Homeless in Vancouver: Crime and punishment of innocents

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      Uganda’s new law punishing practicing homosexuals with life in prison is certainly a product of regional intolerance bred by religion, ignorance, and poverty, but it also fits in with a global trend toward passing punitive laws against minority behaviours.

      Homosexuality, homelessness, spitting, wearing low-riding jeans, eating french fries on a train platform—all have become crimes somewhere in the world.

      Criminalizing otherwise innocent behaviour is a cheap, easy way for politicians to win points with voters.

      It’s certainly easier than actually doing something and the best thing. Once it’s a crime, it’s not a politician’s problem anymore.

      The rush to judge behaviour as a crime

      American professor Dr. Jon Turley rang alarm bells back in 2009 with an essay on the rush to criminalize innocent behaviour in the United States.

      When he wrote the paper five years ago, there were abundant absurd examples of criminalization: the pensioner arrested for not trimming her shrub, the high-school student arrested for eating french fries in a transit train station, or the child charged criminally for swearing at a bus stop.

      Turley showed how quick American politicians were to create new crimes and how, in the process, they were creating a kind of Gulag Americano with 714 incarcerated persons per 100,000—the highest rate in the world.

      The trend has continued unabated. Perhaps inspired by their success in the war on drugs, politicians are using criminalization as an easy fix for other difficult social problems.

      Solve homelessness by putting them all in jail?

      Consider homelessness. Characterized as a social issue, it’s a challenge to governments.

      It invites questions about the underlying fairness of society and it puts the onus on politicians at all levels of government to fund services and create solutions, such as social housing. But simply making it a crime to be homeless takes all the pressure off politicians by making it a criminal matter for the police and the courts.

      Across the United States, municipalities have passed a wide range of bylaws and ordinances to regulate and criminalize aspects of homelessness. The most common laws aim to reduce the visibility of homelessness or make it go away by barring services and erecting legal barriers.

      They usually take the form of anticamping laws. There are also more controversial laws banning the feeding of homeless people in outdoor public places.

      By now, some 50 American cities have these sorts of anticamping/antivisibility laws on their books, with more on the way.

      Take away their food

      Last Augus,t a Christian ministry in Raleigh, North Carolina, set up to offer free breakfasts in a public square, as it had been doing for six years. But that Saturday morning three officers from Raleigh Police Department prevented them from giving out the free food. A cop told them quite bluntly they would be arrested if they attempted to distribute food.

      The story gained wide visibility in social media and Raleigh’s elected politicians blamed it on a misunderstanding by city staff and police; groups were again allowed to serve food to the homeless, but the city ordinance banning the practice stayed on the books.

      In 2012, New York City banned food donations to homeless shelters on the pretext that the city couldn’t assess their salt, fat, and fibre content.

      Take away their blankets

      No blanket pardon for this hardened little criminal!

      In May 2013, Pensacola, Florida, passed a city ordinance to prohibit “camping” or sleeping rough.

      It became known as the “antiblanket ordinance” because it actually made it illegal for anyone outside to cover themselves with a blanket, cardboard, or even newspapers.

      Pensacola’s anticamping law was particularly draconian in that it criminalized almost every aspect of homelessness from sleeping under a blanket to panhandling to washing your face in a public restroom. But at no point did it explicitly single out homeless people—that would be discriminatory.

      Did that mean the broadly worded ordinance could be used on anyone? The answer from the city’s legal staff was yes.

      Anyone using a blanket or newspaper to cover themselves in public for any reason could be charged—using a newspaper to shield themselves from a sudden downpour, or laying down in a park on a picnic blanket.

      Take away their streets

      In August 2013, Columbia City, South Carolina, unanimously approved a new plan—the Emergency Homeless Response—which barred homeless people from being in the downtown business district. The city even planned to set up a hotline so local businesses and residents could report the presence of a homeless person to police.

      If they persist, fine—a really big one

      The European country of Hungary first tried to make it illegal to be homeless at the end of 2011. People found sleeping on the streets were to be initially given a warning. Repeat offenders faced a whopping fine of US$600 or a jail sentence. However the law was subsequently struck down by the constitutional court.

      The national conservative government then amended the Hungarian constitution in 2013 so politicians could have another go.

      The new 2013 law bans homeless from sleeping outdoors around certain public places, including all of Hungary’s World Heritage Sites, as well as any other homeless-free zones designated by local authorities. Those found in violation of the ban face fines, community service, and prison for repeat offences.

      The real target of this law is the Romani people who supposedly make up the bulk of both Hungary’s homeless and unemployed.

      Pass the law and pass the buck

      Almost all of these laws rely on vague wording and pretense to make their true intent arguable. And though all these laws are, in effect, mean-spirited, the politicians enacting them are not trying to be cruel.

      They’re not heartless; they’re feckless—lacking the necessary strength of character to be leaders. They can only pretend to lead by following the majority. And sometimes it’s not even clear they know how to do that.

      During a cold snap earlier this month, Pensacola, Florida, homeless advocate Nathan Monk wrote about the majority support for the blanket ban in an online petition on change.org:

      “Two years ago, when the City Council first considered these ordinances at the request of the mayor, and hundreds of people showed up in protest, the city refused to listen, citing the ‘silent majority’ that wasn’t present.”

      That cold snap saw temperatures in Pensacola drop to -6° Celsius. Mayor Ashton Hayward turned around and announced he supported repealing his own blanket ban after ”reflecting and praying”. His silent majority has continued to hold their tongue.

      Keep in mind that all the aforementioned laws sidestep actually addressing any difficult structural issues underlying homelessness. The laws do not create shelter beds or any rehabilitative services.

      They are not intended to help turn homeless people into so-called productive citizens; they are designed to turn them into criminals.

      It’s so much trouble to figure out what to do with homeless people. But everyone knows what you do with criminals: you put them in prison and then they’re not homeless, are they?

      At least no one's killing thm, right? Wrong!

      There are no countries that have made homelessness a capital offence—punishable by death—like some 10 countries have done with homosexuality, but I believe that street children in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, are still being hunted and killed by death squads for a profit—US$50 a head. Many of these murders are committed by police officers.

      And adultery is still punishable by death in at least four countries.

      The pendulum swings back on 150 years of reform

      There was a time when all sexual behaviour outside of marriage was commonly criminalized: adultery, fornication, sodomy, and homosexuality.

      It was a religious “People of the Book” thing, an obsessive concern about impurity, polluting the family bloodlin,e and male property. Beyond that, all manner of socially undesirable behaviour was harshly criminalized because it was believed that punishment equalled deterrence.

      Criminalizing behaviour reached a kind of high-water mark with Great Britain’s so-called Bloody Code which, by 1815, proscribed the death penalty for no less than 288 offences, including cutting down a young tree.

      Seems crazy and cruel to us now—and it was cruel. But lawmakers back then were following a long tradition they believed in, that punishment was an effective deterrence to crime. When it was shown to not be the case. criminal law across the Western world was aggressively reformed around rehabilitation.

      After about 150 years of progressive thought nurtured by strong Western prosperity, the pendulum may be swinging back toward retribution.

      Steering by committee or lynch mob

      And it’s a prison ship to boot!

      There’s an important difference though between yesterday and today. Past generations of legislators were acting in good faith. They were trying to do good.

      Today’s lawmakers know better. Criminalization panders to the lowest common denominator. It makes politicians looks like they’re doing something firm and decisive when in fact they’re doing nothing at all.

      I liken them to ship captains who are no more skilled than their passengers. It’s no surprise they let the other passengers tell them how to steer.

      Passing laws against difficult social issues can’t solve them or make them go away. any more than sweeping dirt under the rug makes the room less dirty, appearances to the contrary.

      And if any of this sounds familiar, keep in mind I didn’t mention Abbotsford even once twice.

      On this CBC world map of same sex criminalization the four African states that punish homosexual activity with death stand out like red-hot coals. The majority of neighbouring states, such as Uganda, only put practising homosexuals in prison.

      If you include the near Eastern countries just next door, the ugly pattern continues: four more countries want to kill queers and at least 10 more imprison them. Homosexuals are definitely not welcome in the cradles of civilization!

      • Countries where homosexuality is illegal or severely cutailed: 80+
      • Countries banning discrimination on basis of sexual orientation: 97
      • Countries where same-sex marriages are legal: 30
      • Countries with hate crime laws: 28+
      • Countries where stupidity is illegal: 0

      Stanley Q. Woodvine is a homeless resident of Vancouver who has worked in the past as an illustrator, graphic designer, and writer.

      Comments

      3 Comments

      Crime

      Mar 1, 2014 at 7:29pm

      It is always the defenseless and weak that suffer the egregiousness of the ignorant.

      Stanley Q Woodvine

      Mar 2, 2014 at 3:06pm

      Now, now Crime. You're using the sort of big words that perplex and annoy the ignorant. And when they get annoyed they pass laws.

      vancouver city hall SS storm trooper

      Mar 3, 2014 at 12:31pm

      or you can do what vancouver city hall does… just help a pal by tearing down a building for a developer, then blame an old heritage building on it…so the city can evict all the old tenants from the building… and blame it on a old chinese society … hey its easy to kick old people around.
      city hall motto: blame the victim. no one gives a shit cuz the people of vancouver are too stupid to stand up to city hall bullys.