I recall years ago reading an essay by Charles Murray where he said once illegitimacy passes some threshold adults no longer control neighborhoods. That is, parenthetically, an argument against letting in immigrant groups that have high rates of illegitimacy and single parent households. Well, in those neighborhoods where the adults lose control adults are afraid to tell the youthful criminals to stop their activities.

A study of young, violent criminals in New York City found that they used fear and intimidation to keep adults from interfering with their criminal activities.

Almost 40 percent of the young offenders interviewed said that adults' fear of teens was the defining characteristic of their relations.

As a result, in many situations, adults ignored criminal activity by teens and young adults, findings showed.

These results suggest that one of the usual prescriptions for ending youth violence -- more informal social control by neighborhood adults -- may not be realistic in some violent neighborhoods.

Putting all the criminals into jail and keeping them there long enough to allow the law abiding to restore order is one approach that could work. If a neighborhood's law abiding adults can't restrain its youths then the criminal element needs to get put in jail in very large numbers.

"There are these somewhat naive notions that the key to reducing violence is to create these close ties with neighbors, where adults can provide informal social control over teens," said Deanna Wilkinson, author of the study and associate professor of human development and family science at Ohio State University.

"That's not going to work in neighborhoods where relations between adults and young people are governed by fear."

We need a male birth control device that youthful street criminals could be put on as a condition of probation. At least that way these thugs wouldn't knock up women to create new generations of criminals.