>>I'm curious. Say there is an inner city area with lots of disaffected unemployed youth and a bit of a crime problem. Say that the community leaders come to the authorities and say that if there were only a Youth Center it would be possible to get youngsters off the street, give their idle hands something to do, rechannel energies productively etc etc. Say that the authorities have their doubts, but decide to allow the benefit of the doubt and establish a Youth Center. And say that within 6 months the so-called 'Youth Center" is a hangout for druggies using it as a distribution center and a good place to strip cars.
>>
>>How much blame would you attribute to the criminals? How much to the leaders who insisted that the Youth Center is a good idea and that they could control it? And how much to the authorities who allowed themselves to be convinced?
>>
>>Seems to me that some people would blame Government for all of it, apparently holding the leaders and criminals blameless because the problem couldn't have occurred if the authorities hadn't created the Center.
>
>And in all that skirmish/ruckus/rumpus or whatever silly word they use, everybody forgets that there wouldn't be much of a problem had the young had a future ahead of them, jobs and a few dozen notches above poverty level. That's somehow always too far out of the picture. You blame the government for youth programs absence or failure, or blame the youth for this or that, or blame the crime for being too well organized, or blame the lawmakers for making it a crime at all, but please don't ask why were those kids on the streets in the first place, don't mention jobs, future and other things not mentioned in polite company.

Interesting perspective, but not completely accurate. Here, the areas with the best schools and the wealthiest parents living in the nicest neighborhoods (many gated communities of 500,000+ homes) have the worst drug problems. The drug and truancy and general trouble-making runs from the poorest to the wealthiest.