KJ highest US poverty rate, census says [Kiryas Joel, New York]

The connection between poverty and crime is fatherless “families.” Those who grow up living with a married mother and father are at a low risk for criminal activity, irrespective of family income.

Better way of putting it is that crime is culturally induced not poverty induced. A morally high community can be materialistically poor and crime free. What throws most people off on this is that most US communities are not homogeneous and thus have a mixed culture (or lack there of). This town is culturally homogeneous.

Better way of putting it is that crime is culturally induced not poverty induced.

I disagree. "Culturally induced" is vague terminology that implies a complexity not supported by what is known about the men (overwhelmingly men) who commit crimes. They don't have nebulous cultural factors - they have no fathers.

There are plenty of kids who grow up with no father who never have trouble with the law. Those who are fatherless who also have the highest levels of criminality are those who grow up in areas where the concept of a family consisting of a father married to a mother with kids born in wedlock is foreign to the life and expectations of the inhabitants. That's a cultural trait. The trait doesn't induce criminality any more than having a weird first name induces criminality. Both codistribute with a culture that values doing whatever, whenever, in as easy a manner as possible with as little cost to oneself as possible, all the while trying to acquire a look of status through various types of bling (whether clothes or cars). Such a culture is deficient in dedication, deferral of immediate gratification, long-term goal setting, perseverance, reliability, and honesty, all of which are necessary to long term financial or career success.

I agree. It is not the state of not having a father, it is being in a subculture which does not value the traditional family. So we have an increasingly wealthy society (over the long term) which is trending towards increasing levels of barbarous violence.

Isn’t this the town where the Hasidic Jews live? I think it would be the next place to Gitmo to try the terrorists. Of course, these Hasidic Jews seem to consider themselves above and beyond the law, not really a part of the greater US society.

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