number of gang members coming not from the squalor of poverty, but rather well-adjusted and sometimes affluent homes.
"What you're seeing is a spike in affluent families, good solid families," says Javid.
http://www.ctvbc.ctv.ca/servlet/an/l...shColumbiaHome
This sort of stuff has always been interesting to me because of the number of people I've seen who were raised in great, financially comfortable families veer off in the wrong direction, leaving their families wondering why and where they went wrong.
Obviously, there's been enough studies linking problem kids growing up in the Jane/Finch area of Toronto, but why are kids who grew up in West Vancouver or the NW in Calgary ending up in the same place?
A Look at the Root of Canada's Gang Issues
). But of course, rationally I knew it was bad to be in a gang. But I've seen others around me that were influenced by it.
