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Aim at crime's cause Forget about slapping a made-in-the-USA label on our gun problem: Gang violence is homegrown, and Ontario nurtured it with poor social policies, say criminologists ANTHONY DOOB and ROSEMARY GARTNER

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Why is Toronto experiencing so many shootings right now? And what can be done? The first question assumes that there is, in fact, an upward trend in gun violence rather than simply an unusually large number of incidents in a concentrated period. It's too early to know whether the events of the past few weeks signal the start of a sustained upswing. In 1991, there were 89 homicides in Toronto, a record high, and concern that we were entering a new, violent era was widespread -- yet Toronto has come nowhere close to that level of lethal violence since.

For the sake of argument, however, let's assume incidents of gun violence are beginning a sustained rise.

If so, why? Let's consider what's known about the causes of crime, and then look at changes that have occurred in the past 10 years in Ontario's social policies, particularly those that affect children. Very simply, policies put in place during this period had a high likelihood of increasing levels of violence. We don't believe, of course, that increasing crime was the goal. Rather, it seems that our political leaders at the time simply ignored widely accepted evidence about social sources of crime.

One of Ontario's most dramatic changes in the mid-1990s was the large cut to welfare payments for families with children. It is well established that cities with low welfare payments (measured as the amount received by each poor family, or the per cent of poor families receiving some form of assistance) have higher rates of violent and property crime, and that children who experience long periods of poverty between the age of 5 and their early teenage years are more likely to commit crime. We also know that communities with higher levels of economic inequality are likely to have high levels of violent crime. Even Japan, a country with a generally low level of violent crime, has found that homicide rates and robberies go up when income inequality, unemployment, and poverty increase.

When we move from broad economic policies to policies that affect children directly, we find additional factors that account for a rise in crime. For troubled and troublesome young people, the school can be an oasis in an otherwise difficult life. And attachment to school -- finding something positive and personally rewarding -- can reduce the likelihood that troubled youths will commit violent crimes. Getting young people to see education as a good thing can be a challenge, but we do know a little about making school a positive experience. What matter most for disaffected youths are a school's extracurricular aspects and the particular attention paid by a teacher who takes the time to help a difficult student.

But in the 1990s, the Ontario government told teachers that every minute that they spent that was not in front of a classroom was wasted, frivolous time -- never mind the "extras" that made their jobs more rewarding and their students more interested in staying in school. Second, it told schools to deal with troubled and troublesome students through zero tolerance, by suspending and expelling them.

Provincial policy dictated that the one institution, the school, that was available to everyone and that could make a difference was stripped of that opportunity, while teachers were told that it was not their role to help troubled children. Fortunately, many school boards, school administrative officers, and teachers didn't listen; they did what they knew to be best. But their resources were limited.

As well, Ontario demoted public health to the status of unnecessary frill (remember the Walkerton drinking water disaster?).

What does public health have to do with crime? Plenty, it turns out it, especially for the poor and disadvantaged. Something as simple as regular home visits by public-health nurses to poor young mothers, from the early stages of pregnancy until the child's second birthday, not only has important health benefits -- 15 years later, these same children are less likely to be involved in crime.

Homelessness, a problem whose roots go back at least 20 years, is another factor. Children who are forced to move from temporary home to temporary home throughout their school lives are considerably more likely to feel no roots in the community and be involved in crime.

Yet all these changes in social policy were justified because they gave people like the readers of this newspaper lower taxes.

What about the proposed solutions to Toronto's gang/crime problem? No quick fix will reduce it. It will do no good to increase prison sentences, to institute more mandatory minimum sentences, to implement curfews, to sweep the streets clean of disorderly people, to create boot camps. Indeed, looking for solutions to crime within the criminal-justice system is largely counterproductive because it distracts us from effective responses and depletes scarce resources that could be used earlier and more productively.

Toronto has been promised new police officers to deal with crime.

Adding to police strength, alone, will not solve the problem either, however. With each police officer costing about $75,000 a year, we should be asking what our other choices might be, within police departments or elsewhere. In a coldly statistical way, let's look at what is the best way, per million dollars spent, to achieve a long-term impact on violent crime? For the most part, we already know. It's sometimes referred to as an investment in social programs. These programs are designed to create an educated, healthy, productive society. They also have indirect benefits -- they create peaceful communities. We may have learned in the past 10 years or so how to increase violent crime in our communities. The question is whether we will use what we've learned to reduce it.

Anthony N. Doob and Rosemary Gartner are professors of criminology at the Centre of Criminology, University of Toronto.