What would it take to stop Black boys from disappearing into drug trafficking networks across northern Ontario? Not more policing, argues prison abolitionist and scholar Ruth Wilson Gilmore, but more safe housing, funded schools and community spaces where youth can gather safely.
That is what a growing body of Black community leaders is arguing in response to a crisis that The Fifth Estate documentary Missing Black Boys brought into national view in January: Black boys as young as 14 are lured into gangs and sent to remote parts of the province to sell drugs.
Youth gang recruitment is not a matter of individual choice or criminality, but one shaped by inequality, institutional neglect and racialized perceptions. And punishment alone cannot solve it.
