I enjoyed this lede from Douglas Walker of the Muncie Star Press:

Jerry Hugh Guffey is not the first member of his immediate family to face murder charges in a case that involved a victim’s car left burning along a rural Henry County road.

The article is entitled “Several members of Guffey family have long list of brushes with law, convictions.” In Lafayette, I can think of at least two family names right off hand that fit this general description. This makes me wonder if it’s pretty much the same everywhere, with some families tending to be little criminal factories.

In any case, it reminds me of one of my favorite conversations with the late Fred Hoffman, the founding lawyer of my firm and all around terrific person. I had mostly taken over our collections practice but was relatively new to the firm, and he had been semi-retired but came back for a few months a year. He’d asked how things were going. I said, “Not bad, but I’m getting to know some of these debtors awfully well.” He laughed that great laugh of his and responded, “And you’ll get to know some of their children and grand-children awfully well, too.” Which had, of course, been his experience.

It’s not just that economic disadvantage begets economic disadvantage (that’s a fancy way of saying the poor get poorer); but also some families just pass along bad decision making skills to their kids. This is probably a strong argument, incidentally, for some sort of juvenile intervention program to give kids from dysfunctional families a fighting chance.