Criminalization Of Homelessness And Crime

Homelessness is much more than not having a home. Most of the time, homelessness is not having any hope and chance. It is a crisis that continues to impact millions of American people every day. A crisis that gives them no choice but to sit on the streets and try to survive each day with extreme optimism. However, they are being criminally punished for such actions that they have no choice but to do it. The innocuous action of sitting on the streets and sleeping on the streets somehow is viewed as a criminal act. A number of resources wasted for criminalizing such harmless action are gratuitous. The government has two branches of law regarding homelessness in the United States. One branch is helping the homeless people to access shelter, food, and etc. The other branch is outlined to criminalize homeless people. Homeless people who do not have any place to go are forced to live on the streets in order to survive. Criminalizing homeless people reveals that it is actually quite inefficient, expensive, and most importantly it infringes the rights that they are entitled to.

With states closing many of its mental facilities in the communities, there were a lot of people in need of outpatient care who fell through the cracks of the system and ended up in prison. Prison is where many of them died from inadequate treatment. Prisons were suddenly receiving inmates with the following types of mental illnesses: Schizophrenia, bipolar, and deep depressions. These prisons just did not provide these inmates with any medication during their incarceration. Because the community based health services is lacking, and patients aren’t receiving sufficient outpatient care, it makes the effectiveness of deinstitutionalization a serious problem. Without the availability of 24/7 psychiatric services that are well structured, I believe that deinstitutionalization is what is accounting for the increase of the mentally ill inmates in the correctional facility.

Accessibility to affordable housing for the homeless in an issue that not only influences the impoverished, but people of all races. The insufficiency of stable housing forces individuals who are facing extreme poverty, at times, to make choices that are out of their control. The loss of employment and distressful events that have occurred in their lives can eventually lead to a person or a family becoming homeless.

Many individuals experience homelessness do not have certain needs, including affordable housing, adequate income and health care. Some homeless persons may need additional services such as mental health or drug treatment in order to be securely housed. This research paper will discuss what homeless means, various ways in which individuals become homeless, trends, laws that effect the homeless , and do decriminalization of the homeless community help or hinder the situation.

Today, it seems almost incomprehensible that so many people with serious mental illnesses reside in prisons instead of receiving treatment. Over a century and a half ago, reform advocates like Dorothea Dix campaigned for prison reform, urging lawmakers to house the mentally ill in hospitals rather than in prisons. The efforts undertaken by Dix and other like-minded reformers were successful: from around 1870 to 1970, most of the United States’ mentally ill population was housed in hospitals rather than in prisons. Considering reformers made great strides in improving this situation over a century and a half ago. Granted, mental hospitals in the late 19th and early 20th century were often badly run and critically flawed, but rather than pushing for reform of these hospitals, many politicians lobbied for them to close their doors, switching instead to a community-based system for treating the mentally ill. Although deinstitutionalization was originally understood as a humane way to offer more suitable services to the mentally ill in community-based settings, some politicians seized upon it as a way to save money by shutting down institutions without providing any meaningful treatment alternatives. This callousness has created a one-way road to prison for massive numbers of impaired individuals and the inhumane warehousing of thousands of mentally ill people. Nevertheless, there are things that can be done to lower the rate mentally ill persons are being incarcerated. Such

On any single night in America, there are 610,042 people without a home (SIRS). Just think about how much space that would take up in prisons for people who are not causing a crime but are just without a home.Criminalization of homelessness is becoming a popular and widespread topic throughout the US. States all over America are beginning to make laws that prevent homeless people from living in public spaces. Homelessness may be temporary, chronic, or perpetual. The growth of homelessness within and outside of cities puts a new strain on shelters and has led to an increase in panhandling and loitering. Some people think these aspects of homelessness should be criminalized. Those who disagree say criminalization would only worsen the problem

One of the most discussed topics around the world is homelessness. Each and everyday more and more people become homeless. People around the world have tried numerous times to resolve this dilemma. This situation is growing and it 's starting to spiral out of control. One solution that 's getting popular the more we let this situation grow is that criminalizing the homeless is good. People cannot criminalize the homeless. Homeless people should not be criminalized because they have nowhere to go, they have it hard enough, and putting them in jail will solve nothing.

One can blame the criminalization of the mentally ill on deinstitutionalization. Deinstitutionalization began in the 1950s, when state mental hospitals began emptying patients and moving them back into the community. “Deinstitutionalization drew enthusiastic support from fiscal conservatives interested primarily in saving funds by shutting state hospitals, as well as from civil rights advocates who believed that mental patients needed to be “liberated,” (Torrey, Kennard, Eslinger, Lamb, & Pavle, 2010). By the 1970s, there was an increase in the number of mentally ill individuals in jails and prisons. According to Adams and Ferrandino (2008), prison inmates tend to have the same disorders as the inmates in the general population. The most common mental illnesses in the inmate population are depression, schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder. In their article, Adams and Ferrandino go into detail about mentally ill offenders in

Homelessness has been around for a long time, but crimination of the homeless is a topic that just occurred recently. When criminalization came about there was two groups in the U.S., one side opposed to it and the other supported it. The group that opposes criminalization of homeless people are advocates who believe that criminalizing homeless people will only worsen the situation and cause more problems to begin with, make our nation as a whole look bad, and violates their rights. Another reason why a person advocates against the criminalization of homeless people believe in what they believe is that they had a personal experience relating to this subject or out of concern for the citizens who reside in this country. Instead of wasting the

Hansi Lo Wang of National Public Radio reports that as of nine months ago, New York City’s homelessness rates have reached record-breaking heights. Reading his report, I was not surprised by the trend; the real-estate market has no regard for low-income families and individuals, and according to Wang’s report, this is especially true in New York. (Wang) The Coalition for the Homeless describes housing affordability in the city as a crisis, disproportionately affecting African-American and Latino people. Children have been hit the hardest by the rising homelessness rates. (Markee) What I hadn’t expected to learn while researching New York’s situation is this: the city’s crime rate is lower than it was last year by 5.6%. (Wang) I was inspired to examine why I, along with residents of New York City, jumped straight to the conclusion that higher homelessness rates would coincide with higher crime rates. I became alarmed by the assumption that homeless people would make the city “menacing and unlivable”, as the New York Post suggests, and how quickly I had come to it. (Post) According to surveys, New Yorkers believe that their city of declining crime rates is actually becoming more dangerous. (Wang) My opinion on the situation in New York quickly developed from that point on in my reading. Criminalizing homeless people will not

Jails have been described as “de facto mental hospitals” because they have filled the void created when state psychiatric hospitals began closing in the early 1960s through a process known as deinstitutionalization. Supporters of deinstitutionalization thought the process would help individuals suffering from a mental illness live more self-reliantly while being treated by community mental health programs. However, the federal government did not provide the necessary funding to meet the mounting demand for these programs, leaving numerous untreated. Individuals with serious mental illnesses are often poor or homeless and are likely to have substance abuse problems. Therefore, when they are left untreated, they are more likely to commit minor crimes that have been the focus of law enforcement in recent years (H. Richard Lamb and Linda Weinberger).

In 2014, the Central Florida Commission on Homelessness released a new study showing that, when accounting for a variety of public expenses, Florida residents are paying $31,065 per chronically homeless person every year they live on the streets (“Leaving”). This study had tracked public expenses accumulated by 107 chronically homeless individuals in central Florida. These costs ranged from criminalization and incarceration costs to medical treatment and emergency room visits that the patient was unable to afford. This seems like a really expensive way to deal with the problem when there are cheaper alternatives.

Police have opened an investigation on a possible serial killer on the loose. There have been reports from the homeless saying that they have seen others going off with an unknown figure in the dark nights.

While Homelessness isn't a crime, it poses obviously concerns (health, safety) for everyone including the homeless folks themselves. The city seems to bypass the issue and has truly never been tasked on providing a solution to help. With Folsom's continued expansion, the issue will only grow right beside us. I've stopped to speak to the seemingly homeless folks who are all classes of homeless; addicts, poor, gave up or just lost with 85% determined not to change their way of life no matter what help is provided. I've also spoken to officers as well, who's wrestled with the issue of only being told by leadership that being homeless isn't a crime. Folsom leadership needs to partner with outlets who understand the issue and the premise of a hand

Homelessness has always been a problem, occurring in cities across the world. For example, homelessness became a problem “in the 1980s, as housing and social service cuts increased. This was in part a consequence of the transfer of federal dollars to a huge military buildup and consequent large budget deficits” (Donohoe). The government spent all the money on the military, leaving none for the housing; therefore people became homeless. Also due to “A lack of affordable housing and the limited scale of housing assistance programs” ("Homelessness in America - National Coalition for the Homeless") homeless people can’t look to any one for professional guidance. This has created and contributed to the housing crisis for the homeless. Homelessness can make individuals “often [experience] feelings of isolation, [and] homelessness can also increase your chances of taking drugs or experiencing physical or mental health problems” (“Impact of