The Buck Stops Where?

This made front page news eight years ago…

Unequal Justice: Aboriginal and black inmates disproportionately fill Ontario jails –Toronto Star article, Saturday March 2, 2013

Star Investigation: Black and aboriginal youths over-represented in Ontario jails

• The proportion of jail admissions is four times higher.  For other boys of other ethnicity there is no such representation.
• “Federally, corrections data by race have for many years provided a look at the result of decades of political indifference and systemic racism in many aspects of Canadian society”.
• The data show similar over-representation in the US and Canada, yet the US has received far more public and political attention.

• “Young black men face racism, poverty, lack of opportunity, social isolation, and violence in their neighbourhoods, family challenges and unemployment.”
• “Once men are known to police,  systemic issues stack the deck against already disadvantaged groups, says academics and a library of past research, including the 1995 Report of the Commission on Systemic Racism in the Ontario Criminal Justice System”
• “At-risk communities receive more police attention, Police detain, leaving release decisions to the courts.  Justices of the peace in Ontario are demanding sureties more often these days.  Making bail is harder when you have no home, are poor, or have no one to be a surety.”

Having read this article, it’s a sad state of affairs when we consider our young men and their futures.  Of course, there may be ways to interpret this article (and what it may mean), but it’s impossible not to recognize that there is a problem.

As I was thinking about what I was reading, the thought came quite clearly to me that dealing with this “systemic” problem at the “courts” stage is way too far down the line.  I’m not saying that things do not need to change.  What I am saying is “The buck stops where?”  The solution to the problem with young men (whatever ethnicity) needs to be addressed at the home level, with men, mentors and fathers.   By the time a youth is thrown in jail, let’s all agree, that’s a difficult time to affect change in his thinking.  A handcuff makes it challenging to spread your wings.

But that was eight years ago. Has their been any improvements? Well, I found this article from just over one year ago.

Bias behind bars – Globe Mail article (in prison)

Then there was this one, not too long after…

Canada has a black incarceration problem: The Torontoist – article 2016

Here is another one that I came across earlier this year…

Canada’s prison service better trying to understand the needs of Black offenders – Toronto Star article January 21, 2020 (in prison)

It is not hard to see that improvement may be questionable; however, it would be naïve to think that this is not a complex problem. (Systemic racism, socio-economic organization…)

Maybe a place to pressure change is that of mentorship. Now, I’m not saying that the problem is due to the failure of examples… However, it has been my experience that in Men’s group, it is often difficult to find males to participate, but maybe it would be expedient as well to make men. 

As such, we need to impact boys with positive and spiritual values.  We need to let them move to manhood and maturity on purpose and not by accident.  In my experience, I remember thinking one day: “I have a wife, kids and mortgage…when did I become a man?”

Our boys need rites of passages and young men need ceremonies.  They need some peers, and definitely older men to come around them and speak declarative words of life and purpose and meaning into them.  We must realize by now that every man is “on call” for this duty.

One may not be a father, but that does not absolve the responsibility to impact our young men.  If fathers fail, we have a God-given and social responsibility to mentor, care and love.  We must fill the gap.  Fathers, we must aspire to be a “Genesis Man.”

So, let the courts, judges and activists get on a mission to buck the system.   Let us as men, mentors and fathers let the buck stop much closer…

Now, after I wrote this piece, I came across an interesting YouTube video interview with Denzel Washington where he essentially said…

Don’t blame ‘the system’ for black incarceration, ‘it starts at home’

Watch the video (starts at 3:01)…

What do you think? Leave a comment below and send us an email with your contact information and you could receive a copy of the “Genesis Man: The Masculine Identity”.

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