Economist.com God meets Mammon

Oct 18th 2001 | MILWAUKEE
From The Economist print edition


The profit of turning thugs into programmers



A brother who could spare a dime
MILWAUKEE'S South Side is not a promising place to start a business. The city has a 60% high-school dropout rate and proportionally twice as many murders as New York. After he had buried his 28th gang member, Brother James Holub, a Jesuit, looked for a way to stop the killings. Arguing that “nothing stops a bullet like a job”, he decided to turn youngsters from local street gangs into programmers.