

Is It Now a Crime to Be Poor? - gnosis
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/09/opinion/09ehrenreich.html?_r=1

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acabal
This puts into words really well what's been stewing in my brain the past few
years. Having spent the last few years traveling the world and seeing the many
different ways people live, it's sometimes a bit of a shock to come back to
the States and having to check if there's a nearby police officer before
jaywalking across an empty street or enjoying a beer outside in the sun.

The more I leave and come back, the more it seems to me that, as this article
states, we punish, ticket, fine, and incarcerate for the slightest of
"offenses", things that in other places would be chalked up to "live and let
live," or at worst, a verbal warning. There's the commonly cited statistic
that we have more citizens in prison than China does. A country needs laws,
but there's certainly a difference between laws that keep peace and laws that
are petty and domineering.

All of it (among other factors, not least of which are health care and wild
militarism) adds up to an environment that I'm increasingly less inclined to
return to. For a country that prides itself on its freedoms, I'm constantly
surprised at how successful here people are at imposing their desired behavior
on others.

~~~
phlux
My ex is from the Philippines, she used to say "Why do you always say America
is the land of the free? If you have a party that's too loud the cops come,
you get tickets for parking anywhere, you get in trouble for crossing the
street, you get fined for everything! Where is the freedom? Why are there so
many laws dictating what you can do?"

------
Zak
While most of the issues raised by the article are entirely valid, I did
notice one point with which I have to take issue:

 _Flick a cigarette in a heavily patrolled community of color and you’re
littering_

Cigarette butts are litter, and there's the only reason I can think of for
treating them differently from other forms of litter is that they're often
_burning_ when discarded and have the potential to start fires. Unlike many of
the other behaviors cited as criminalizing poverty, this one is entirely
voluntary. It is not, in any way a necessary consequence of being poor.

------
czDev
I live in San Francisco, and I voted for the recent sit-lie ordinance. I
would've have done so had I not recently been working in the civic center
area, and come face to face with the dirty reality of homelessness. The
sidewalks smell like urine, people are belligerent and drunk or passed out
often. I was punched in the face while waiting for a bus outside of work. A
lot of the opposition to sit lie used the rallying cry "Sidewalks are for
people". I agree; they're for me too. And I don't want a bunch of drunks
sleeping on my sidewalks; dirtying them up

~~~
linuxhansl
So you want homeless people to be jailed, because you like a clean side-walk?
I find that... Strange.

I walk by a typical homeless sleeping spot every morning, and while I do not
enjoy the smell, my first reaction is to wonder: Why are these people out
here, why do they have no home, why is there no toilette for them to use, etc,
etc?

How about donating some money to groups like Glide and other organizations
that help the homeless? That's what I do.

~~~
rtra
Why indeed. Where I live we have vacant free shelters where one can get a bed,
a shower and a meal, and yet there are those who absolutely insist in pan
handling for their next bottle. A sad picture.

~~~
gnosis
Have you ever spent a night in a shelter?

More to the point, have you ever been mentally ill and spent weeks, months, or
even years in shelters?

~~~
rtra
I haven't done any of those things. Yet I'd wage it would be better to live on
a shelter than on the streets, unless one has some serious psychological
demons, in which case an hospital with specialized care should be preferable.

------
Semiapies
1) "Poverty" and "homelessness" are entirely different things. Conflating them
is simply stupid.

2) There's actually a HUGELY valid point, here - in many jurisdictions around
the country, it's basically illegal to be homeless for reasons described in
this article.

People have to sleep, whether they can pay for a place or not. Protecting
private property is one thing, but what do people expect the homeless to do if
you chase them off of supposedly "public" land and carry out what amount to
raids on homeless shelters?

~~~
Dylanlacey
Honestly? Die. Or, more realistically, stop being. Whether that means stop
being homeless or stop being alive is entirely irrelivant.

I believe (Because I can't speak for them) that these laws come about because
people judge the homeless and/or feel guilty about them. Either you see them
and you feel angry that "They're messing up the park by sleeping there! They
don't pay taxes!" or you feel guilty/uncomfortable (Because 'that could be me'
or 'why doesn't someone help them?')

The only way to 'get rid' of the problem is to make them go away, and since
killing them would be unacceptible, the next best thing is just make it
illegal for them to be anywhere you have to encounter them being all homeless.

~~~
Semiapies
Or at least "not be where I can see them".

Of course, people won't admit when that's their thought process.

------
shawnee_
_It turned out that Mr. Szekely, who is an ordained minister and does not
drink, do drugs or curse in front of ladies, did indeed have a warrant — for
not appearing in court to face a charge of “criminal trespassing” (for
sleeping on a sidewalk in a Washington suburb). So he was dragged out of the
shelter and put in jail._

The utter insanity of this is astounding. There are so many actual criminals
that law enforcement officials could expend their efforts on, but instead
they're raiding homeless shelters in the middle of the night. Why?

Homeless shelters might house blue collar criminals, but in order to alleviate
the "cost" of blue collar criminals, the law needs to be more aggressive in
finding and stopping the white collar criminals. White collar criminals
(Bernie Madoff, the NAR, etc.) are the usually the underlying cause of blue-
collar crime. Blue collar crimes tend to be about survival; white collar
crimes are about greed.

Disclaimer: I have been in a place where I've seen it up front and know not
all homeless people are drunks or derelicts.

------
sankyo
If you are unable to take care of yourself, then the state has a
responsibility to take care of you.

However, with freedom comes responsibility, so if you cannot be responsible to
take care of yourself then it follows that you should lose some freedoms too.
They should not be free to mill around corners drinking and doing drugs, using
the sidewalk and street as a toilet.

Here in San Francisco we have many street people and most of them are not
capable of taking care of themselves. Most have mental illness, drinking
and/or drug problems. It would be nice if someone could triage the ones who
have potential to be rehabilitated. As for the ones who cannot be
rehabilitated, they should be warehoused somewhere where they are not a danger
to themselves or others. As of today, they are warehoused in the streets, and
it is lose-lose for everyone. Everyone seems to blame Reagan for shutting down
most of the mental hospitals. I do not know to what extent that is true.

Overall I fear that there are now too many people in the wagon and not enough
pulling it.

~~~
blueben
Warehoused? How do we prevent them from leaving the warehouse? Maybe we need
some fences and armed guards.

And now that we've prevented them from leaving, how do we keep them from
fighting and misbehaving? Maybe we put them all in separate rooms so they
can't get at each other.

Congratulations, we've just created a prison and made it a de facto crime to
be homeless.

------
kongqiu
How can this be hacked?

I'd suggest improving education, making it easier to get involved in politics,
taking an approach in which different remedies for ($homelessness, $drug
abuse, etc.) can be tested instead of assuming our legislatures or courts know
best.

