November 10

Smell you later San Antonio. Smell you later forever.

The Greyhound ride from San Antonio to Austin was a short one but it was memorable thanks to one Jonathan Pena. Jonathan was a pleasant, clean-cut Mexican kid who just happened to have been released from a juvenile prison after serving a year-long sentence for drugs and firearm offenses. Both Jonathan and I didn't like San Antonio, but I had the feeling he might have had a worse time of it than me.

He had been bounced from Austin, to Houston and then finally to San Antonio over the course of a year, because he was unable to peacefully co-exist with other inmates. He explained to me how if you were small you had to "beat the shit out of people" so they knew you weren't a pushover. Jonathan was 18, but had been in and out of correctional facilities since 15.

He wasn't bashful about showing me the accoutrement of life behind bars. He had a laminated OFFENDER card with his name, prisoner ID, and a terrifying photograph of him, shaven-headed, glaring into the camera. His most proud possession however, was a printout of the report which ended up putting him in solitary confinement for six weeks. In the section labeled "reason for confinement" a prison officer had written"inmate got into a fight with Rodriguez Benigno; said fight resulted in injuries to Rodriguez too serious for first aid".

"But Jonathan," I said. "You seem so nice."

Jonathan explained that he hadn't been at fault. This Benigno character had jumped him in the rec yard, clocking him in the face with a paper-weight inside a sock. True to character Jonathan then had to "beat the shit out of him".

The subsequent six weeks with no visitors, no recreation time and even worse meals than usual hadn't been pleasant but Jonathan believed that had he not made an example out of Benigno he would have been picked on again and again. So in some ways I think we all have a lot to learn from Jonathan Pena. At the office, on the train, or even at the supermarket, it's time that we, as a people, stop letting everyone else make our lives difficult. It's time to start beating the shit out of people.

There was also a young girl on the bus who told me that her friend, aged 17, had already given birth to five kids. That's amazing. Even the perma-pregnant teens of Caledonian Road would be impressed at that kind of rapid-fire spawning. She was also keen to talk about how tough it was financially, for a single-mother to raise that many children.

I was reminded of something Johnny Trask had said in New Orleans. A lot of the girls in the poor neighbourhoods, he said, couldn't see the point in getting a job when it was possible to get paid more in welfare cheques after having a baby. "These are some ignorant peoples", he said. Harsh, but coming from a former drug-dealer in New Orleans, oddly fair.

So, how hard is this single-parent malarkey? This 17-year-old mum with five kids. Let's assume she belongs to the 37 million people living in poverty in the United States. Apparently that means, in a household containing six people (five of which are infants), she has to bring in less than $27,000 anually. If she falls short of that hurdle, she technically classifies as living below the poverty line - as it is defined by the US Census Bureau in 2007.

The average income defecit for a family living in poverty in America is about $8000. If we apply this to the 17-year-old with five kids it means she is $8000 short of the $27,000 needed to not be poor in the eyes of the government.

However in America, or at least I think so, a lot of welfare benefits are not counted as part of your income. Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, low-income energy assistance, and many more, none of it is cash so none of it gets added to your income when the people at the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programme work out just how needy you are. Theoretically, you could make up a lot of that $8000 in social security benefits but not have it register on anyone's radar.

On top of that if our girl has a job that pays at least $15,000 (much less than the McDonald's median wage), she can receieve an additional $4,700 in tax credit because of her kids.

Now obviously it's not an easy life. I can't assume that single mothers are having a big old laugh at the taxpayer's expense in Texas - where it's harder than elsewhere to qualify for cash assistance of any kind. But then if it's so hard and unpleasant why are so many girls in Texas rushing to get pregnant? A national report in 2007 found the state has the highest teen pregnancy rates in the country.