Community-minded criminologist to bring skills back home
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Bermuda’s gang dynamics and youth violence are to be researched in depth by a student criminologist “eager” to return to the island as an agent of positive change.
Frankco Harris, 39, is in his first year of doctorate studies in criminology covered by scholarships at St Anthony’s College in Oxford University — and, after 17 years away, is looking forward to coming home and getting to work.
He comes with top academic credentials as well as abundant experience in how cycles of poverty, violence and other socially entrenched obstacles can lead to trouble.
Mr Harris said: “I went to rehabilitation in the UK, where there were safe houses for people to get help.”
He believes the island could “get creative with potential partnerships with the UK” to address the roots of gang crime.
Mr Harris said that Bermuda’s incarceration of criminals was in dire need of better rehabilitation services to keep offenders from “going right back into their familiar circles”.
“I look at some of these guys and I know they have done horrific things but I see the humanity behind it.”
He added: “There are people we could give space off the island, to grow and evolve.”
Mr Harris’s plan for research into the evolution of gang-related youth violence in Bermuda will focus on the unique “islandness” underpinning gang dynamics, in a field he describes as “island criminology”.
“I’ve had my own interactions with the criminal justice system, experiences of addiction, mental health issues; you name it,” he said.
Growing up in Middle Town in North East Hamilton — among a string of areas in Bermuda with bad reputations, that tourists were advised to avoid — he said he set his sights early on becoming “a hotshot barrister”.
Life, however, had other plans.
Struggling with inner demons, Mr Harris dropped out of law school in his second year and spent “seven or eight years deejaying and partying”.
“It got really dark,” he added.
Mr Harris is well-versed in the discontents of island life for many young men and counts himself deeply fortunate for the exposure to education and the outside world since he moved to Britain in 2007.
“I thought the problem was the island and I ran like a bat out of hell,” he said.
“But I realised the prison was in my mind. There were so many generational crises that I had to break and heal from.”
Mr Harris’s experience of Bermuda goes back to days before the term “gang” was applied as commonly as in recent years, when a surge in gun violence changed the narrative.
“Growing up, we had a crew or a posse that hung out. But there weren’t gangs; they weren’t labelled as that.”
He said gang violence had evolved with the changing socio-spatial dynamics of the communities that produced them — including the use of the term “gang”.
Mr Harris noted tremendous changes brought by the complex and changing spiral of violence and incarceration, including the end of the informal tradition of young men loosely affiliated with criminal activity being able to openly hang out and socialise at the roadsides of their own neighbourhoods.
“With the infighting between gangs, you do not want to be sitting outside waiting to be shot,” he said.
“You have guys that belonged to a gang, but don’t live there any more. They’ve gone more underground. The socio-spatial dynamics have changed.”
He said an island brimming with opportunity in a narrow range of key industries could inadvertently fuel gang violence among those who found themselves disenfranchised.
“You have young men who can’t have it in any legitimate way. So we sell drugs and use violence, as a way to reclaim power for ourselves.”
Mr Harris told The Royal Gazette that he started at Oxford in October and submitted his thesis plan for gang research in Bermuda.
He added: “It’s Oxford. They’re going to pick it apart, push you to go further.”
In his second year of studies he plans to do a “deep dig” of research in Bermuda into the island’s gang violence, including the intergenerational aspect.
“It is a complex problem,” he said. “I have digging to do and I am not limited by anything such as government policy.
“I have absolute freedom to explore. Bermuda does not fall naturally into any categories.”
Mr Harris’s experience includes prison mentorship, volunteering as a criminal justice recovery practitioner and, more recently, serving as a trustee for a criminal justice charity.
Now he looks forward to bringing that understanding back home, potentially including lecturing on the topic at the Bermuda College.
Mr Harris comes home regularly in the summer, mainly around his June 24 birthday, and is back over the festive season for the first time in “nearly 13 or 15 years”.
He is enjoying decompression from ambitious studies driven by experiences of adversity, his insight into the uniquely island nature of Bermuda’s gang culture, and a deep need to advance a fairer and more compassionate criminal justice system.
“I would really like to see more robust social services for people in custody and in prison,” he said. “Research is its own thing but I also want to see more rehabilitative services.”
He enjoys spending time with his father, Frankie, and was able to clear up one frequently asked question.
His name is a ringer for Franco Harris, the American football running back who died a year ago and whose career with the Pittsburgh Steelers included the epic “Immaculate Reception” touchdown in 1972 — to this day, one of the most famous plays in the history of the sport.
Mr Harris laughed and revealed that he had been “traumatised since a young boy” because of his link to that well-known name in American football and was asked about it recently.
“My father’s name is Frankie and my grand and older family members used to call my father Frankco,” he said. “It’s a coincidence.”