PITTSBURGH -- Friday's "Poverty in Western Pennsylvania" segment begins in a part of town that goes by various names, including the ghetto, the hood or the projects.

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Watch Jon Greiner's Report

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No matter what you call it, Homewood is considered the poor side of Pittsburgh. It's a place of vacant homes, boarded-up businesses, weed-filled lots and trash-strewn sidewalks.

But even though it might have been nearly invisible on your radar, tens of thousands of people live there.

Unfortunately, many of those who live in Homewood end up in the Allegheny County Jail, where, while on the outside, nearly half the inmates were living below the poverty line.

In some prison populations, that figure's as high as 70 percent.

"When I see things I want, I want them like right there, right there, and if I can't do it, I'll do anything to get it," said one Homewood juvenile.

"Most of it is due to poverty," said counselor Charles McClelland. "Most of it is due to lack of not having resources, not having the wherewithal to do the things that they see, may it be on television, videos, and they want that experience."

"It was always rough for me," said one juvenile offender. "Like, it was just me and my mom. My father, he was never there, but I always saw kids with stuff I wanted but could never have."

But some juvenile offenders have learned that improper actions have consequences.

The Community Intensive Supervision Program of Allegheny County, located on Penn Avenue in Wilkinsburg, can help juveniles escape being locked up by spending six months in the program.

They wear electronic monitors and are drug-tested. Seven days a week they're tutored, do community service and are mentored by counselors in everything from how to get a job to how to make better decisions.

"They see life as their immediate got to get it now, have to have it now, can't wait tomorrow," said McClelland. " That perception we have to change."

McClelland said the program helps and that fewer than 10 percent of those who make it through the program are arrested again.

Obviously, not everyone living in poverty is a criminal, though. Poverty might lead many to crime simply because of the staggering statistics of one out of nine people living in poverty in Pennsylvania.

Another statistic indicates more than half of prison inmates grew up in fatherless homes. But the problem isn't just one of not having a role model, it's one of a cycle of poverty.

Larry Davis is the dean of the University of Pittsburgh's School of Social Work.

"There's an expression that says it's hard to be that which you have never seen," Davis said. "You see, you have so many kids who've never seen a worker in the family or a consistent worker in the family or a high-income worker in the family. And I think the way to build families is to employ men."

Taili Thompson, who grew up on Pittsburgh's North Side, agrees. He spent time in prison for drug and gun violations.

Speaking from experience, he tells young people they can break out of poverty through education.

"The things that you take, that you get in the street and think might get you out of poverty for that moment, can always be taken from you, and it's taken from you," said Thompson. "So I try to tell the kids knowledge, knowledge and education. They can't take that away from you. And those are the components that will get you out of poverty. The material things can be taken from you at any given time."

Thompson said he believes trade unions should partner with schools so that those who don't want to go to college can come out of high school with enough knowledge to be a carpenter, a plumber or an electrician.

Rashad Byrdsong, of Pittsburgh's Brother to Brother group, also believes in education, but said it's time to try something more radical, such as having the CDC declare poverty a disease, and commit the resources to fight it.

"This is a social disease, and this is a social plague that we see," said Byrdsong. "This should be a public health approach to how we deal with the conditions in our community. And once it becomes a public health approach, then we can garnish all the necessary resources to address the problem. I don't think we have addressed it at that level yet."

Poverty might lead to crime, but crime also leads to poverty.

Businesses can't operate in an area of lawlessness, and you get once-thriving communities dying a slow death while waiting for a solution.

Davis believes that nobody chooses to be poor or to be born into their situations. But everyone can choose to help do something about poverty.

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