As police crack down, another glaring question is how to deal with the offenders, many of whom are minors themselves.
“I don’t feel that we should be giving up on children because this is what they are at such an early age,” said Argentino. “You can’t tell me that an 11-year-old who’s involved in this space is already forsaken.”
Some, like 764’s founder, are serving long prison sentences, but Argentino believes rehabilitation should be the focus.
Peter Smyth, a social worker with Edmonton’s Organization for the Prevention of Violence (OPV), is grappling with what that looks like.
OPV works to reintegrate extremists into society and is the first group like it in Canada working with 764 members. Both cases it has taken on involve minors who were referred by the courts on the recommendation of RCMP’s counterterrorism unit.
Smyth said he and his team are still in the reactive phase and are trying to figure out how to establish trust with those minors.
“People would look at what’s going on and the harm that is being caused, the children perpetrating on children, and think, well, they must be sociopaths,” said Smyth, adding that in his work with hundreds of youth, he’s rarely seen a case that ends up with that conclusion.
More often, he said, perpetrators have their own history of abuse and learn to detach from the violence they inflict on others.
“That’s why we look at more of this as dissociation,” said Smyth. “In another setting, with the right support and help, could they demonstrate compassion and empathy?”
He said it’s unclear what their capacity is to do further harm, “but without any intervention, there is reason to believe that they’ll continue to do this or become more entrenched in this way of thinking.”
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