Maritime Morning - Andrew Krystal

Teen girls – and boys — have been responsible for recent acts of violence in Halifax recently: at the Busker’s Festival where Police were swarmed by a youth mob when trying to make an initial arrest following a fight between girls; outside the Halifax forum, which began, apparently, when girls started fighting and ended with four security guards getting stabbed. A 16-year old male teen has been charged with attempted murder; and a bizarre attack in the Halifax Common on a 65-year-old woman by two 15-year-old girls who allegedly beat her with metal table legs for kicks – not even asking for money.

None of this is very new.

In addressing youth violence or crime in general, the right side of the political spectrum, typically, wants to see more police, tougher sentencing, corporal punishment, active deterrence; the left side of the political spectrum is the providence of the ever-present “ounce of prevention”: increased welfare, increased social services, more education, more counseling, etc

Social factors such as reduced welfare and parents that are busier and more preoccupied (but with less or the same money) also contribute to the societal malaise, a sickness cariactured and captured so well in 1962 in the novel by Anthony Burgess called A Clockwork Orange. Stanley Kubrick later made it into a 1971 film starring Malcolm McDowell.

The story deals with a sick socio path named Alex who belongs to a violent youth subculture with their own dress and language (a jingoistic idiom inspired by Soviet Russia), who, upon capture for raping 10-year-old girls and others (Alex is 15), is subjected to the “Ludovico technique” which involves inducing nausea at the idea of committing a violent act (think of a similar treatment for alcoholism where the patient vomits if consuming alcohol due to a chemical reaction).

In a way, violence is an insobriety and these punks in Halifax and in A Clockwork Orange are drunk on their own ephemeral physical power. But what author Anthony Burgess was getting at in his 1962 novel was more of a demographic fear of the coming wave of baby boomers that were washing over the system, as well as a fear of Soviet inspired mechanical violence — cruelty for its own sake.

The fact of high per capita violent crime in Halifax is of particular concern. But is pointing fingers the answer? Is compassion for the victimizers sensible? 15-year-olds know right from wrong. Why should we be making allowances by creating, assuming, a context for punk actions? Who cares? If someone is throwing a brick through my window I don’t care if he had a bad Mamma or not.

At the same time, if most these kids really did have love in their home or had been respected and returned it, they wouldn’t be getting their kicks by acts of gratuitous violence — power would come from other sources, other places. However, when a youth is lost, society must then be the parent and the prison-maker and should contend with both youth crime approaches: more policing and tougher youth crime laws, and more social services spending. 

No one can take the place of a parent (or medication if the kids need it), failing that, throwing money at it is the only other way. Please don’t tell me about “values” as they are not abundant anymore, nor did values ever serve as a  corrective. The act of gratuitous violence itself only exists in the awareness of its moral opposite.

If only we could capture them like in the novel and play Beethoven loud, and make them sick. And make them stop; hearts may be black, self-preservation may be blacker.