The elephant in the room on the recent ACORN scandal: providing tax advice to prostitutes is a necessary social service.

No surprise at the many people who are shocked–shocked–by a social service agency working with illegal professions. “Heaven forfend,” they must think, before they call their accountants to find out how best to minimize their taxes, with a socially appropriate wink and nod whenever they cross the line from avoidance to evasion. “Truly shocking,” they think, as they drive their SUVs at 80 MPH. “What is this world coming to?”, as they count out a cash under-the-table payment to their domestic help, which is parceled out to subcontractors making subminimum wage.

Call me crazy, but I think that few of the prostitutes on the corner of 13th and H NW feel like they’re on their chosen career track. Freakonomics documented that drug dealers make McDonald’s-level wages, and live at home with their mothers. If you make your living in the black market or gray economy, it’s pretty damned unlikely that you measure your income in integer multiples of the poverty line.

Unfortunately, that conflicts with the American class war–the middle class versus the poor, protecting the status quo benefits of wealthy. The red states, seemingly forgetting that it’s their own who are most likely to be impoverished, want to see the inner city poor (coincidentally black and Hispanic) vanish entirely from social services if they break any of society’s rules. Join the standard economy, don’t use illegal drugs (unfortunately, Vicodin prescriptions are hard to come by for this group), and don’t transgress against the law.

Behavioral economics doesn’t bear them out. Sure, some people are criminals because they choose to be; some percentage of humanity is sociopathic. But the majority of low income criminals turn to that path because it’s their best option–which is to say, seeing as how this route includes low wages, and the risk of prison and violent death, it’s most likely their only perceived option.

You want to get people off of this track? Most people can’t do it on their own; you need social services to provide support. And one way to get people into that system is to have a clear hook: come to ACORN for tax and financial advice, and while you’re here, get networked into a community that can help you change things you really shouldn’t be doing.

The preferred alternative of the clucking chickens appears to be “lock them all up and throw away the key.” Yeah, that strategy has worked very well. It’s nearly impossible to buy drugs or pay for sex these days, since we started locking up more people than any other wealthy democracy.

I, too, was sickened by the ACORN videos–because what I saw was the shutting off of social services for the most needful, sacrificed at the altar of middle-class white outrage. I have little doubt that among the 400,000 families whom ACORN claims as their constituency were many people whose income was supplemented–or drained–by illegal activities, and who had no other source of advice. When you ask for social services, you’re looking for two things: help with negotiating the bureaucratic maze, and planning in order to get as close to right with society as possible.

That route is now closed; if you’re forced into prostitution, thievery, or drug trafficking (perhaps for your own habit), forget trying to get help if you want to stop. The self-styled straight and narrow community won’t let you.

What I also see are community-trained, low-income social workers, whom are now unemployed. Perhaps the advice they gave was substantially similar to what they said to the genuinely needy who came through their doors; are we to believe that they were supposed to throw them out? That is considered just treatment for a 17-year-old turning tricks in order to eat? They did their jobs, and if they did them poorly, I don’t believe that there are enough Ivy League MSWs lining up to be paid $9 an hour to work with society’s outcasts.

You can only call what happened a social offense–or a firing offense–if you have a better alternative. The loud and outraged offer none. I’m used to rank hypocrisy from this group, but I’d like to think that it was once considered shameful to be so blatantly inhumane. Apparently, no longer.