True North

In the last few weeks there has been much wailing and gnashing of teeth in the Star Tribune over the fact that so many minorities are incarcerated. Oh to be sure, our friends on Portland Ave have many answers to the problem, all of which involve throwing more of your hard earned dollars at a problem that they refuse to correctly or fully identify. Oh they gloss over it, but they don't hit it.

Without a change in course, Minnesota will need to build a new prison for 1,000 inmates every other year from now until 2030.

And the number of black people arrested in the state will nearly double by 2030.

And too many children will be raised by single mothers barely getting by.

Emphasis mine. Let me throw a few statistics your way.

70% of youths in state operated institutions come from fatherless homes. (US Dept Justice Sept 1988 report)

71% of all high shool drop outs come from fatherless homes. (Nat'l Principles Association Report)

80% of rapists with anger problems come from fatherless homes. (Justice & Behavior vol 14 p. 403-26)

85% of all youths in prison come from fatherless homes! (Fulton Co. GA Jail Populations, Texas Dept of Corrections)

85% of all children who show behavior disorders come from fatherless homes. (Centers for Disease Control)

90% of all homeless and runaway children come from fatherless homes! (U.S. D.H.H.S., Bureau of the Census)

Are you sensing a trend here. We are dooming generations of children to poverty and to prison because we, as a society, are encouraging fatherlessness! Fathers, the society has declared, are expendable! We encourage divorce, we encourage people to get on a welfare system that keeps dads out of the picture, we are told that men are are unnecessary to getting pregnant thanks to in vitro fertilization. Single women are able to have children without ever knowing who the father is.

Here is a thought for our friends on Portland Ave. Rather than putting more money into a program that has so badly failed generation after generation of young inner city men, we need to get a program that encourages young men and young women who have children to get married and get some sort of a job that will allow them to succeed. We need to make sure that these families encourage their children to stay in school so that they have the skills necessary to get a decent job that will help them support a family.

We simply must quit subsidizing crime and fatherlessness if we are ever going to survive as a society.