Poor people, especially people of color, face a far greater risk of being fined, arrested, and even incarcerated for minor offenses than other Americans. A broken taillight, an unpaid parking ticket, aminor drug offense, sitting on a sidewalk, or sleeping in a park can all result in jail time. In this report, we seek to understand the multi-faceted, growing phenomenon of the “criminalization of poverty.”......When a person applies for government assistance, he/she is "finger-printed, drug-tested, interrogated, and asked to prove paternity of children.Similarly, eligibility for public housing is restricted or denied if the applicant has a criminal record, including misdemeanors or a prior lease violation. Further, local Public Housing Authorities can be even more restrictive and evict occupants if a member of their family or another person residing in — or in some cases visiting —commits a crime, such as a misdemeanor drug offense.
I thought this post and the attached report was really interesting. Many of the statistics and trends are ones that I am familiar with such as the school to prison pipeline but it was very interesting to read an actual report on the subject!
ReplyDeleteThis is a sad truth. Like Bronte, I was familiar but had never seen an actual report with such information. Reading about the poor makes me think about Piety's piece in the book about equality of rights and equal opportunity. I wrote about this in this week's reading summaries and found an article questioning if equal rights and equal opportunities is a myth, or is it attainable in the way our society has developed. I also read a piece that questioned, have we had an end to an era of equal opportunity?
ReplyDeleteI thought that this article was really interesting, but sad to see. Like Bronte and Cam I also was familiar with this trend, but had never seen this information compiled into an actually report.
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