Ok, I’ll bite a little. I’m not from BC but live two provinces east from there and we have similar problems but not nearly as bad.
One of the causes of this is inter-generational trauma and the chain reaction that this causes. In my province a significant fraction of homeless and drug-addicted people are First Nations (for non-Canadians: aboriginal, “Indians” although we don’t use that term much). Our government has done horrific things to this population; significantly worse historically, although some of it still persists today. Here’s how the chain reaction persists:
- a child in the 70s was forced to go to a Residential School where they were separated from their parents and culture and frequently endured physical and sexual abuse.
- that person leaves school broken. They have complex PTSD and no supports. They start doing drugs to forget the pain. They get pregnant.
- maybe not right away, or maybe immediately at birth, the government takes their child and places him or her into the foster care system. Some of the parents in the foster care system are great, many are not and treat it as a way to get additional income every month while doing the bare minimum to raise the child. Many children in the foster care system suffer their own abuse.
- To manage the PTSD from being in the foster care system without significant mental health support they start doing drugs…
Repeat ad nauseum.
I have several friends (saints, really) who work in the Ministry of Social Services who genuinely care and want to help change things by providing support etc but the ministry is perpetually understaffed and underfunded. Many go into that line of work bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to make a difference, and after a few years end up bitter and jaded.
While I partly agree with you on the hedonic treadmill part, it does also change the externalities of the situation. Someone who has a home (apartment, homeless shelter, whatever) might still choose drugs but they’re probably not going to choose to sleep under a ragged blanket on a park bench.
It’s an incredibly complex problem. What happens to someone who uses drugs in public when that is criminalized? They can be fined (which they have no means to pay) or they can go to jail for a bit. So now they’re in jail and meet more people who come from similar situations. Our prisons are also full of drugs (how?!?) and are definitely not the place to finally have a chance to work on your mental health. People then get released with new friends and more PTSD.
I don’t have the answers by any means, but around here at least our government was responsible for a huge amount of the damage that was done years ago and continues to be responsible for perpetuating its effects.
Jail is not actually about rehabilitation. Its use is to separate criminals from law-abiding citizens in society. A drug user may have good intentions but they will more likely to involve themselves in crime to feed their addiction.
For deterrence, I think it does a decent job for most of the popularion. Without elaborating too much, there are several things in the Canadian Criminal Code that are illegal but that I personally believe have no moral or ethical guilt associated with them and are also victimless. Some of them are things I would love to be able to do, but I don’t because I have zero desire to spend any time in jail. This doesn’t necessarily apply to people who are habitual offenders though.
On the protection of society side of things, yeah, we have a bunch of people who are going to be in jail for a long long time and really shouldn’t be part of the general population. We also have a bunch of low-level habitual offenders who are basically “catch and release” and they continue to go around stealing bicycles and sunglasses to feed their meth addictions.
And then there’s rehabilitation… which… wow. Not really doing so great on that front.
These people spent centuries evolving a culture and were violently forced into a Western European one. Do we have any evidence a Western European culture will ever work for them?
We assume that all people can live in all cultures but I think that’s naive - chestertons fence and all that. Is there any historical evidence that diverse democracies work? There’s ample literature to the contrary.
Here’s the fun part: we didn’t even give them a hope in hell to adapt. It’s not just “will our culture ever work for them” it’s “will a culture that systematically tried to eradicate them for 200 years and then switched to maliciously marginalizing them ever work for them”?
If it’s ever going to work, it’s still going to take time. The last of the Canadian residential schools (where First Nations children were put after being forcefully taken from their parents) closed in 1995. In many cases we’re only one generation removed from that atrocity. It’s still the case that many reserves don’t have reliable access to clean drinking water.
One of the causes of this is inter-generational trauma and the chain reaction that this causes. In my province a significant fraction of homeless and drug-addicted people are First Nations (for non-Canadians: aboriginal, “Indians” although we don’t use that term much). Our government has done horrific things to this population; significantly worse historically, although some of it still persists today. Here’s how the chain reaction persists:
- a child in the 70s was forced to go to a Residential School where they were separated from their parents and culture and frequently endured physical and sexual abuse.
- that person leaves school broken. They have complex PTSD and no supports. They start doing drugs to forget the pain. They get pregnant.
- maybe not right away, or maybe immediately at birth, the government takes their child and places him or her into the foster care system. Some of the parents in the foster care system are great, many are not and treat it as a way to get additional income every month while doing the bare minimum to raise the child. Many children in the foster care system suffer their own abuse.
- To manage the PTSD from being in the foster care system without significant mental health support they start doing drugs…
Repeat ad nauseum.
I have several friends (saints, really) who work in the Ministry of Social Services who genuinely care and want to help change things by providing support etc but the ministry is perpetually understaffed and underfunded. Many go into that line of work bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, ready to make a difference, and after a few years end up bitter and jaded.
While I partly agree with you on the hedonic treadmill part, it does also change the externalities of the situation. Someone who has a home (apartment, homeless shelter, whatever) might still choose drugs but they’re probably not going to choose to sleep under a ragged blanket on a park bench.
It’s an incredibly complex problem. What happens to someone who uses drugs in public when that is criminalized? They can be fined (which they have no means to pay) or they can go to jail for a bit. So now they’re in jail and meet more people who come from similar situations. Our prisons are also full of drugs (how?!?) and are definitely not the place to finally have a chance to work on your mental health. People then get released with new friends and more PTSD.
I don’t have the answers by any means, but around here at least our government was responsible for a huge amount of the damage that was done years ago and continues to be responsible for perpetuating its effects.