Jun
19th
Thu
19th
The Best Criminals Have a Dad
I like this part from Taranto’s Best of the Web today:
The Chicago Defender notes a curious claim by Barack Obama in his Father’s Day speech:
“We know that more than half of all Black children live in single-parent households. We know the statistics—that children who grow up without a father are five times more likely to live in poverty and commit crime; nine times more likely to drop out of schools and 20 times more likely to end up in prison,” he said, as his wife Michelle and two daughters listened from the front row.
We’re certainly inclined to believe that the absence of a father makes a child likelier to run afoul of the law, but can it really be true that fatherless children are 20 times as likely to end up in prison but only five times as likely to commit crimes? That would mean criminals from intact families get away with their crimes three times as often as those raised by single mothers.