The New York Times and the Washington Post each featured long, front-page stories today about inner-city black crime. They are not labeled as such, but that’s what they are. And both are interesting, as far as they go; kudos especially to the Post’s series on how the District of Columbia’s policy of giving second chances to repeat violent offenders is maybe not working out so well. But neither story seriously grapples with the obvious problem that is nonetheless clearly there, just below the surface of the narrative: Boys are getting into trouble when they grow up in environments where fathers are not in the picture (and their absence is unsurprising since the mothers are not married).