"We expect much of you": enlisting youth in the policing of marginalized communities.

Chapman-Nyaho, Selom ; James, Carl E. ; Kwan-Lafond, Dani 等

Abstract

In this paper, we examine a police summer program for youth from marginalized communities designed to both provide valuable experiences and opportunities as well as improve the problematic relationship between marginalized youth and police. Using the concepts of racialization, governance, and interest-convergence, we consider how such institutionally sponsored programs socialize youth into a value system that fosters self-governance and restraint, particularly in the case of youth who, because of where they live, are considered to be "at risk." Hence, they are subjected to interventions that operate in subtle ways to regulate them into what are deemed appropriate values and beliefs. We found that after six weeks of working with the police, the attitudes of the youth changed from avoidance to enthusiastic endorsements of police practices. In this way, the program worked to advance the institutional interests of the police without the organization having to confront or adjust any of its own practices and assumptions. Ultimately, the program, with its focus on attitudes, behaviour, and opportunity, promotes and achieves the kind of reform that never questions structural and systemic inequalities.

Resume

Dans cet article, nous examinons un programme estival organise par la police de Toronto pour les jeunes de communautes marginalisees, concu a la fois pour leur offrir des occasions et des experiences utiles et pour ameliorer la relation problematique qu'ils ont avec la force publique. A partir des concepts de racialisation, de gouvernance et de convergence d'interets, nous constatons comment ces programmes, parraines par les institutions, les socialisent en leur instillant un systeme de valeur qui les encourage a se prendre en mains et a se controler, surtout dans le cas de ceux qui, en raison de leur lieu de residence, sont consideres comme " a risque ". En consequence, ces jeunes sont soumis a des interventions qui fonctionnent de maniere subtile afin de les convaincre d'adopter de bonnes valeurs, ou ce qui est juge comme tel. Nous constatons qu'au bout de 6 semaines de travail avec la police, leur attitude a change : ils passent de l'evitement a une approbation enthousiaste des pratiques policieres. Le programme a fait ainsi progresser les interets institutionnels des forces de l'ordre sans que l'organisation ait eu a se remettre en question ou a ajuster ses propres pratiques et methodes. Finalement, en mettant l'accent sur les attitudes, le comportement et les possibilites qui leur sont offertes, il favorise et obtient un type de reforme qui ne questionne jamais les inegalites du systeme et des structures.

INTRODUCTION

In July 2011, media, politicians, parents, senior police officers, and community members were invited to meet the approximately 150 youth who were to spend their summer working within the Toronto Police Service. The Youth in Policing Initiative (YIPI) is a program designed to give youth from Toronto's priority neighbourhoods (1) summer employment working in various police divisions. It is thought that the program would provide these youth with opportunities and direction that they might otherwise lack since they come from socioeconomically disadvantaged neighbourhoods. The program is also seen to provide the youth and police opportunities to get to know each other, thereby dispelling any negative stereotypes that may exist between the two.

During the launch ceremony, Police Chief William Blair told the youth, "The work you do will make a difference. You will help us serve the people and this city and you will help us improve the quality of life for every citizen" (Toronto Police Service 2011). He continued by stressing that the youth would "learn new skills that will help you with your future aspirations. You will also learn about the value of public service to the community and to the city.... We expect much of you." Police Services Board chair, Dr. Alok Mukherjee, claimed "this program helps to build future leaders in neighbourhoods across Toronto," adding that the youth should be proud of the contributions they were making to the city and their communities that were, in turn, very proud of them. Provincial Member of Parliament, Glen Murray, told the youth and attendees that "Public service is the highest expression of our own society and it is what makes society civil and our city livable." He said that police officers "express the highest calling of citizenship" and praised the YIPI program for connecting these officers with "young people who, in many instances, have life experiences that would have given them reasons hot to have hope, not to have faith, and not to see a brighter future." Noting that the youth were courageous for their decision to work with the police, Murray went on to say that they would have the opportunity to work with "some great leaders and role models."

It is impossible to doubt the sincerity of these remarks, and difficult not to be impressed by the sight of 150 predominantly racialized youth ready to embark on a summer program that the young participants speak of in overwhelmingly positive terms. One could not help but be struck by the discourses of hope, opportunity, citizenship and responsibility that structured the comments of the speakers. Here you had a group of youth from Toronto's priority-identified neighbourhoods, often portrayed as marginalized and disadvantaged, being told that they had just been given a great opportunity. But this opportunity came with a cost: responsibility. And this responsibility was, in essence, the responsibility to conduct themselves properly as representatives of youth, their neighbourhoods, and now, the police. As one city councillor remarked a year earlier during the 2010 YIPI launch, the youth would be able to go back to their communities and tell people "what it means to be contributing members of society."

At the 2011 launch, two former YIPI participants also spoke about their experiences in the program two years earlier. One explained how YIPI had become "like a family for him," as he recounted his experience, being bullied in school and growing up in a single-parent family. The other participant explained that she "grew up in a neighbourhood where police officers are not viewed in the greatest of ways. After my summer with the YIPI program, I could not wait to tell everyone how wrong they were" (Toronto Police Service 2011). Judging from the positive reception these youth received, and the enthusiastic support for the program from the police, city and provincial politicians, and community members, many in attendance seemed encouraged by the fact that YIPI continued to exist to guide and shape these "at-risk" youth into responsible and grateful young adults--in essence, into good citizens.

YIPI is, in many ways, a remarkable and remarkably successful program that can help to address the often contentious relationship between marginalized youth and police. It gives youth a valuable summer employment opportunity, and it gives youth and police opportunities to "get to know" each other, thereby helping to reduce the social distance between police and youth. It allows both to experience each other in a non-conflictual context. But how might the close encounters between the police and youth influence their perceptions and understandings of each other?

In what follows, we will examine how programs such as YIPI, which set out to meet the social and economic needs of "at-risk youth" and build positive police-youth relations, from the critical race theory perspective, can be interpreted to show how the program actually operates to entrench and privilege the institutional interests of policing. We explore this question with reference to research we conducted with participants in the 2010 program. In the research, we conducted interviews and focus groups with police officers, supervisors, and youth, and administered surveys at both the beginning and end of the program. As participant observers, we observed all stages of the YIPI process: recruitment, applications, job interviews, employment, and graduation.2 The rationale behind our methodological approach was that the interviews and focus groups would allow us to recognize not only the extent to which the youth's attitudes towards the police changed, but to also note the nature of that change. We wanted to know, from their experiences, how much their attitudes changed and how the very way they conceptualized and talked about police and policing changed. This experience allowed us to gain a comprehensive picture of how the program was administered and its impact on the youth and police participants. This paper introduces a critical reflection on our original research.

We begin with a discussion of how programs designed for "at-risk" youth are caught up in racialized assumptions and anxieties. "Youth at risk" are positioned as in need of extraordinary attention and guidance, especially from professionals and "responsible adults." Their geographic location serves as proxy for racialized anxieties resulting from the disruptive potential of marginalized youth. We go on to discuss how the YIPI summer employment program is premised on a need to guide, govern, and surveil young people from priority areas, and, in the process, protect and advance the material, moral, and psychological interests of the police.

THEORETICAL CONSIDERATIONS

According to Critical Race Theory, racialization is a perspective that "recognizes the complexity of racial dynamics" in contemporary society by exposing and deconstructing "seemingly 'colorblind' or 'race neutral' policies and practices which entrench the disparate treatment of non-White persons" (Stovall 2008, 244-245)-something that is "central to the way people of color are ordered and constrained" (Trevino et al. 2011, 7). Racialization also draws attention to the process by which ideas about race--an admittedly socially constructed category--and racism achieve a certain "normality" in North American society (ibid., 9). The "permanent and pervasive nature of racism" is something Charles (2011) claims is exacerbated by the "chorus of denial" about racial elements in supposedly egalitarian societies (63).

By "bringing race discourse to the forefront of informed discussions on civil society" (Trevino et al. 2011, 8), racialization provides insight into how well-intentioned attempts to intervene in the lives of marginalized youth may actually produce and sustain racial subordination. Constraint and subordination often typify programs involving educational support, guidance, and mentorship, which James (2012) asserted are frequently advocated to combat marginalization. He claimed that often the application of these interventions become so routine that they end up concealing the structural nature of inequality, instead locating disadvantage in the cultural and social practices of racialized youth (4).

As such, these interventions constitute a form of governance which Fox and Ward (2008) defined as "the guidance or control of an activity, in order to meet a specified objective" (521). They outlined three broad perspectives of governance within sociology: interest-based accounts in which governance is thought to be shaped by influential groups with materially-based interests; value-based approaches, which assess the extent to which politics and the state are reflective of institutionalized values and culture; and governmentality, "a 'micro' approach that examines the 'mentalities' of government and the impact of governance on the subject-positions of those who are governed" (521-522). Scholars working within this third perspective generally concern themselves with the relationships between power, knowledge, and subjectivity. Focusing on the "conduct of conduct," governance scholars consider how power constructs and shapes "systems of knowledge" that influence people's behaviour and their understanding of "how to live a 'moral life'" (524). According to Garland (1999), this framework attends to not only the forms of rule authorities put in place to control specific populations, but also to the ways in which these populations internalize specific beliefs and practices. It is, in essence, a set of techniques by which state authorities act through rather than on the designated individuals and communities to render them governable (15, 21). Rather than relying on overt methods of control, governance works to subtly align the attitudes and beliefs of targeted populations with the material and social requirements of the governing institution.

In their article, "Governing the Young," Ericson and Haggerty (1999) discussed how discourses of being "at-risk" are used to extend interventions beyond strictly traditional notions of policing. The police become one among many institutions--including, and especially, schools--that classify and manage youth through indirect methods of classification and intervention. Youth, particularly racialized and marginalized youth, are subjected to a variety of discourses and persuasions aimed at understanding and subsequently improving their lives and future opportunities. Raby (2002) wrote that "except perhaps for childhood, adolescence is one of the times of life that is most overdetermined" (431); and later she pointed out that "young people's selves are constituted through techniques that foster self-governance" (2005, 74). Ideally, this self-governance leads to youth embracing "a certain kind of self, one that is restrained, docile, and firmly located within hierarchy, property relations, equality, gender, and age" (Raby 2005, 75). Through discourses of risk, youth are governed by linking notions of rights and opportunity to questions of conduct, restraint, and respect for authority.

Kelly (2000) wrote that "the crisis of youth-at-risk is a key marker in debates about youth" (463) and that identifying youth as "at-risk" and subsequently mobilizing around this designation regulate and recode "institutionally structured relations of class, gender, ethnicity, (dis)ability and geography" (469). This manufactured crisis serves to make youth and their parents themselves responsible for their situation and, at the same time, justifies invasive surveillance of risk-designated populations. Youth programs, such as YIPI, engage in this type of work to the extent that they stress individual responsibility and proper conduct as prerequisites to accessing opportunities which are considered necessary to improving the life chances, or potential success, of marginalized youth.

As a program, YIPI claims to provide an opportunity to youth that will also work in the interests of the police in ways that help to not only improve relations between police and marginalized youth but also to promote the Toronto Police Service as a potential career option--an "employer of choice." This can be considered interest-convergence, a concept that, first articulated by Derrick Bell (1980), proposes that measures promoting racial progress are only accommodated to the degree that they also support elite white interests. Referring to the situation of Blacks, Bell stated: "The interest of blacks in achieving facial equality will be accommodated only when it converges with the interest of whites" (523). The 1954 U.S. Supreme Court decision that prohibited state-sponsored school segregation (Brown vs. The Board of Education) served as a reference for Bell who argued that:

   the Court's long-held position on [issues of segregation] cannot be
   understood without some consideration of the decision's value to
   whites, not simply those concerned about the immorality of racial
   inequality, but also those whites in policymaking positions able to
   see the economic and political advances at home and abroad that
   would follow abandonment of segregation (524).

According to Bell, for many whites, the principle of racial equality was sufficient, motivation to support school desegregation, but that, by itself, was insufficient to bring about reform.

In this context, programs that promise movement towards inclusivity or equality are structured in ways that are least threatening to elite interests. As such, while people may agree to measures providing opportunity to those deemed less fortunate, few are willing to engage in action which may result in a loss of status or privilege for themselves (Bell 1980, 522). In his contribution to the conception of interest-convergence, Jackson (2011) contended that the factors that work as incentives for people to engage in progressive action operate on the basis of at least four disaggregated interests: material, emotional, psychological, and moral (439-442). While Material Interests involve actions that result in tangible economic benefits, Emotional and Moral Interests are more subtle and contribute to individuals feeling a sense of wellbeing and moral triumph over their actions as they use their privileged position to help others (441). Finally, Psychological Interests refer to the assurance gained when practices and outcomes reaffirm individuals' fundamental worldviews. Essentially, Interest-convergence considers how those in privileged positions tend to be supportive of change that often benefits them, but at the very least, does not threaten or challenge their social and economic status. As Milner (2008) claimed:

   The point is that people in power are sometimes, in theory,
   supportive of policies and practices that do not oppress and
   discriminate against others as long as they--those in power--do not
   have to alter their own ways and systems, statuses, and privileges
   of experiencing life (334).

Programs and measures, such as YIPI, that are designed to mutually benefit youth and police, are not necessarily bad. But focusing on racialization, governance, and the interest-convergence principle allow us to critically examine how these types of programs can be, often inadvertently, structured to ensure that the interests of the powerful are protected and promoted. The Youth in Policing Initiative benefits both youth and police by bringing them together in a non-confrontational context. However, the claim that this then leads to greater mutual understanding obfuscates the fact that the unequal power dynamic between the two results in youth being more likely to adopt, embrace, and promote the interests of the police.

THE YOUTH IN POLICING INITIATIVE AND ITS GENESIS

The Youth in Policing Initiative (YIPI), established in 2006, is a program funded in partnership with the Ministry of Children and Youth Services, the Toronto Police Services Board, and the Toronto Police Service. Every summer, YIPI hires up to 150 youth to work in police divisions across the city. The program begins with a paid weeklong orientation session designed to introduce youth to the Toronto Police Services and for them to hear the expectations of the program. After the orientation week, the participants are placed in one of 45 different divisions where they work 35 hours a week for six weeks of the summer. Participants are paid slightly above minimum wage.

YIPI was initially conceived as a response to the social and employment needs of marginalized youth who reside in Toronto's priority areas, and was occasioned, in part, by the concerns of 2005--the so-called "summer of the gun"--when some 52 homicides involving guns occurred in Toronto. The establishment of YIPI also coincided with a number of reports on the social and economic conditions of youth which precipitated youth violence in Toronto.

The reports Poverty by Postal Code (United Way 2004) and Strong Neighbourhoods: A Call to Action (United Way 2005) identified an increasing concentration of poverty in specific Toronto neighbourhoods, noting that this situation, in part, was a product of public investment in services and facilities that were not keeping pace with the demographic shifts that were occurring in the city. Calling for a place-based approach to services, both reports suggested that government agencies, ministries, and departments needed to invest in strategies aimed at strengthening what they identified as "priority" areas of the city. In their report on school safety following a shooting inside a Toronto school in one of these "priority areas," Falconer, MacKinnon, and Edwards (2008) stressed that the focus on discipline and zero tolerance was failing to decrease concerns of violence in schools and communities. The Road to Health report, commissioned by the Toronto District School Board, indicated that "hope needs to be restored through programs and initiatives that create prospects for success for youth who are currently on the outside looking in" (6).

And following their "review of the roots of youth violence" in Toronto for the Ontario provincial government, McMurtry and Curling (2008) called for a move towards strengthening neighbourhoods and community agencies and an engagement of youth by providing them with hope and opportunities through positive and constructive community initiatives. The report indicated that while Ontario is a relatively safe province, there was an increasing concentration of violence and hopelessness found among youth who are often from racialized minority backgrounds and reside in disadvantaged communities (102). Commissioners McMurtry and Curling emphasized that these trends were most evident in neighbourhoods characterized by higher concentrations of poverty, structural manifestations of racism, family breakdown, and the lack of both adequate transportation and public space for gathering and recreation (141). In this regard, they asserted that "limited resources must be put where they will have the biggest impact on the roots of violence involving youth" (144). In this context, YIPI is a program that seeks to enhance the relationship between marginalized youth and the police and, by extension, police and these priority-designated communities.

RACIALIZATION, GEOGRAPHY, AND "RISK"

As stated earlier, the youth accepted into YIPI were all required to reside in priority or marginalized neighbourhoods. One of the key criteria for determining "priority" was the disproportionately large concentrations of immigrants and racialized minorities in these neighbourhoods. In what Wacquant (2008) described as the "moral panic about the 'ghettoization' of postcolonial immigrants in their urban periphery" (200), marginalized youth become the targets of special attention, singled out for interventions designed to serve "at risk" youth. The selection criteria for YIPI reflects these anxieties. While two-thirds of the participating youth were born in Canada, the majority were born to immigrant parents and over 93% were nonwhite, with the largest proportion (almost half) identifying themselves as Black. While the perception was that these were "at-risk" youth based on where they lived, in reality, according to their interviews, few of these young people experienced significant problems at school. And none of them had a history of trouble with law enforcement. This has to do with the fact that to participate in the program, the youth could not have a police record or outstanding criminal charges. Nevertheless, despite the actual behaviour of these youth, their geographic location in priority areas positioned them as "at risk" and therefore in need of intervention.

Indeed, a number of police officers, even as they questioned the youth's participation in the program, admitted that the young people assigned to them were not, according to one officer, "problem kids." "These are good kids;' claimed another. One officer agreed that in the priority neighbourhoods, you would more likely find "Parents who are struggling," but added that you will "get that a lot in other neighbourhoods as well." But other members of the service who seemed more invested in YIPI would readily employ the language of "at risk" youth in their assessments of the youth. They emphasized the notion that while the youth may not seem "bad," without programs like this, their environment and lack of opportunity might lead them down a wrong path.

One supervisor commented, "You never know what would happen," adding:

   People get to where they are based on their surroundings. If we can
   take someone from these priority neighbourhoods and be a positive
   influence on their life and they in turn can go out and influence
   someone and turn them from going down the path of destruction, we
   can accomplish a lot and I think we have done that. You never know
   what would happen.

Another supervisor concurred, claiming that it was the program that was responsible for the youth's good behaviour because of the healthy positive environment provided to them. In other words, the youth were seen as pre-disposed to risk, hence the need to provide them with the right environment that would help to mitigate deviant behaviour:

   Given the opportunity, these kids are making the best of it and
   people are confusing it with [whether they are good or bad kids].
   And it's not. Give a kid an opportunity, encourage them, give them
   a healthy, positive environment and then you see what happens.

This supervisor claimed that with youth, "There's a level of being influenced by your peers that we try to facilitate."

Insofar as these youth's place of residence positioned them as being at risk, and hence, as Kelly (2000) would say, posing "dangerous possibilities;' then they were in need of "increased surveillance of, and intervention into, [their] lives by regulatory authorities" (463). Therefore their very presence has them in need of intervention, for they are "at risk" of being deviant. "Risk" is transferred from geographic location, or neighbourhoods, to the bodies of the youth who inhabit these areas. And once established, these risks must be effectively managed.

YOUTH GOVERNANCE

One of the guiding assumptions behind YIPI is that youth from priority neighbourhoods and police hold negative stereotypes of each other. The expectation is that bringing them together in a program that allows them to "get to know" each other will help dispel these attitudes, thereby improving police-youth and police-community relationships. There would be a mutual exchange. In practice, however, while we observed a significant change in the attitudes of the youth towards police, this change was not mirrored by changing police attitudes. In essence, the youth came to like the police more, while the officers we interviewed demonstrated more ambivalent and unchanging attitudes towards the youth. In fact, the attitudes of the youth who participated in YIPI were effectively brought in line with those of the policing institution.

While the youths' opinions varied and ranged from those who had an outright dislike for the police, to those who claimed they had never paid much attention to the policing of their neighbourhood, one consistent theme voiced by most of the youth was that they had very little direct contact with police officers or knowledge of policing before participating in YIPI. The participants spoke most frequently of being intimidated by police and how they were initially nervous about working with the police. As one female participant put it, "I was scared of the police, I was." And another, claiming to be scared about going to work in a police station, commented, "I thought they were going to be like strict, kind of like: 'This is what we're going to do, this is the way we're going to do it, he quiet'." One male participant added, "I thought they'd be all like don't talk to me," and another male added, "I thought the police were going to be really tough people."

That participants had very little contact with police and even fewer encounters with individual police officers prior to their participation in YIPI seemingly contributed to the distance they kept from police. By the end of the six-week YIPI program, however, the participants who had spoken of being intimidated by the police all claimed that their experience had greatly changed their perceptions. One youth said emphatically, "I personally love everybody here!" Almost every youth we spoke with made some kind of comment about coming to the realization that the police were normal, or even nice, people. They remarked, "When I go to my station they're all nice, they like to play around. They're just normal people." Another agreed, saying, "They're really down to earth--very personable and stuff." A male participant said, "Now I know police are regular people" And a female participant added, "Now I see how they are; it's like they're human just like us. They're doing a job just like everybody else."

The original reluctance many of the youth felt surrounding police officers and policing at the beginning of the summer was replaced by wholesale endorsements of police officers. In large part, this was accomplished by officers going out of their way to make the youth feel comfortable. The youth seemed to separate the individual personalities of the officers from their role as representatives of the police. The preponderance of comments about police being "normal" or "just like us" powerfully counteracted any negative assessments the youth had based on the history and representation of policing in their neighbourhoods and among their friends. Their perceptions were changed in a way that was both subtle and effective.

The officers' sense of humour was something that the YIPI participants really seemed to appreciate. A few of them told lengthy stories about funny things officers said or did. The influence of the interpersonal relationships the youth believed they had formed with police officers was also noted in their journals. One participant wrote after orientation week, "Listening to other police officers' experiences really showed me that police officers were as real as us, and that opened my eyes to see that officers are human beings too." Another commented that after spending a day with two officers and going to lunch with them, "They are no longer 'just police officers' but they are my friends." And another participant concluded her journal entry with the observation that, "police officers are human beings, who have opinions and feelings just like everyone else.... I am amazed to see how kind-hearted and dedicated each and every worker is."

While these reactions may seem almost trivial, the enthusiasm with which the participants talked about their changing perceptions was profound. These interactions had an effect on all of the participants with whom we spoke. Perhaps the most remarkable aspect of the youths' changing attitudes was that they were the result of what would seem to be the rather benign actions of their police supervisors. As well as the humour of the officers that was frequently cited, the YIPI participants frequently gave examples of being taken to lunch or coffee, or having an officer they did not know speak to them in the elevator as having a significant impact on their feelings towards the police. There was a sense of awe that these people, in powerful positions, were paying attention to, and in some cases, helping them.

Many of the police officers also recognized and mentioned the significance of including the youth in fun or interesting activities. One officer expressed surprise at her youths' enthusiasm, claiming "I was surprised at the end when they said this was the best job ever because I had given them such tedious tasks. I thought they were going to hate it, but they enjoyed themselves." Others talked of taking the youth to meetings or different events. Officers were often willing to provide job references for former YIPI participants and this was something that was highly valued by the youth. The interpersonal aspect of the program was the issue that most profoundly affected the youth's perceptions of and attitudes towards the police. The most striking statement came from the male participant who had previously stated that he thought police officers were "assholes." When asked how much his perception of the police had changed, he said it had completely altered his views "because now, when I see a cop car, I don't look to see who's in it, I look to see who's driving it."

The youth who now looked to see who is driving the cop car has effectively switched allegiances. He no longer saw the police as an institution; rather, he viewed police officers as individual people to whom he could easily relate. But of course, police officers operate within an institution and their work, priorities, and outlooks are guided by that institutional cultural ethos. Rather than a mutual exchange, the officers' positive assessments of the program were largely dependent on the extent to which they believed the youths' attitudes towards police had changed. As Garland (1999) noted, the central goal of governance through governmentality is to "align the actors' objectives with those of the authorities; to make them active partners" (20). This is YIPI's outstanding achievement. Through the classification of these youth as "at-risk" and the subsequent intervention and opportunities provided to them, the policing organization effectively created a group of allies within the neighbourhoods where police-community and police-youth relations are deemed most problematic. The admiration the youths developed for individual police officers was quickly and easily translated into an increased acceptance of and endorsement of policing. One participant commented that she realized: "Police have every bit of interest in saving our communities from various harm." Another one captured what seemed to be the general sentiment when she claimed: "I have to admit that I really have been quite oblivious to what the police actually do."

This style of governance--indirectly aligning the attitudes and beliefs of youth to those of the institution--is not something that is explicitly pursued. In fact, it is more effective due to its subtle and indirect nature. Youth are exposed to police officers on an interpersonal level where individual officer's personalities are allowed to "win them over;' but they are also brought into the institution and exposed to policing outside of its enforcement capacity. Field trips to the mounted unit, the marine unit, the canine unit, and the Emergency Task Force were extremely popular with the youth because they exposed them to the more exciting aspects of policing, but in a way that was divorced from their actual enforcement function. The youth were also often included in the community relations aspects of policing. One of the most popular summer activities for the youth was their inclusion on the police services Caribana float. (3) Two of the youth discussed how, at first, they thought it would be "really weird,' especially since they were warned by YIPI supervisors to be on their best behaviour. Once they arrived, however, they were delighted by the lavishness of the officers. The first youth explained that a police officer informed her that, "You have to dance. That's a requirement." Her friend added, "And there was this one officer and he was dancing like no tomorrow. He was so funny." Throughout the program, the affability of police officers was linked to very select aspects of policing that resulted in an image of not just police officers, but the job itself, as friendly, helpful, and just.

The youth talked of how this program helped to dispel negative stereotypes of the police. A male participant said: "The media portrays the police as aggressive as this bad type of police and being here dispels everything." Another jumped in when someone brought up people's complaints about police not being involved in the community:

   See how she said that? At my division they have all these BBQs and
   everybody's there [meaning police] but barely anybody ever shows
   up. On Saturday we had one where they brought the horses and stuff
   and the old police cars and everything and about 50 people showed
   up.... People just don't want to show up.

Accordingly, as one young woman explained, it is through YIPI that they have become aware of efforts by the police to reach out to the community. As she said:

   [YIPI] opens up people's minds to what the police do. Because you
   might think the police are only out there to get you and doing
   negative things. But once you work here you see more about what
   they do. You know how people always say police stop you randomly;
   they always have no reason for stopping you? They [police] explain
   why they stop you--they might get a call or something and you might
   fit that description. They're just there to help you.

Instead of a more balanced view of the tensions between police and communities, many of the youth become ardent defenders of the actions of the police that others tend to criticize.

The youth's realization about the benevolent nature of policing come about as a result of what Jay (2003) called a "hidden curriculum of hegemony" (6). Through the program, youth were socialized into the value system of the police organization through techniques designed to foster self-governance and restraint (see Raby 2005). In this process, as Sukarieh and Tannock (2008) pointed out with reference to poor and working-class youth, their values and behaviours are "moulded and remoulded to fit functionally within industrial and post-industrial capitalist society by the enormous and complex structures and practices of schools, juvenile courts, youth organizations, psychological counseling and psychiatric treatment" (304). Furthermore, such institutionally sponsored youth and summer employment programs, like YIPI, are enticing techniques to pacify disillusioned youth and condition them into a culture of "responsibilisation and entrepreneurship" (309). The changing attitudes of the youth and their enthusiastic endorsements of not only police officers but police practices after participating in the program, was not an outcome that was nefariously designed, but it worked well to advance the institutional interests of the police.

YIPI AND INTEREST CONVERGENCE

In addition to exposing youth to police and thereby enhancing police-youth relationships, YIPI also seeks to promote the Toronto Police Service as a potential career choice for these marginalized youth, and eventually to have them act as ambassadors for the police in their communities. This might be considered an effective means of interest-convergence in that the program provided these marginalized youth with a valuable work experience, opportunities to make money, and connections with individuals and an institution that can benefit them in their future employment. At the same time, the police were able to boost their organizational image and encourage potential future recruits. The expectation is that through the employment process, both police and youth would develop greater mutual understanding and respect.

Indeed, YIPI did serve the interests of the youth who participated in the program. Most indicated that they chose to apply to the program either to gain meaningful work experience (i.e., a summer job) or because they had an interest in a career in policing that they wanted to explore. Having heard about the program from friends, family members, teachers, guidance counselors, and school resource officers, participants believed working with the police for the summer was a good chance to gain and develop the skills and connections that would help their future career goals. While at the beginning of the summer, the money they would make was most frequently mentioned as what would be most beneficial to them, by the end of their summer employment, participants mentioned that the increased knowledge about police work and the job skills they gained throughout their employment were, in fact, more significant.

In one focus group, when participants were asked how many were now considering a career in policing, rive of the eight youth raised their hands. A female participant who did not raise her hand mentioned that she had always wanted to be a social worker. To this one of the male participants immediately responded: "You can do that with the police." Even those who had other career aspirations began to see policing as an option. A male participant stated:

   Honestly, this is another career option for me but it's my second
   option. I want to be a psychologist and take either social work or
   teaching because I like listening to people and helping them with
   their problems.

But more significantly, it was the work-specific aspects of their experience on which they elaborated most. Participants expressed that, even though most of the work that they performed in their various placements was administrative-help, they gained a great deal of appreciation for the skills and experiences they were able to obtain. They believed that the skills they acquired would help them in the future. One female participant, for example, spoke of how she spent most of her time filing papers. Rather than viewing this negatively, she saw it as positive because, "It teaches you how to be well organized." Another one spoke about the work she did researching organizations and inviting their members to a police conference on diversity. She saw it as teaching her to be resourceful. Yet another called the administrative work useful because: "I can take the skills I've learned and then any office I go to I know what to do. It's easy for me." A number of participants spoke of learning to use Microsoft Excel. While these were all benefits cited by the participants and thus represent how their interests were served, it is useful to note the extent to which they also correspond to the subtle ways in which their learning, skill development, and knowledge were regulated by the police.

The police gained much from their interactions with the youth without having to sacrifice any of their interests, practices, or outlooks on the nature of police relations with youth and communities. Their role was affirmed and justified by the changing attitudes of the youth. Furthermore, materially and morally, much of the benefits accrued to the police were not only through the relatively cheap labour the YIPI youth provided, but by the ambassadorial role the youth took on. This could be seen in the reflections of the youth and officers and at the 2011 official launch. A senior police officer asked rhetorically during one interview, "Is it a good program?" and answered, indicating, "It's an excellent program, because it's giving those 150 kids that opportunity to go out there and do something." That YIPI presented a chance for both individual officers and the police service as a whole to celebrate their efforts to reach out to marginalized youth, and, in turn, change attitudes of the youth towards police, evinced much satisfaction.

The primary benefit of YIPI to the police, however, was that the enthusiasm and increased knowledge about policing the youth gained, effectively positioned the youth to be ambassadors for the police. Through winning the support and allegiance of the youth who participated in the program, the police service effectively recruited allies to enhance and promote their image within the communities where relationships with police were most problematic. For instance, with her new awareness and positive viewpoint of the police, a female participant said: "I told my friend: make sure you sign up next year because it's really good." Another reflected that he was able to use the knowledge he gained to inform his friend about how to become a police officer:

   I was able to fill in one of my friends with the requirements of
   becoming a police officer. I told him about the training and the
   college he will have to attend. I was also able to assure some
   people that the police as a whole are not bad people. They are
   regular people like everyone else and they shouldn't judge all
   police by the actions of just a few.

While working in the interest of the police service, this capacity to "teach" their friends about policing also benefited some youth in that they acquired additional social capital upon which they could call when interacting with friends, family members, businesses, other institutions, and society as a whole. While many of the youth were guarded about who they told about participating in the program--citing the negative opinions of police for their discomfort with widely advertising their summer job--they spoke of their parents' pride and their friends envy over their stimulating and respectable summer experience.

The increased knowledge they had gained over the summer, as well as the personal relationships they had formed, positioned them as ambassadors for the Toronto Police Service. While they still perceived other youth in their community to have largely negative views of the police, they enthusiastically provided other friends and family members with information about YIPI and policing in general. All of this, the police were able to accomplish without having to adjust or change any of their own practices or assumptions.

CONCLUSION

The YIPI program emerged out of an urban social context in which government and law enforcement officials sought to address, if not pre-empt, social problems-specifically crime and violence--resulting from the poverty and social isolation that were to be found in Toronto's under-serviced priority-identified neighbourhoods. As youth in these neighbourhoods are considered to be "at-risk" authorities tend to develop programs based on racialized assumptions about possible social problems and risk. In many cases, the focus on Toronto's priority neighbourhoods means that resulting programs are likely to reinscribe stereotypes about youth being in need of intensive intervention based on geography and race. Increasingly, these interventions operate in subtle ways to regulate youth into what are deemed appropriate values and beliefs including respect for authority. The consequence of these approaches, with their focus on conduct and behaviour, is that they promote and achieve the kind of reforms that never questions structural and systemic inequalities.

In many ways, YIPI has been extraordinarily successful. There is no doubt that participating youth considered it a valuable experience, and they reported a greatly improved attitude towards police after taking part. That YIPI is a valuable program is evident. It provides youth with an opportunity to "get to know" police and hopefully inspires them to actively pursue their goals and ambitions. But, while providing the youth material and social opportunities and resources, the structure and organization of the program simultaneously works to entrench and privilege the institutional interests of police. The question of why police-youth and police-community relations in these priority areas were in need of improvement in the first place remains unaddressed.

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SELOM CHAPMAN-NYAHO is a PhD candidate in Sociology at York University and a researcher with the York Centre for Education and Community. His current research interests include race, policing, youth regulation, and qualitative methods.

CARL E. JAMES teaches in the Faculty of Education and in the graduate program in Sociology at York University, and is currently the Director of the York Centre for Education and Community. His research interests include educational and occupational access and equity for racialized youth. His most recent book is Life at the Intersection: Community, Class and Schooling (Fernwood Publishing, 2012).

DANI KWAN-LAFOND is a PhD candidate in Sociology at York University and a recipient of a 2010 Vanier Canada Graduate Scholarship. Her scholarly work is in critical race studies, youth studies, and the sociology of education.

NOTES

(1.) The reports Poverty by Postal Code and Strong Neighbourhoods: A Call to Action identified an increasing concentration of poverty in specific Toronto neighbourhoods, noting that this situation, in part, was a product of public investment in services and facilities that were not keeping pace with these demographic shifts taking part in the city (United Way 2004; United Way 2005). Calling for a placed-based approach to services, both reports suggested that government agencies, ministries, and departments need to invest in strategies aimed at strengthening what they identified as thirteen "priority" areas of the city. YIPI participants are all drawn from these neighbourhoods, but the program also obtained permission to include an additional neighbourhood based on the notion that because that area is home to Canada's largest social housing project, it would contain many youth who could be classified as "at-risk."

(2.) In addition to our participation in the program's activities, we held two focus groups with 16 YIPI participants and interviewed 15 Toronto Police Service employees (police and civilians) assigned to supervise the youth. The youth were selected based on their availability, and the Toronto Police Services employees were drawn from a list of all of the employees who had direct supervisory roles for the youth and who agreed to be interviewed. We administered surveys at the beginning and again just before the conclusion of the program to note any change in the youths' attitudes towards the police. We also conducted an analysis of the journal entries all of the youth were required to keep throughout their employment.

(3.) Toronto's Caribana is an annual festival held to celebrate Caribbean culture. A week-long series of events, it culminates with a large parade of floats, costumes, and music.