kalm wrote:LeadBolt wrote:
It would be interesting to see what % of non-violent drug offenders are living at home with young men at the time they are incarcerated, leaving those young men fatherless.
My guess is that the % is relatively low as I would expect that most of those non-violent drug offenders weren't sticking round to provide a father figure to those young men, but rather were off pursuing their own gratification.
Do you have any statistics on this?
Valid point and I don't have stat but they certainly aren't going to be at home if they're in prison.
You also need to appreciate the big picture. Single parent homes in the black community is a cultural and economic problem. Thug life and the ease to illegally make money is a part of that culture. It takes time, but removing the $ incentive from the war on drugs helps.
I agree that there is a cultural and economic problem causing this, and it is not limited to the black community as you suggest. This is exacerbated by child care payments to single Mothers, but not to 2 parent families, encouraging some males to father children and avoid the responsibility of sticking around to mentor and teach young male offspring, leading to a large increase in disenchanted, alienated young men.
Some mothers caught in this trap by being abandoned by the fathers of their children and left to provide for them and raise them alone, then seek to have more children in order to get more economic assistance, thus exacerbating the problem as even more young men grow up without male father figures and mentors.
Thus a government program that started out with the best of intentions to compassionately provide for the less fortunate and those in desperate situations, such as widows whose husbands did not return from fighting for this country or were made widows by other unfortunate circumstances becomes rather a trap.
Taking the economic incentive from this downward cycle away would help the issue of gun violence, no question. We seem to agree on the issue, but I suspect have differing cures for the issue.
