Being on the streets is a spectrum of bad luck and bad choices. Yes, that means there are generally examples of people who are mostly one or mostly the other and plenty in between. Usually what happens is a few things go wrong at the same time from either category and life spirals out of control.
The problem is that it's hard to get people back on their feet again and the criminal justice system is quite terrible at it in general, but that doesn't mean that people never learning that there are consequences for their actions is a good thing, either.
Part of the problem is that various criminal societies have developed and need to be dismantled so as not to self-perpetuate the harm they cause to others.
If you have a home / money, a fine or brief jail time are punishment. If you don't have home / money, you won't pay a fine, your time and lack of freedom won't solve an addiction brought on by being desolate. So, a month later, a cop has wasted hours, a judge has wasted hours, and the "criminal" still can't pay the fine, is still addicted, and will waste that same time again.
tldr; A fine of $50 for someone who doesn't have money to eat is in ways as inconceivable as a $1bln fine to someone in the middle class.
that's almost certainly not true. a fine is primarily a deterrent, and failing that, is punitive. it's not corrective (or restorative), because it doesn't "correct" anything.
an example of corrective action is a burglar being required to return/replace stolen items.
So, I can say wholeheartedly it's not discriminatory against homeless or the disaffected, it's discriminates based on behaviour. Period.
If law breaking behaviour (theft, assault, etc...) exists most prominently in addicted homeless people, that shouldn't be surprising nor ignored. And it certainly shouldn't negate the laws of the land.
I lived in a van with my wife, and we didn't steal. There were people in the parks that would steal, and the police would come after them, not us. I speak from life experience.
You are helping spread a deadly lie.
I challenge anyone to prove me wrong. Go be genuinely poor, it's really easy to do. Just use a tiny amount of money to live off of. And see if it causes you to commit crimes.
Move to a single room apartment, or be homeless. It does not make you immoral or unethical or cause you to mug people or steal.
I suggest checking out The Emperor Wears No Clothes for a background behind the start of drug prohibition as a new way to discriminate and make use of bolstered police forces after the failure of alcohol prohibition, as well as prevent the disruption of several entrenched industries.
It's a short read, extremely informative, and it's available freely online here: https://jackherer.com/emperor-3/
> Go be genuinely poor, it's really easy to do. Just use a tiny amount of money to live off of. And see if it causes you to commit crimes.
That's not the correct way to look at it.
We are artificially creating crimes from things which shouldn't be illegal and which infringe upon basic freedoms, and then creating the conditions that lead to people committing those "crimes".
"Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime," as Beria says. The Drug War is a tool to, among other things, benefit the new tax-supported slave trade disguised as a private industrial prison system. Affluent citizens are usually able to circumvent the system, as designed, and thus these laws are able to discriminate against the poor while seeming "fair".
If you have been homeless, you know that there are both good and wonderful people that are homeless and rotten crooks. Neither of which adding money to their pocket would change.
The argument is about discriminatory laws and conditions forcing a percentage of those in poverty to be considered criminals. Specifically, the drug war. That was all my original comment deconstructed. We could extend the moral boundary to stealing food in order to survive provided you don't hurt anyone, but that's it.
I never made any claim that being poor causes some kind of effect on people that turns them into criminals. You're barking up the wrong tree.
I knew tons of people that did drugs on the streets (most of them) and none of them went to jail accept those that committed crimes while doing drugs.
Is there statistics somewhere that shows "x number of people are in jail for inhaling while minding their own business"?
The police are always around on the streets, they don't have time to arrest people for just "drugs". I am amazed this is the refrain still going around. Consider how many states have made weed legal now, those same states decriminalized weed decades ago. No jail for weed in a lot of places for a very long time.
If you want to talk about other drugs, and pretend like they don't lead to crimes, bring up the stats, I'd be curious to know.
I watched someone else who got caught trespassing and hunting without tags, caught with several grams of marijuana, his second possession arrest, only get a few hours of community service because he wasn't poor or youthful.
This charge has had an extremely negative impact on my life, and I did nothing to deserve it.
Your understanding of how the world works is so small and broken, you need to work on developing empathy for others caught up in the system and stop assuming that just because they are in it, they deserve it. You have no idea what police are arresting people for outside of your little town, and it's arrogant to assume otherwise. Read that book.
I didn't get into fights, I didn't argue with the police when they told us to move or leave an area, I was respectful and decent. While people right next to us caused problems and got arrested.
So, I have seen plenty of police action, and rarely was it undeserved.
I think people who don't want to take responsibility for their actions are blind to the effects they have on others and simply can't see how their actions are scary for police to deal with and feel entitled to be belligerent.
Meanwhile, my local police blotter is littered with "adolescent charged with drug possession/paraphernalia" reports.
> No jail for weed in a lot of places for a very long time.
There are plenty of fines, and if you can't pay them, you have the option of voluntarily or involuntarily spending time in jail over them.
But, I disagree that your social status decides guilt.
Rich/famouse/politicians shouldn't get away with crimes they commit based on their status anymore than a poor person should. Crime is crime. Just because the judge/police/whoever feels social pressure to not enforce the law means everyone else suffers.
Feeling pity for someone's situation does not absolve them of their actions. Personally knowing poor/homeless people gives me a perspective that they aren't total victims and that they don't deserve absolution based on status. (just like the rich don't)
There are many people who are poor due to unfortunate circumstances, but more than likely, if a poor person commits crimes, it has less to do with their poverty and more to do with other factors that caused both their poverty and criminality. We may have reasons to feel sympathy for or try to help the criminally inclined poor, but showing them leniency doesn't usually help them.
It also doesn't help poor people in general, because typically the victims of poor criminals are other poor people.
I say it's the laws that currently exist, what do you say?
>"It's discriminatory [law] against the poor, not the homeless"
I think it's fair to express how my experience is evidence that this is not a universal truth and there is room to challenge it.
Threads naturally change topics as they grow.
And conversely, that I should have just starved instead of stealing food in order to maintain my moral standing? That is arguably an illogical position.
"Starving or stealing" in the US today is a straw man argument.
https://www.kqed.org/bayareabites/110356/where-homeless-peop...
Where do you live? I will likely be able to find food for you online. If not from a website, there will be a church, if not a church a social network that will get you food.
I've even seen people post on imgur.com and get sent pizza by people on the other side of the country.
If you need help getting food right now, post an email address here and I will find a way to get you food.
I am sorry you have experienced bad times. But have you considered that you could have asked for food instead of stealing it? Every restaurant I ever worked at gave food to people who asked. A number of other companies did as well. I have given people food that weren't even asking for it because I could see they needed it. (I have plenty of experience dumpster diving, which I chose over stealing)
You can justify breaking the law, and I wouldn't hold it against you for the sake for food, but it doesn't means it's the right thing to do. I begged on the streets and found charity every time.
The post is about being homeless, and your original comment was this:
>This is a complicated issue because the Drug War is inherently discriminatory, and asking for our government to enforce these laws will always lead to discriminatory practices. All of the other issues definitely need to be addressed, however.
But you seem to have derailed the conversation in your response, because the comment you replied to was this:
>I’m not saying punish homelessness, I’m saying enforce existing laws regardless of who the perps are.
I am discussing laws and the effects on poor people, I feel this is on topic, just like the original comment. And in my experience the law protects everyone from everyone, and the loudest claims of "discrimination" were from people who broke the law, just like you are doing now. And the people who don't break the law don't feel discriminated against.
The parent comment to this was how a homeless guy bent over backwards to fit in with society and did not break the law. Yet you seem to be the only one saying the poor/homeless are victims of the law and discriminated against in this entire thread.
If you change the topic, you should expect to be challenged.
Maybe consider the possibility there is a completely different way to live that protects you from what "seems" like discrimination, and that would be suffering a little to do what is right. Humble yourself and ask for help instead of blaming others and breaking the law.