Urban Pathways residence in Queens (photo via Urban Pathways)
Across the United States, cities continue to adopt laws criminalizing homelessness and poverty as their first line of defense against rising homelessness. According to a 2014 study of 187 U.S. cities by the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty, 100 cities have banned sitting or lying down in public places and 81 cities have prohibited sleeping in one’s own vehicle, increases of 43 percent and 119 percent, respectively, since 2011.
Criminalization of homelessness occurs in many forms. Palo Alto, CA made sleeping in one’s own vehicle a crime punishable by a $1,000 fine or up to six months in jail. In June, Saratoga Springs, NY banned sitting or lying on sidewalks. While federal courts increasingly find these laws unconstitutional, cities still adopt them, appeasing some constituents with “tough” measures disconnected from proven solutions to homelessness.
Even for cities like New York that don’t adopt these bans, criminalization persists, with similar consequences for those criminalized. City laws – such as the city transit code prohibition on lying down or taking up more than one seat on the subway - are arbitrarily enforced against those experiencing homelessness. The police also order persons experiencing homeless to “move along” not because there is reasonable suspicion they are engaging in criminal activity but because they are homeless.
Regardless the form, criminalization hurts the person criminalized, policing, taxpayers, and the community. Harm to those criminalized can include a criminal record, fines, or jail, as well as another traumatic experience added to that of being homeless. It impedes community policing, compromising the already attenuated relationship between communities and the police who are to protect and serve them. It is a waste of money, using significant tax dollars for policing and court time, and too often involving the expensive corrections system. Criminalization also accomplishes nothing for the person experiencing homelessness or the city enacting the ordinance, since these laws and their enforcement don’t address the root causes of homelessness.
It is the central cause of homelessness, the dearth of truly affordable housing, on which we must focus, doing all within our power to constantly protect low-income tenants and facilitate the tenancy of those without access to affordable housing. In New York City this includes strongly enforcing our fair housing laws, including the Human Rights Law’s protection against source-of-income discrimination. We only impede shelter exits when we allow landlords to refuse to rent to a person because they have a Living in Communities rental voucher.
In this spirit, today, the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty launches a national campaign advocating for “Housing Not Handcuffs.” The campaign has two principles: 1) To end the homelessness crisis, the criminalization of homelessness must end; and 2) All persons experiencing homelessness should instead have access to affordable housing, education, health care, employment, income, and other opportunities and services that allow all to live with dignity.
Tomorrow -- Wednesday, November 16 -- there will be a New York City launch of the national Housing Not Handcuffs campaign at the City Hall steps. The launch, focusing on homeless criminalization and affordable housing in New York City, will feature speakers including Eric Tars of the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty as well as individuals who have experienced homelessness criminalization. We will also launch a survey of those experiencing homelessness about criminalization.
You can get involved in the Housing Not Handcuffs Campaign in several ways: Attend and encourage others to attend the New York City launch on Wednesday; Endorse the national Housing Not Handcuffs Campaign; Encourage those experiencing homeless to complete the criminalization survey; Reach out to the NYC Housing Not Handcuffs Campaign at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..
Let’s end the criminalization of homelessness. Handcuffs are not the solution to homelessness; truly affordable housing is.
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Nicole Bramstedt is Policy Director at Urban Pathways. Jeff Foreman is Policy Director at Care for the Homeless. Both organizations serve homeless adults in New York City. On Twitter: @UrbanPathwaysNY & @CFHNYC.
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Senator Gianaris, the author
When I went to cast my vote, in the same polling location I have voted all my life, the line was out the door. I’ve never seen it that crowded before. At other polling sites in my district, wait times lasted up to two hours, often scuttling voters' other plans for the day or causing upheaval for families. Observing the chaos, I thought about the 34 states that have already enacted early voting, a process proven to increase voter participation and enhance convenience.
Why hasn't New York adopted this common-sense measure?
The American voting system is known to erect hurdles to participation and discourage voters in too many cases. Aside from the lack of early voting, we have other problems: in New York alone, more than two million eligible citizens are not registered to vote. This is why I introduced the Voter Empowerment Act, which would implement automatic voter registration among other needed reforms.
The enactment of the Voter Empowerment Act would solve problems plaguing our election system. We would automatically register every eligible citizen to vote through the Department of Motor Vehicles and other government agencies. In addition, voters would be able to automatically update their information, we would permit pre-registration of 16- and 17-year-olds, automatically transfer registrations of New Yorkers who move within the state, provide access to voter registration records and registration of eligible citizens online, and remove cumbersome registration deadlines to allow people to register or change their party affiliations later in an election cycle.
It is several sensible and essential pieces that we should pass immediately.
This year’s elections reminded us of the scale of the problem we’re facing. Year after year, New Yorkers become increasingly frustrated with the flaws entrenched in our voting system while too many of our representatives sit idly by. In the last year, Oregon, California, and Vermont became among the first states to approve automatic voter registration, and both President Obama and Governor Cuomo have voiced their support.
In the annual U.S. Election Assistance Commission analysis, New York State is ranked 46th in voter turnout, an embarrassing distinction routinely. We will continue to rank among the worst in the nation if we don’t act.
This rambunctious election captured the attention of millions. It's showroom feel attracted voters to the polls, increasing turnout in New York City from 2.46 million in 2012 to 2.52 million this year.
Unfortunately this was the exception, not the rule, and it’s also not a big enough jump. Too often, average Americans' voices are ignored. Electoral reform is a critical step that would help restore faith in our democracy and give our citizens a bigger stake in their government. By continuing the current outdated system, government has failed to do its part to provide voters with effective methods of convenient registration and voting.
Isolating voters does our democracy no good. The more we expand access to voting, the less we suppress voter participation through our inaction.
On November 8, more than two million New Yorkers were unable to vote for our next President despite being eligible to do so. It is time to eliminate barriers to participation in our democracy and ensure the fundamental right to vote is equally provided to all New Yorkers. I continue to urge every citizen currently registered to continue to get out and vote. We've got to make voting easier, not harder, because your voice matters.
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State Senator Michael Gianaris is a Democrat representing Astoria, Long Island City, Sunnyside, Woodside, Ridgewood and Woodhaven in Queens. On Twitter @SenGianaris.
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Red Hook Community Justice Center
Do problem-solving courts prevent New Yorkers from receiving their basic constitutional rights? Are defendants forced to make a Faustian bargain, pleading guilty to avoid incarceration when they should be challenging the legality of their arrest?
Steve Zeidman, a professor at CUNY School of Law, thinks so. In “The Treatment Court Cottage Industry & Its Unintended Consequence,” published Oct. 27 by Gotham Gazette, Zeidman argues that problem-solving courts create a “mindset of cooperation among all the institutional players” that prevent defendants from receiving their basic due process rights.
As an illustrative example, Zeidman tells a story (presented as an individual case but actually a composite) of a defendant named “CB” who is arrested for drug possession but wants to fight his case because he believes he was set up by an undercover police officer. Instead of receiving vigorous defense from his attorney, he is pressured to plead guilty in order to enter a drug treatment court. When CB decides instead to fight the legality of his arrest, he is left at Rikers Island, while his case proceeds. To Zeidman, this injustice is repeated again and again with problem-solving courts. “Countless defendants,” Zeidman writes, “stated that their lawyers simply urged them, forcefully, to plead guilty.”
Zeidman’s critique raises several important questions. Why have problem-solving courts proliferated in New York in recent years? What impact have they had? And do they in fact undermine the fairness of the criminal justice system?
The answer to the first question is simple: because they provide a better brand of justice.
Take drug courts, for example. These programs link addicted defendants to treatment in lieu of incarceration. Drug courts are among the most well-researched interventions in the history of American criminal justice reform. A national study underwritten by the U.S. Department of Justice found reduced drug use and crime among drug court participants when compared to defendants who went through regular case processing.
Nor are positive findings restricted to drug courts: researchers have also documented solid results from community courts, re-entry courts, mental health courts, and other alternative-to-incarceration programs. The human implications are enormous – thousands of New Yorkers given a second (and third and fourth) chance in life. Thanks to problem-solving courts, these individuals have been linked to potentially transformative interventions, including mental health counseling, employment training, and youth development programs.
As Vincent Schiraldi and Judith A. Greene noted recently, the number of New York City residents behind bars declined by 31,120 between 1996 and 2014, even as the city’s population increased by one million and crime rates continued to fall.
New York’s problem-solving courts played an important role in this remarkable success. New York’s drug courts demonstrated to policymakers that treatment instead of incarceration wasn't just notionally the right thing to do -- it actually makes a difference in the lives of defendants. That’s why the New York court system has made such a large institutional investment in these programs under the stewardship of the last three state chief judges. And that’s why Governor David Paterson, when announcing the reform of the Rockefeller Drug Laws, chose to do so at the Brooklyn Treatment Court. Closer to home, the Mayor’s Office has trumpeted the role that problem-solving programs have played in reducing the Rikers population.
In the aggregate, problem-solving courts have achieved demonstrably better outcomes for the clients that Zeidman purports to represent. But they have done more than just this. The research also suggests that they have actually improved the process as well, increasing defendant perceptions of fairness.
Many researchers are coming to the conclusion that the active ingredient in problem-solving courts, the element that makes them work better than conventional courts, is procedural justice.
Procedural justice is an idea, developed by Yale Law School professor Tom Tyler, that suggests that how defendants are treated is just as important, if not more, than the outcome of their cases. By treating defendants with dignity and respect – and communicating with them in plain language – courts can not only improve public perceptions of justice, they can promote voluntary compliance with the law.
This idea was tested most recently in Red Hook, Brooklyn, where my agency helped to develop the Red Hook Community Justice Center in partnership with the court system, the DA’s Office, and local defense attorneys. In Red Hook, we have altered the atmospherics of the criminal justice system in some fundamental ways: eliminating the bars in holding cells, shrinking the height of the judge’s bench so that he can look most defendants in the eyes, and improving signage so that court users understand how to navigate the building. The Red Hook judge, Alex Calabrese, also takes pains to ensure that defendants understand their obligations to the court and praises participants when they succeed in alternative programs.
Researchers from the National Center for State Courts conducted an independent evaluation of the Red Hook justice center, tracking participants in the program over the course of three years. It found that Red Hook reduced recidivism among both juvenile and adult defendants. It also found that Red Hook had improved perceptions of justice – defendants preferred Red Hook to the regular criminal court. This quote from a defendant was typical:
I went to Brooklyn Criminal Court before Red Hook, horrible place, horrible. They should do a tour there, just so people could see. I wouldn't wish that place on my enemy. Red Hook is 100 times better...[The Red Hook judge] allows you to speak...he likes to interact and get your opinion. I don't get the feeling that he's one of those judges that looks down on people. To me, he's fair, I'll put it that way. The court officers treat you like a person too, not like that other court over there. I learned that there's two different types of ways that courts treat people. You have these obnoxious goons and then you have those that look at you like, ‘ok, you made a mistake.’
Zeidman may be wrong on the merits, but he raises important warnings. Defense attorneys need to play an active role in the development and operation of problem-solving courts. And the structure of these courts should not exacerbate the coercive nature of the criminal justice system.
But make no mistake: if we want to continue to reduce the use of incarceration while preserving public safety, we don’t need to halt problem-solving courts – we need to spread the lessons from these programs as far and as wide as we possibly can.
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Greg Berman is the director of the Center for Court Innovation. On Twitter @GregBerman50 and @courtinnovation.
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