10
Street roots
Jan. 7, 2011
The time
doesn't fît
the crime
Street Roots a n d Sisters o f
the R oad are proud
members o f the Western
R egional Adocacy Project
(W RAP). The Western
R egional Advocacy Project
was created to expose an d
elim inate the root causes o f
civil a n d h um an rights
abuses o f people
experiencing poverty an d
homelessness in our
com m unities. The
organization is m ade u p o f
grassroots organizations up
a n d down the West Coast.
BY PAUL BODEN
CONTRIBUTING WRITER
he e Western Regional Advocacy Project
ha been documenting the increases of
has
rri'
mentally
ill people in local jails as a
result of diminished funding for mental health
treatment and housing, escalation of
“nuisance crime” enforcement by police and
private security, and expansion of mental
health courts.
The scale of this issue is enormous: it is
reported that the LA county jail alone houses
3,000 mentally ill people a night According to
the Bureau of Justice Statistics, as many as
64% of people in jails nationwide have mental
health problems. In the 1980s and early
1990s, people with severe mental illness
made up 6-7% of the jail population. In the
last 5 years, this percentage has climbed to
16-30%. Nationwide, there are three times as
many people with mental illness in prisons as
there are in hospitals; 40% of people with
severe mental illness have been imprisoned at
some point in their lives.
We at WRAP see this ever-increasing
incarceration of mentally ill people as part of
a trend toward using the criminal justice
system to address health and socioeconomic
needs.. On the ground, this means that
mentally ill homeless people who lack
adequate access to housing and treatment
services are vulnerable to getting caught in
the criminal justice system. This includes
arrest or citation under local “quality of life”
or “nuisance” laws that include sitting/lying
on sidewalks, panhandling, and loitering.
Oftentimes, the seriousness of these
infractions is escalated to “failure to appear”
bench warrants, which require jail time.
To gain a clearer understanding of the
scope of the problem, we are conducting
outreach to self-identified mentally ill people,
service providers, justice system employees,
lawyers and researchers. We have also
conducted a literature
review of Department
of Justice reports and
periodical pieces. We
W hile re-funding housing and were stunned to learn
that never before has
treatm ent services m ight
there been systemic
seem to be a logical response, outreach to self-
local and state governments,
identified mentally ill
homeless people about
w ith the support of the
Federal Departm ent of Justice this issue.
During the month of
have instead been
August 2010, WRAP
im plem enting so-called
did street outreach
with
253 self-identified
homeless and m ental health
mentally ill homeless
courts. In the past 10 years,
people in six cities
the num ber of m ental health
(Portland, San
Francisco, Oakland,
courts in the U.S. has
Berkeley, Los Angeles
increased from 4 to 120.
and Denver). The
National Consumer
Advisory Board of the
National Health Care
for the Homeless
Council is doing 350 more outreach sessions
in seven cities across the country.
The initial responses tell us we need to
bring together all the concerned members of
local communities and finally start to reverse
this trend.
Here’s just some of what the street
outreach found:
■ 76% reported being stopped, arrested, or
cited due to “quality of life” offenses.
■ 60% reported being harassed by private
(Business Improvement District) security.
■ 35% reported having ignored tickets
issued against them.
■ 59% reported having Bench Warrants
issued for their arrest
T
f « K : U
■ 22% reported having outstanding
warrants at the time of the survey.
■ 21% reported being incarcerated while
5% reported being referred to a program
when brought before court.
■ 29% reported losing their housing or
being discharged from a program due to
incarceration.
This closely mirrors the initial service
provider experiences even though they were
not all in the same cities:
■ Almost 20% of service providers report
that their clients’ interactions with police
occur because they appear to be homeless.
■ More than 60% of service providers
report that their clients’ interactions with •
police occur because of drinking related
offenses
■ 30% of service providers report that
their clients interact with police because they
are loitering, 16% report interaction because
of jaywalking, and 16% for trespassing.
■ 74% of service providers report that at
least 70% of their clients have been arrested.
By looking at and analyzing the experiences
of the clients and of the service providers and
relating these to the research that has been
done on issues of decreasing access and
increasing criminalization, we will lay the
foundation needed for all of us to come
together and finally begin to dispel the myth
that mental illness and homelessness are the
result of people choosing a lifestyle and that
service providers are incompetent. These
claims have gone unanswered far too long and
the result, as we all-see, is killing us.
While re-funding housing and treatment
services might seem to be a logical response,
local and state governments, with the support
of the Federal Department of Justice have
instead been implementing so-called homeless
and mental health courts. In thé past 10
years, the number of mental health courts in
the U.S. has increased from 4 to 120.
In theory, the mental health court system
is a collaborative effort between judges,
prosecutors, defense attorneys, caseworkers,
and mental health professionals aimed at
figuring out an appropriate treatment plan for
’
V
the offender. Some recent studies suggest
that mental health courts substantially reduce
recidivism, and others have shown that
participation in mental health court increased
defendants’ access to long-term care, which
would seem to disprove the whole services
resistant argument that is so prevalent in the
creation of these courts.
However, mental health courts also have
significant drawbacks. In order to gain access
to the mental health court, defendants must
plead guilty to the crime they are accused of
and agree to adhere to the courts
recommendations or be remanded to the
traditional court These conditions are
coercive and can also perpetuate the
criminalization of people with mental illness.
As one service provider noted, “in mental
health court, people are often, “remanded to
custody” for non-compliance with court case
management, which includes medications. To
jail someone for not taking medication,
especially if it is medication that causes
extremely adverse side effects, is questionable
from a legal standpoint, and from a treatment
standpoint, it is barbaric. Everything
described above then happens — people (lose)
their income, health insurance, housing, and
everything else.”
WRAP seeks to ensure that jails do not
replace community-based mental health
treatment services and that the hundreds of
millions of dollars that are currently funding
the whole bureaucratic process of
criminalizing people instead be applied as an
initial down payment toward the housing and
treatment that is not only much more
humane, but in the long run, much more
affordable as well.
We’ll use our collective strengths,
organizing, outreach, research, public
education, artwork and direct actions. We will
continue to expand this network of
organizations and cities, and we will train
ourselves to ultimately bring down the whole
oppressive system of policing poor people and
poverty as a non-human broken window to be
discarded and replaced.
ORIGINAL W O R K BY
R. G O O D M A N .
IM A GE COURTESY
OF THE WESTERN
REGIONAL
AD VO CA CY
PROJECT