Aboriginal Communities and Crime Prevention: Confronting the Challenges of Organized Crime

• NCJ Number: 219787
• Journal: Revue de l' IPC Review Volume: 1 Dated: March 2007 Pages: 89-110
• Author(s): Jane Dickson-Gilmore
• Date Published: March 2007
• Length: 22 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Issue Overview
• Language: English
• Country: Canada

Annotation

This paper examines the challenges of crime prevention through social development in those Canadian Aboriginal communities commonly linked to cross-border criminal activities featured in "Aboriginal-based organized crime."

Abstract

This paper first contextualizes "organized crime" within established patterns of Aboriginal life and offending patterns. Criminal Intelligence Services Canada has identified a significant increase in what it describes as "Aboriginal-based organized crime." This phenomenon is characterized by regional variation and domination by two forms of organized crime activities. In western Canadian Provinces, Aboriginal-based organized crime consists primarily of criminal gangs with fluid structure and alliances for committing street-level criminal activities, much of which is drug-related. In recent years, this pattern has extended from major urban centers into rural Aboriginal reserves where gang members and associates may have family and personal ties. The second form of Aboriginal organized crime activities involves cross-border activities linked with border communities in Ontario and Quebec. This criminal activity consists primarily of brokers on or around Aboriginal reserves who facilitate cross-border smuggling of commodities that include marijuana, currency, and people. Other criminal activities include marijuana cultivation, organized vehicle theft, illicit firearms activities, illegal gambling, the illicit diversion of tobacco, and drug trafficking. There is little about the crimes themselves that distinguish them from organized crime by non-Aboriginal offenders. The causes of these crimes by Aboriginal individuals, however, have distinctive causes related to social conditions that affect them when residing either in urban communities or rural reserves. Aboriginal communities are, for the most part, in desperate need of social development, since many of the pathologies they face can be directly linked with poverty, unemployment, substandard living environments and community infrastructures, family instability, and substance abuse. These conditions underlie a disproportionate rate of crime and victimization. 26 references