My nephew has become a statistic, but this may not be the last statistic he becomes. His name is Michael. He has been arrested for murder and will most likely wind up in prison. I am pretty confident that is where he will die—either by his own hand, at the hand of a fellow inmate, or at the hands of the state. It will be the culmination of a long history of sad events, with plenty of blame to go around. Everybody in the family has basically known for decades that this would happen. For most of Michael’s adult life, it seems that he has had a violent temper. None of us are surprised that he wound up killing one man and almost killing another. So, why should this turn of events cause me to lose sleep? I have not seen Michael since February of 2006, when my mother died. I was still living in Germany at the time but had flown home to attend her funeral. Michael and I were at her apartment, helping to clear out her things. When he attempted to make a joke about how I kept dropping things,