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Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people

In a first-of-its-kind study, the Prison Policy Initiative (PPI) is reporting that formerly incarcerated people are a staggering ten times more likely to experience homelessness than the general population. The study, which utilized data from a Bureau of Justice Statistics survey, builds on a foundational understanding of the correlation between homelessness and incarceration. Previous national data has suggested that as much as 15% of the incarcerated population had experienced homelessness in the 12 months before they were imprisoned.

Last December, the United Nations special rapporteur on extreme poverty, Philip Alston, was sent on a tour of the United States to witness and report on the extreme poverty experienced by millions in the world’s wealthiest country. In his final report, Mr. Alston disparaged local governments for criminalizing homelessness; shocked by the fact that police ticket and arrest men and women for “crimes” like sitting on the sidewalk or sleeping in public places.

At Southern Center for Human Rights, we see this link clearly. Last year, we filed an emergency petition for relief on behalf of Sean Ramsey, who had been jailed for standing on a sidewalk in Atlanta while holding a sign which read ‘Homeless, please help.’ It is illegal to ask for money in the City of Atlanta. Mr. Ramsey was arrested on September 19th and, unable to post the $200 bond he had been assigned, he sat in jail until November 29th.

Across Georgia – and across the country – being homeless or poor is, in effect, criminalized. When you are experiencing homelessness, basic, life-sustaining actions you must take on a daily basis – sleeping or sitting in parks or sidewalks, relieving yourself outside, asking for money – are enough to land you behind bars. Criminalizing homelessness violates our most basic human rights, and it sets in action a revolving door – sent to jail for sleeping on the street; more likely to experience homelessness again once released.

PPI also found, unsurprisingly, a racial element to this revolving door: formerly incarcerated Black men have much higher rates of homelessness than white or Hispanic men. The data also shows that women of color experience homelessness at higher rates than white women.

“People who have been to prison just once experience homelessness at a rate nearly 7 times higher than the general public,” writes Lucius Couloute of PPI. “But people who have been incarcerated more than once have rates 13 times higher than the general public. In other words, people who have been incarcerated multiple times are twice as likely to be homeless as those who are returning from their first prison term.”

Read the report here.

Read more about Sean Ramsey’s case here.