Where I live, a lot of homeless people go to jail for the crime of being... homeless (its usually a loitering charge I think). Then they get a charge for it, which, they’re obviously not going to pay. This might happen to a person 10-100 times a year. Who is this serving?
(The obvious answer is to follow the money, but a big part of the problem is the WASPy yuppies that want the homeless people out of sight but will raise a fuss if anyone tries to build affordable housing.)
In the US, everyone thats part of administering our inhumane criminal justice system should be deeply ashamed of their job. Corruption like this is just the tip of the iceberg.
This is purely anecdotal but it seems like this serves the neighborhood mostly because it discourages the homeless (I believe the official term is actually transients) from staying in the area they were occupying. Speaking to California, this sort of policy is popular with home owners because the homeless ruin neighborhoods (not a judgement, just an observation) and so in areas with especially vocal home owners (tenants complain too but less so overall) there is a certain willingness to look the other way as long as the problem is solved. Obviously this applies primarily to neighborhoods with a politically significant base of home owners since tenants tend to care much less about the quality of the area (but of course the same statistics could be explained as observations about regions which offer services and money to the homeless since suburbs and retirement communities typically lack the same public services as downtown SF, Santa Monica beach, or SD tourist zones).
He was thrown in jail on a rape charge. Fought in court, and won his freedom. Then he received a bill for having been in jail.
Making it worse, this was at a private prison, and the sheriff who put him in jail was on the board of directors for the prison. Can you spell "conflict of interest"?
What mental gymnastics do you have to do to justify putting all of the people that are coming back to society at an already huge disadvantage under crippling debt as a way to help reduce recidivism?
Taxing to exist is call a capitation tax or poll tax. It's perfectly legal in many jurisdiction and even explicitly permitted in the U.S. Constitution. Though, penalties for inability to pay such a tax might run afoul of Substantive Due Process rights, constitute a Cruel and Unusual Punishment, or some similar open-ended clause; likewise for foreign constitutions.
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[ 6.5 ms ] story [ 45.0 ms ] thread"The cost of running it is almost equal to what they bring in, he says."
"Our goal is to reduce recidivism. If we can use that money to turn around and not see them again it's well worth it"
(The obvious answer is to follow the money, but a big part of the problem is the WASPy yuppies that want the homeless people out of sight but will raise a fuss if anyone tries to build affordable housing.)
In the US, everyone thats part of administering our inhumane criminal justice system should be deeply ashamed of their job. Corruption like this is just the tip of the iceberg.
The US has the highest per-capita incarceration rate on the planet except Seychelles.
He was thrown in jail on a rape charge. Fought in court, and won his freedom. Then he received a bill for having been in jail.
Making it worse, this was at a private prison, and the sheriff who put him in jail was on the board of directors for the prison. Can you spell "conflict of interest"?
- omnicidal/suicidal acts like mass shootings
- ineffective journalism
- standard / inverted totalitarianism
- corrupt, stagnant leadership only doing the bidding of the very rich
- cruel, unreasonable treatment of average people
- atomizing and dissolution of communities
- celebrity chefs