IN the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, there were signs last week of another disaster gripping the United States – the deepening poverty crisis in the world’s richest nation.
Amid the watery graves of thousands of New Orleans residents, gangs wreaked havoc and looted and pillaged from the stunned survivors of the natural disaster.
The human disaster is that these perpetrators are the victims of an underlying poverty cycle which is spreading to millions of Americans.
Poverty and crime rates are closely linked and both came bubbling to the surface in the path of destruction from Hurricane Katrina.
The crime rate is further exacerbated by the ready availability of guns in the United States, another issue that needs to be urgently addressed.
