New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu’s idea of solving the city’s growing crime problem is apparently lecturing gang members on the impact of their criminal behavior.

Emily Lane at the Times Picayune reported on the meeting between about 18 gang members in the city and Landrieu, as well as a slew of other public officials and members of Landrieu’s administration.

The Times Picayune’s article goes into length about how the meeting is part of Landrieu’s “group violence reduction strategy,” where basically criminal are talked to about their criminal backgrounds in a hope that they choose a different lifestyle.

Most of the comments on the article point out the too-nice tone that the supposed solution puts on the gang members, as if lecture meetings with criminals will really change much or reduce crime in the city.

The gang members, though, were essentially told that if they kill someone, they’re going to ruin their mothers’ life. And if they kill someone else, they’re going to ruin someone else’s mother’s life.

However, the meeting apparently failed to mention the biggest aspect of individuals choosing a criminal lifestyle: The fatherless family.

The statistics on the criminal population in the country and the single mom households that they come from are absolutely astonishing.

Back in the late 1980’s, some 70 percent of juveniles in prison did not have a father. Those numbers could have only grown since then being that single mom households are even more widespread today.

And in the late 1990’s, 72 percent of juvenile murderers did not have a father and 60 percent of rapists came from fatherless homes.

Of course, the policies of welfare, public housing and more welfare pushed by Democrats has done nothing to lift individuals these low-income, sometimes single-mother households out of poverty. This, though, never gets mentioned anywhere.

Democrats, though, never discuss the breakdown of the family because it makes them uncomfortable because they’re largely responsible for it. The loads of public housing, welfare and great society programs only help the fathers who run off and leave their families behind.

Democrats’ policies perpetuate the breakdown of the family because the breakdown of the family means more government social workers to help these broken households and more welfare. That helps the government social worker, not the broken family.

Landrieu’s approach to crime in the form of meeting with gang members is odd enough. But, perhaps even odder is the fact that many of these young people engaged in criminal activity come from broken homes is never mentioned, much less discussed.