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H ~ P T E R

Rerouting the Weeds

T

he Move from

Criminalizing

to Pathologi

zing Tr

oubled Youth

in

The eview o the

oots

of Youth Violence

fijian oronka

D

uring the summer of 2007, following the shooting death

of

a Grade 9 student in

a Toronto high school, Premier

Da

lton McGuinty commissioned former Chief

Justice and Attorney General Roy McMurtry and former Speaker of the Legislature

Alvin Curling to investigate the epidemic of youth violence in Ontario. A panel of

inquiry was put in place

to

help identify and analyse the underlying causes contrib

uting

to

youth violence

and

provide recommendations for Ontario

to

move forward

(McMurtry Curling, 2008b). As a result, in November of 2008,

The Review of he

Roots of Youth Violence

(hereafter referred

to

as

The Review

report was released

to

the public. This chapter will examine what knowledge

is

produced through this

report, in the province's attempts to understand and prevent the roots

of

youth vio

lence. Specifically, I want

to

inquire, through a textual analysis

of

The Review,

what

stories about madness, race,

and

violence are created

and

maintained through this

text. Ultimately, the provincial narrative

that

emerges from this review has a produc

tive function

that

works

to

solidify notions of Ontario as a white province, and allows

for the construction of actionable policy recommendations aimed

at

caring, curing,

and

contro

ll

ing Mad racialized bodies in Ontario (Hanafi, 2009b, p. 8 .

Premier McGuinty launched the inquiry because he felt that no parent should ever

have

to

worry about losing their child

to

violence, and

that

as a province

we

have a

responsibility

to

do everything we can

to

make children, schools and communities

safer and help young people make good choices (McMurtry Curling, 2008a,

p. 7). Triggered by an incident

of

youth violence, the inquiry produced, in little over

a year, an extensive five-volume report

that

totals just under 2,000 pages of text.

In

order

to

narrow the scope

ofmy

analysis, I have concentrated solely on

The Review

of

the Roots

of

Youth Violence: Volume 1 Findings. Analysis and

Conclusions a

400-

page text that works as the main body ofThe Review.

The stated intent ofThe Review

is

clear: the province wants to discover what are the roots of the problem of youth

violence. Those roots are immediately identified as resulting from what the report

calls disadvantage: from racism, from poverty, emerging from sites of disadvantaged

309



310 Social Justice, Madness, and Identity Politics

exception. It is this disadvantage with which The Review concerns itself. From this

inquiry,

The Review

blossoms into a document that acts as a reparation to itself: we

are told what is broken, and how the province is to be made whole again.

I start my analysis by looking at how the province of

Ontario

is framed as a

benevolent

white settler

space, paternally concerned

with

its disadvantaged

children. I show how, through the establishment of white settler space as imperilled

by raced violence, The Review legitimizes its right

to

intervene. I then examine how

and what racialized subjects

are

considered in the document,

and

argue

that

the

approach The Review takes disappears the history of white settler colonial violence.

I then consider recommendations

that

The Review advances

to

cure

the

problem

of raced violence, many of which ask for

an

increase in mental health services for

children and youth in targeted sites of exception. I end with a critique of The Review s

proposal to solve over-criminalization in racialized inner-city slums by substituting

such governance with mental health services. I understand this shift as a move away

from overt policing through

the

criminal justice system, to a more subtle system

of self-governance that asks racialized communities to individually pathologize the

problem of collective systemic oppression.

Province-Building: Ontario

urs to

Discover

The Review begins

at the

same site

that

I want

to

begin: in the grounded territory of

the province. From the first page, and repeated throughout the text, we are informed

that

Ontario is at a crossroads :

While it is a safe place for most, our review identified deeply troubling trends in

the nature of serious violent crime involving youth in Ontario and the impacts

it is having on many communities. Those trends suggest that, unless the roots

of this violence are identified and addressed in a coordinated, collaborative and

sustained way, violence will get worse. More people will be killed, communities

will become increasingly isolated and disadvantaged, an ever-accelerating down

ward cycle will ensue for far too many, and our social fabric as a province could

e seriously damaged. (McMurtry Curling, 2008a, p. 1, emphasis mine .

We, as a suddenly imperilled province, have hit a fork

in

the road: how we proceed

will determine our future. The image of a crossroads acts as a literal dividing prac

tice

that

informs us what is at stake: we can either confront, contain, and cure raced

violence,

or

we

can

succumb

to

it. As

the

review imagines for us,

we

believe

that

Ontario is

at

a crossroads. One of the two main roads leading from

that

crossroads

will, with strong leadership and sustained commitment, lead us towards an ever-safer



Rerouting the Weeds

3

society with increasing security and opportunity for all. The other will lead

to

an

entrenched cycle of violence, which could plague this province and limit its potential

for years to come (McMurtry Curling, 2008a, p. 83).

We stand at a crossroads, and we are being asked

to

choose what road to take.

Through the tropes ofhaunting and racial paranoia, our social fabric is being torn at

by

the notion that nits make lice (Smith, 2005, p. 80). Stemming from one particularly

high-profile act

of

spectacular high school gun violence, the province has determined

that the goodness of our respectable white settler province is in jeopardy, and it is

now that we must intervene. Ruth Gilmore talks about how moments of spectacular

violence are used to harness interventions on problematized bodies: The 'terrible few'

are a statistically insignificant and socially unpredictable handful of the planet's humans

whose psychopathic actions are the stuff of folktales, tabloids (including the evening

news and reality television),

and

emerging legislation

...

The media, government

officials, and policy advisers endlessly refer

to the

public's concern' over crime and

connect prison growth to public desire for social order (Gilmore, 2007, pp. 15, 17).

Through this moral panic, we make demands on our nation

to

act, and the province

has responded through The Review by unveiling

to

us knowledge that all is not right

with the p r o v i n ~ e s disadvantaged. Spectacular violence, when harnessed by state

administration, has the productive value of allowing us as a province justified access

and opportunity

to

collect and produce knowledge on those who are at risk, and who

pose a risk to us (for further reading on moral panics and at-risk youth management,

see Barron Lacombe, 2005; Wotherspoon Schissel, 2001).

s

a nation, and more locally as a province, The Review documents

that

we are

in jeopardy. To paraphrase Andrea Smith, Canada is

not

at war; Canada

s

war. For

the system of white settler supremacy to stay in place, Canada must always

be

at war

(Smith, 2005, p. 69). Through The Review we are confirmed in our fear that our

(read: white) province is under constant threat by unpredictable raced violence, and

The Review works to allow us to know, intervene, and discipline the racialized bodies

that pose threats

to our

civility.

Our

province is

at

a crossroads, under threat by those

outside the core

of our

social fabric,

and our

white supremacy must be defended

at

any cost. s

Martinot

and Sexton note:

Owing to the instability

of

white supremacy, the social structures

of

whiteness

must ever be re-secured in an obsessive fashion. The process of re-inventing

whiteness and white supremacy has always

involve

d the state, and the state has

always involved the utmost paranoia ... White supremacy is not reconstructed

simply for its own sake, but for the sake of the social paranoia, the ethic of

impunity, and the violent spectacles

of

racialization that it calls the mainte

nance of order. (Martinot Sexton, 2003, pp. 179-180)




One productive value of The Review is its construction of white settler supremacy

as being under threat, in the process offering a multitude of interventions that will

recreate and maintain the status quo. The specific focus of The Review on disadvan

taged populations (poor racialized inner-city bodies) adds and sustains a discourse

that demonstrates a specific obsession with those denigrated that characterizes the

socius of white supremacy, its demands for allegiance, its conditions of membership

...

derogation comes in many

forms-as

stories, aphorisms, discourses, legal sta

tuses, political practices. The reputation of derogation becomes the performance of

white supremacist identity, over and over (Martinot & Sexton, 2003, pp. 174-175).

The Review calls not only on those who are under threat by the

Other to

be vigi

lant, but also depends on those

1

at

risk to identify, know, and come to discipline

themselves through the tools, training, education, methods, recommendations, and

resources

that

are identified and offered throughout this report.

In

this very crucial

way, Ontario's spaces of exception come to be permeable through benevolent inter

ventions, and slum administration replaces colonial administration. The city belongs

to the settlers and the sullying of civilized society through the presence of the racial

Other in white space gives rise to a careful management of boundaries within urban

space (Razack, 2002, p. 128).

We

are told in The Review over and over

that

we must act in order to prevent

further trauma

to our

social fabric. In a particularly telling passage on why we must

act now against the terror of youth violence, the analogy of a disease outbreak is

invoked

to

illustrate how we cannot risk being careless:

f these trends and impacts are seen as akin to a public health issue, then

it makes no more sense for those not immediately affected to blame those

who suffer from them, and otherwise ignore them, than it would to ignore an

infectious disease outbreak in one community or neighbourhood.

We

know

infections can spread and, even i f they don't they can weaken other parts of

the body and its systems, with regrettable mid- to long-term consequences.

Therefore, we deal with the problem collectively and cure it, because ignoring

it will simply make matters worse for ever-increasing parts of our body politic.

(McMurtry Curling, 2008a, p.

102

Likening both raced youth violence and the problem of disadvantaged inequities

to

a plague is a rhetorical tool

that

turns socially produced structures

of

oppression

into scientific facts that can be mediated through the impartial reign of biomedicines.

No one is implicated, it is all just fact, and it makes common sense to spatially attack

the bodies and sites in which this problem resides. There is no room in this account

for the non-reasonable pain that leaks out of these interventions, that permeates The

Review There is no language for the haunting, for the racism that exists beyond



Rerouting the Weeds 313

words. Rather, The eview depends

on

and harnesses the language of common

sense,

through

which we bespeak

our

social world in

the most

common way, [and

which] leaves us speechless before the enormity of the usual, of the business of civil

procedures (Martinot Sexton,

2003,

p. 172).

The Review,

in calling

on

common

sense and

the

common

good-and on

unveiling the story

of

raced youth violence

becomes

the

hero

that

is

equipped

to

intervene

on

the racialized incivility

that

is

erupting in corners of this clean province. Further, while always ignoring structural

violence, it

is

white settlers who come to suffer from the sight of it,

and

must be called

in

on

the adventure to stop it.

Before delving into

what The Review

says, I just

want to mark who says it.

The

proverbial we that penetrates the text

is

a white settler we, and the assumed readers

and writers are always unraced whites. Indeed, the text thoroughly understands race

to be a problem of blackness, and occasionally of aboriginality.

2

But the might that is

white

that

thoroughly structures the text

is

unquestionably universalized. Despite

The

Review s constant emphasis on incorporating critical race theory, culturally appropriate

and sensitive services, governances, and so on, the entry point to this topic is always

through the lens of unraced whiteness. Statements such as we were taken aback by

the extent

to

which racism is alive

and

well

and

wreaking its deeply harmful effects on

Ontarians and on the very fabric of this province (McMurtry Curling, 2008a, p.

39),

and

recent instances

of

racial profiling

and

other related matters

of

course kept

the issue [of racism] alive for us as it did for many, but perhaps hid the depths to which

racism

is

ever more embedded throughout our society (McMurtry Curling, 2008a,

p 39), illustrate that the standpoint that the provincial we speaks from is one that is

unquestionably

that

of the white bystander, surprised and unaffected

by

racism.

Thus, The Review as a body replicates that too familiar journey that respectability

constantly engages in, creating

an

us through exploring a them. The task

of

producing knowledge on the Other once again leads white settler subjects to learn

who they are, and, more

important,

who they are not. Moving from respectable

space to degenerate space

and

back again is

an

adventure that confirms that they are

indeed white men in control

...

[and] have

an

unquestioned right

to

go anywhere

and

do anything (Razack,

2002,

p 127). We have a right, a duty in fact, not only

to protect Others from themselves, but in doing so, work to create ourselves as

the

harbingers

of

civility.

A)voiding Colonial Context

To begin

to

understand

what

is sustained

through

the discourses

of The Review,

I want

to start

with

how

racialized bodies are understood as to have

arrived

here.

White is

of

course naturalized,

and

diasporic immigration

is

understood within the

neoliberalist context

of

choice:

3




Canada and Ontario, in particular, are blessed by their many and diverse

immigrant communities. People from around the world have chosen to make

Canada their new home and embraced their adopted homeland with affection,

passion and energy. People

immigrate here for a number of reasons, primari

ly

because they want to succeed and because they want their children to succeed.

(McMurtry Curling, 2008a, p.

74

Void from this sunny, polite, and welcoming take on multiculturalism

is

the resolute

absence of the historical, structural,

and

contextual ways in which whiteness is impli

cated in the forced migration of racialized bodies. I want instead

to

forefront how

racialized bodies dwell on this territory because of white histories of domination

and subordination for which we [as Canadians] are accountable (Razack, 2002, p.

128). Further, the constant referral to this land as ours solidifies white settlers as

non-immigrants

and

indigenous

to

this land, while denying honest engagement with

white settler practices towards Aboriginal peoples.

The disavowal of

our

genocidal practices towards Aboriginal peoples

is

exemplified

through the stunning statement

that

The eview makes about where Canada stands

as a nation in relation

to

severe violence:

We need to note that Ontario is in the relatively early phases of this degree

and kind

of

violence. Some of those

we

met referred to Ontario experiencing

the first generation of violence driven by economic disadvantage and racism,

compared to the United States and the United Kingdom, which they considered

to

be

more deeply mired in second or third generations of this kind of violence.

(McMurtry

Curling, 2008a, p. 103)

The notion that Ontario has only recently begun

to

engage in racialized

and

eco

nomic violence critically emphasizes where The eview

is

willing to begin the story

of violence on this land that

is

now called Canada. That story in The eview largely

begins in the 1970s when raced crime statistics began

to

e harvested

to

investigate

crime divided along race lines. The structural

and

collective violence

that

was enacted

to

secure this province as a white settler territory is rendered invisible through this

account. While The eview lays claim that it

is

committed

to

considering systemic

issues, our colonial legacy

is

completely ignored in this account. ot only does this

quote

mark

us as only beginning to enter into a phase of severe violence, but it also

positions us as a less implicated, less violent, middle power nation when compared to

the

US

and the UK: maintaining an understanding of ourselves as the compassionate

nation in relation

to

superpowers (Razack, 2004, p. 26).

The disappearing

of

the reasons why multiculturalism and First Nations issues

are understood as problems in this province decontextualizes the true roots of our




own implications in violence: that of systemic oppressions both at home and abroad.

With this in mind, the approach

that

The Review takes to First Nations peoples is

that there is no room in this report

to

consult or speak directly

to

their needs. The

act of excluding First Nations from a report that concerns itself with youth violence

(which certainly pertains to Aboriginal peoples as their youth are subjected to all

forms of violence, and are among the most over-criminalized populations in Canada)

effectively treats Aboriginals as a dead culture: a culture beyond hope, and

beyond

benevolent intervention. Aboriginality is understood as a disappeared culture in the

imagination of this province, a culture

that

must

always

be disappearing, in order

to allow non-indigenous peoples rightful claim over this land ... Native peopies are a

permanent 'present absence' in the [Canadian] colonial imagination, an 'absence' that

reinforces, at every turn, the conviction that Native peoples are indeed vanishing and

that the conquest of Native lands is justified (Smith, 2005, p. 68).

Aboriginals in The Review are a present absence: present, because they are identified

s

a population that

is

racially marginalized within the

province-but

decidedly absent

because they are excluded from the immediate conversation that

The Review

engages,

however noting that having regard

to

the practical and jurisdictional reasons why our

review did not seek to study violence within First Nations in Ontario, the Province

should meet with First Nations leaders to consider the potential applicability of our

advice to those communities (McMurtry Curling, 2008a, p. 379). The Review in

choosing to disengage from the Aboriginal problem, circuits itself away from having

to confront our own colonial legacy and implication in our violence against them. It

allows us as a province to remain unhinged to white people's historic participation

in and benefit from [the] dispossession and violence that we depend on in order to

maintain the myth of our province as a benevolent one (Razack, 2002, pp. 126-127).

Focusing on raced violence is a more facile strategy, since these bodies are framed in

The Review as people who have chosen to move here (and we welcome them). But to

engage with First Nations peoples in The Review runs the risk of forcing the inquiry

to

confront our own colonial history, and in turn re-centre what we are willing

to

locate

s violence. Thus, in

The Review

Aboriginal bodies are understood to be implicated

in

a

problem of violence, but that problem

is

left as vague perpetrators

of

violence,

and the over-policing, incarceration, and high suicide rates of Aboriginal peoples

were not brought to bear on the details, [and thus] the stain that is Aboriginality could

not be seen as socially constructed (Razack, 2002, p. 129).

rom

System to ubject

The main intervention that I want to analyze is one

that

permeates the core of

The

Review.

While

the

report makes a plethora of structural and system change rec

ommendations, and insists on understanding itself as a report that is invested in




structural amendments, I want to show how structural oppressions (or systems

of

disadvantage, as they are referred to) are moved into troubled communities; and how,

in

turn

those disadvantages land

on

targeted individualized bodies, to be assessed,

understood, and fixed. This practice, this business-as-usual

of

localizing structurally

embedded oppression on individual bodies, continues the process

of

solving social

violence on the bodies

of

degenerate subjects, instead

of

the work

of

dismantling the

structures

that

cause such harm.

One

of

the main problems identified in The eview is the over-criminalization

of racialized youth in the province. The eview recognizes that the criminal

justice system, while generally used to good effect,

can

nonetheless also be used in

co

unterproductive ways when the exercise

of

its power leads

to the

inappropriate

treatment of youth

and

to over-criminalization (McMurtry Curling, 2008a, p.

267). The violence of

the criminal justice system

is

understood

to

land on racialized

bodies in particular,

and

this heightened policing

and

intervention on racialized

bodies are understood as producing

more

raced crime,

as

they produce subjects

that

become enraged with the system. Ultimately, they produce risk for us : rightfully

angry youth

who

are more likely

to

become unpredictably violent, which

can

lead to association with youth gangs (McMurtry Curling, 2008a,

p

269),

or

alienat[ed]

and

disaffected youth [who] walk

our

streets

and

enter our schools

carrying loaded handguns (McMurtry Curling, 2008a, p. 362). The problem of

over-criminalization poses a threat

to

the province, and as such, other methods

of

discipline must be enacted to counter this constantly burgeoning potentiality

of

risk.

To counter

the

over-criminalization of racialized youth,

The eview

proposes

strategies such as lenient punishment for nonviolent offences,

and

using approaches

such

as

restorative justice to punish young offenders (McMurtry Curling, 2008a, p.

358; see also Harris, 2000). Alongside such structural shifts to criminal enforcement,

The eview emphasizes ''a community approach

to

individual interventions. Instead

of

relying on the prison system, which can stigmatize a youth in their own minds

and others, disrupt their education

or

employment, label them as a serious criminal,

expose them 24/7

to

many youth who are a danger, and destroy their self-esteem

and

sense

of

hope (McMurtry Curling, 2008a, p. 269),

The eview

calls on

problemed communities themselves to identify and intervene on youth who are

at

risk.

Thus, problemed communities must learn to act on their own, to identify, intervene,

discipline, and cure their own troubled individuals in their communities. In this way,

structural violence becomes, yet again, an individualized issue

that

must be weeded

out

at

the source: a spatialized, racialized practice

of

self-governance.

This self-governance must be done in localized settings, to allow for the weeds

to

be

rooted out. This approach to violence prevention locates the more proximate risks

of

you

th

violence in local communities. A local community might be defined as a block, a

neighbourhood, a housing project

or

an ethnic enclave (McMurtry Curling, 2008a,



Rerouting the Weeds 3 7

p. 355).

The

subjects

of

these racialized slum spaces must come to harness their power

over their communal children

and

intervene

on

them before the police do. Services

within slum spaces must be made available to concerned citizens and at-risk youth

alike, services

that

offer ways

of

disciplining them outside

of

the criminal justice system:

services that are accessed through educational, community,

and

social services hubs.

n

this way, we are shown how

systems require one another.

In moving away from

over-criminalization, The Review offers other, more seemingly benevolent systems

of

service that will take the place

of

the criminal justice system.

The

more interventionist

of these services are

to

be made available

to

those who have already succumbed

to

their

criminality: services such as cognitive behavioural therapy,

and

core rehabiiitation

services (including anger management training, cognitive skills training, sex offender

treatment,

and

substance abuse treatment) (McMurtry & Curling, 2008a, p. 359). But

more importantly,

The Review

wants communities

to

target youth who have yet

to

give

in

to

their potentiality as violent perpetrators, but who exhibit at-risk symptoms,

as a preventative measure to ensure community safety. This classic rhetorical tool

reconstructs collective systemic oppression as a problem that is graphed onto racialized

inner-city bodies, and a problem to be sorted

out

in kind. As The Review proposes, it

becomes necessary to identify specific children from a community (typically from 7 to

14 years of age) at particularly high risk

of

engaging in criminal or violent behaviour in

the future. After being identified, these youth can be provided with additional services

including intensive mental health counselling, behaviour modification, family therapy

and

adult mentorship (McMurtry & Curling, 2008a, p. 355).

n

this way, the systems

shift

that The Review

makes is one that moves away from a criminal justice system

that overtly governs a problemed community, to one that uses mental health as a

· system

of

internalized self-governance: as Hanafi notes, society is governed much less

by law and order but more

through

[self ]

administration

nd

management

(Hanafi,

2009a, p. 116, emphasis in original; see also Hook, 2007; Rose, 1990).

enevolence

Is

Not enign

This rerouting

of

troubled youth from the criminal justice system to mental health

systems

is

one that

The Review

argues strongly for, as a way

of

solving

the

stigma

and damage that early criminalization can impose on the disadvantaged. I want to

argue here

that

this move, in recognizing the structural issues inherent in the criminal

justice system, is being solved through the shifting

of

systems

of

governance from the

power of criminalization

onto

the powers of pathologization.

t

is a system shift from

the structural powers of criminalization (that are understood as problematic in race

relations)

onto

the individualizing powers

of

pathologization (which are understood

to

e

benevolent

and

problem-free

.

The Review

understands

that

the criminal jus

tice system does

harm

to racialized youth,

and

thus proposes that we instead offer



318 Social Justice Madness, and Identity Politics

preventative

and

interventionist measures through the goodwill of the psy disciplines

(Rose, 1990).

Martinot

and Sexton ask: How can one critically discuss policing and

imprisonment without interrogating the very notions of freedom, citizenship, and

democracy? (Martinot Sexton, 2003, p. 177). They answer

that

question, and

The eview

enacts how, rather than disassembling systems of structural violence,

instead remedies can always be found

within

liberal capitalism: from psychological

counselling, moral and scientific education, legal prohibition, or even gene therapy

... (Martinot Sexton, 2003, p. 178, emphasis in original). Evident here

is

how the

structural problems inherent in the criminal justice system are seen as being solved by

drawing on another system of power, that of mental health, that

individualizes

this

structural violence as personal pathology. Moving troubled youth into being man

aged by psy disciplines not only masks how this disadvantage

is

structura

ll

y rooted,

but also localizes the problems that at-risk youth face into the core of their bodies:

the structures of their biomedical souls.

This relocation of the violence of criminalization into the violence of pathologization

is one that I want to bring forward. This tactic of pathologizing these individuals,

studying their condition, and offering 'therapy' to them and their communities must be

seen as another rhetorical manoeuvre designed to obscure ... the moral and financial

accountability of Euro-Canadian society in a continuing record of Crimes Against

Humanity

(Chrisjohn et al.,

2006,

p. 22).

That The eview

clearly recognizes

that

the criminal justice system

is

a troubled system

that

produces

and

maintains

systems of disadvantage within targeted populations

is

clear. However, the solution

offered-to

increase youth mental health services in

Ontario

by

$200

million

completely overlooks the violence

that

is inherent in psychiatric pathologization.

The

eview

offers to solve the violence of criminal justice systems by strengthening the

power and violence of mental health services. The fact

that

mental health services

remain untroubled in this report (unlike racism, poverty, immigrant integration,

etc.) demonstrates how entrenched the dividing practices of the psy disciplines

remain in this province. Denied is how mental health systems are implicated in the

reproduction of hierarchies and in the structural violence against which they claim to

offer protection (Harris, 2000, p. 800).

The common sense argument

The eview

offers

is

that in order to prevent the stigma

and rage that occurs when disadvantaged youth are criminalized, the province must

increase its spending on child and youth mental health services (from its current $444

million annual budget) to catch at-risk youth before they erupt into criminality. What

this common sense line of thinking ignores are the discrimination, rage, damage and

worse that pathologization enacts on young bodies when they are marked as mentally

ill.

s

it really better to

be

labelled insane

than

a criminal? Further, these problemed

children and youth, through the psy disciplines, come to understand their trouble in

individualized, often biomedical frameworks that decontextualize the role that structural




oppressions play in the constitution of their personhood. Needless

to

say,

The eview

also unquestionably links madness

to

criminal behaviour. Ultimately, individuals are

asked

to

fix themselves, instead of acting

on

and resisting the systems of oppression out

of

which violence arises.

4

Again and over again, the problem begins within.

riminality to Pathology

With this call

to

self-governance in

mind,

the recommendations

that

I

want to

high

light from

The eview

are

those

that work

to

increase psy monitoring wi

th

in racial

ized inner-city slums. Both recommendation numbers 15

and 28

(the latter

of

which is

marked

for priority implementation) ask for increased child

and

youth mental health

services in disadvantaged communities. As recommendati

on number

15 suggests:

The province must take steps to bring youth mental health

out

of the shad

ows. The province should enhance prevention through programs that promote

health, engagement and activity for youth.

t

should also provide locally avail

able mental health services that afford early identification and treatment for

children and youth in the context

of

their families and schools,

that

are cultur

ally appropriate and that are integrated with the community hubs

we

propose.

(McMurtry Curling, 2008a, p. 377)

5

I

want

to

start

by saying

that The

eview engages

with

mental health

and

illness in

purely biomedical terms,

and

never considers madness as a socially constructed

and

mediated model. Unlike race

and

racism, which are understood as being

created

mad

ness simply

is

in existence

and

in need

of

identification, isolation,

and

eradication.

Culture and

difference are

understood

as in need

of

understanding

and

cultivation:

madness is

to

be killed.

t

is

never imagined

that

different ways

of

thinking, experienc

ing, interpreting, or being in the world could ever

be of

value see

Voronka

, 2008b).

Eradication

of

madness is always the rule.

Normalization is

always the goal.

Madness

as a

rampant

problem

in

need

of

a

cure

is

postulated

ad

nauseum

throughout

The Review:

statistics circulate, facts concur,

experts

agree.

6

Further,

perpetrated

violence

is

attached

to

Mad bodies, in claims such as

In

the age group

committing

the

most violent incidents, individuals

with

mental disorders account for a

considerable

amount of

violence in

the

community. Retrospective studies have shown

that more youth with mental health disorders are

arrested

for violent offences

than

are

youth

who

do

not

meet

the

diagnostic criteria for mental disorder (

McMurtry

Curling,

2008a,

p. 69).

Thus, The eview not

only manages to reinforce discourses

on

raced violence, but also continues

the

belief that

those

diagnosed as mentally ill

are

more

likely

to

be violent

perpetrators.

It

is never considered here, as it is

with

racialized bodies, that

more

youth

with mental health

disorders

are arrested

for




violent offences because they too are an over-criminalized body (ibid.). In this way,

The

eview

has the productive function

of

marking madness, and not psychiatric

interventions, as where violence's roots occur.

I want to consider how The Review works to solidify biomedical notions of madness

within communities that are understood as operating outside of common sense knowledge

about

mental illness.

The cultural move-and

mental health

move-to

educate

racialized inner-city slum communities about the biomedical approach to mental illness

is

marked as work

that

must be undertaken by the province.

sy

professionals must be

culturally competent, able to relate and translate to culturally diverse populations (who

may have an understanding of madness outside of Western medical dominance), and to

convert them to the right (read: white) ways of approaching madness as biologically

embedded. This work of educating deficient cultures about how to think properly about

madness requires skilled and sensitive outreach, effective 'navigators' to help youth

and

their families sort out options and align services and creative, culturally conscious

mechanisms to_break down parents' reluctance to have their children use [mental health

services] (McMurtry Curling, 2008a, p. 247). Respectable professionals must enter

slum spaces and educate racialized peoples about biomedical understanding of madness.

Others must submit themselves and their families to the precarious truths that operate

through the psy disciplines, and open themselves up to scrutiny. Once social oppressions

are biocultured, racialized slum spaces can move from over-policed spaces to sites of

exception that learn to police themselves.

Finally, of great concern in The Review's recommendations

is

how it asks to increase

the level

of

surveillance within racialized inner-city slums.

The Review

moves away

from increasing police/population ratios in these sites

of

exception, but counters with

increasing psy monitoring within these racialized spaces. Parents, teachers, mentors,

coaches, police officers, and so on are asked to identify and recognize the signs of

mental illness so that they can recommend interventions (McMurtry Curling,

2008a,

p. 247). Mental health practitioners are called to be integrated throughout

social i n ~ t i t u t i o n s ready to intervene on any youth who

is

identified as outside of

normal.

Of

particular concern

is

just how early these interventions are to be enacted.

Over and over again, early interventions are stressed (ibid., pp. 70, 246). Statistics

inform us that 70% of childhood cases of mental health problems can be solved

through early diagnosis and intervention, although it is forebodingly noted later

that

there

is

no end date on mental illness (ibid., pp. 70, 156). This early intervention

is

identified as needing to begin within school settings starting at ge

five, or even

earlier (ibid., p. 246, emphasis mine), and that preschool and younger school-aged

children who suffer from mental illness be given higher priority than at present (ibid. ,

p. 70, emphasis mine). That The Review seeks to counter systemically disadvantaged

youth by increasing pathologization among small children should strike fear, anger,

and

strong resistance in communities that have already been problematized to death.




onclusion

The Review as an analytical tool shows us how

an

everyday neoliberalist government

produced text can work

to

solidify white settler supremacy through common sense

and

benevolent discourses and policy recommendations. t shows us how systems use

one another to offset and relocate the powers of governance. The good intent as it

runs

through

The Review

under the guise of helping racialized slum spaces manage

their violence works to further entrench the right that is white settler and psychiatric

supremacy in this province. y upholding the credo of the inherent goodwill of our

systems of governance, regardless

of

the talk of systems

of

disadvantage, the change

that

must be made continues

to

land on individual bodies: those

that

have borne the

legacy of

our

collective violence. To

that

end, I would like to conclude

by

reassert

ing Chrisjohn et al.'s reminder

that

Present-day symptomology found in Aboriginal

Peoples

and

[and all Othered] societies does not constitute a distinct psychological

condition, but

is

the well known

and

long-studied response of human beings living

under conditions

of severe

and

prolonged oppression (Chrisjohn eta ., 2006, p. 21).

Notes

1

Much could

be

said

about the

other

four volumes

of

The Review: Volume 2

Executive

Summary; Volume 3

Community

Perspectives Report; Volume 4, Research Papers; and

Volume 5, Literature Reviews.

2 Racism (but not race or racialization) garners a lot of attention in the text. To give the reader

a sense

of

how racism

is

understood to work in

The Review,

I offer this quote that exemplifies

how racism is understood as

an

individual belief, even when structurally manifest: Racism is

manifested in three ways. There are those who expressly espouse racist views as part of a per-

sonal credo. There are those who subconsciously hold negative attitudes towards black persons

based on stereotypical assumptions concerning persons of colour. Finally, and perhaps most

pervasively, racism exists within the interstices of our institutions. This

systemic racism is a

product of

ndividual attitudes and beliefs

concerning blacks

and

it fosters

and

legitimizes those

assumptions

and

stereotypes

(McMurtry

& Curling,

2008a,

p. 238, emphasis mine).

3 A variety of scholars and activists have critiqued the choice paradigm because it rests on essen

tially individualist, consumerist notions of 'f ree' choice that do not take into consideration all of

the social, economic

and

political conditions

that

frame

the

so-called choices

that

[immigrants]

are

forced to make" (Smith, 2005, p. 99).

4

Psy disciplines are often used as a way of quelling resistance to social oppression.

An

example

of this in The Review: "The Behavioural Monitoring and Reinforcement Program is another

school-based intervention

that

has shown positive results among juvenile populations. t targets

students in the seventh

and

eighth grades from low-income,

urban,

racially mixed neighbour

hoods

and is designed to challenge youth cy1ticism

about

the outside

world and related feelings

of hopelessness

and

alienation (McMurtry Curling,

2008a,

p. 180, emphasis mine).

s

Recommendation number 28 reads:

Children's

Mental

Health:

This issue affects many aspects

of the roots: the stability of families and the ability of parents

to

work and parent, how youth

develop

with

their peers, how they

do

in

school, how they interact with

the

justice system

and



322 Social Justice, Madness, nd Identity Politics

their life chances overall. We believe that one or more associat ions with expertise in youth

mental health should be retained immediately to prepare a plan for universal, community-based

access to mental health services for children and youth for the earliest possible implementation.

They should also prepare plans for all interim investments

that

are feasible within the limits of

the available professional expertise in Ontario. In a province with a health budget of $40 billion

and a youth incarceration budget of $163 million, we believe that the $200 million estimate of

the cost of providing universal youth mental health services

is

manageable within this govern

ment's mandate (McMurtry Curling, 2008a , p. 380).

6 Scientific and statistical

truths

are continually called upon to justify the need for psy interven

tion in The Review One in five of Ontario's children and youth experience[s] a mental health

or behavioural disorder requiring intervention. . . . However, only one in five young people who

need mental health services receives them (McMurtry Curlin

g

2008a, p. 70).

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