Why Realistic Upstream Solutions Nevertheless Will Never Work

My wife brought home a bag of Homeboy tortilla strips the other day. As tortilla strips go they actually were pretty good. On the label above the name is the slogan "Jobs Not Jails." On the back of the bag is another label, this time showing photos of two of the workers, one black and one Hispanic. The Hispanic worker has a shaved head, mustache, goatee and is doing his best not to look down his nose at us in contemptuous homeboy style. He doesn't quite succeed.

Still, I'm happy to see former (or even current) gang members actually working and turning out a good product. The thought occurs to me though--why does it have to be this hard? Why do we need a Jesuit priest (the indefatigable Greg Boyle) to spend his life trying to straighten out young men gone crooked? Wouldn't it be better to solve the problem upstream?

I mean solve the problem before the boys join gangs, get tattoos, see their friends get gunned down and kill a few people themselves?

It won't happen--because that would require politicians, social workers, the universities and the media to own up to the root causes--which are: fatherless boys, single mothers, broken homes, and a welfare system that makes it possible for young girls to leave home and set up their own households on the taxpayers' dime, as long as they're a single mom.