Posted on 08/14/2015 5:45:54 AM PDT by SeekAndFind
We all need sleep, which is a fact of life but also a legally important point. Last week, the Department of Justice argued as much in a statement of interest it filed in a relatively obscure case in Boise, Idaho, that could impact how cities regulate and punish homelessness.
Boise, like many cities — the number of which has swelled since the recession — has an ordinance banning sleeping or camping in public places. But such laws, the DOJ says, effectively criminalize homelessness itself in situations where people simply have nowhere else to sleep. From the DOJ's filing:
When adequate shelter space exists, individuals have a choice about whether or not to sleep in public. However, when adequate shelter space does not exist, there is no meaningful distinction between the status of being homeless and the conduct of sleeping in public. Sleeping is a life-sustaining activity — i.e., it must occur at some time in some place. If a person literally has nowhere else to go, then enforcement of the anti-camping ordinance against that person criminalizes her for being homeless.
Such laws, the DOJ argues, violate the Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment, making them unconstitutional. By weighing in on this case, the DOJ's first foray in two decades into this still-unsettled area of law, the federal government is warning cities far beyond Boise and backing up federal goals to treat homelessness more humanely.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
I’ve always wanted to go urban camping. Maybe I’ll set up my tent in this judge’s front yard. Maybe light a campfire and hang some clothes out to dry.
Until that happens, I get it how some people end up homeless.
I guess that "that person" does not have a problem with criminalizing "him." Feminism, a fraud since womyn got the vote.
Round up the homeless and transport them to the front yards of those at DOJ who are responsible. Any bets how quickly they would change their tune?
Ah yes! We could stage a “Camp In” on the White House lawn, and demand the right to light a fire to cook the arugula grown with our tax money!
These are people whose own family and friends will not allow them to live under their roofs.
Anyone on this forum would probably open his home to a friend who lost a job and a place to stay, and needed a little time to get things sorted.
If you live on the street it's generally because you have burned every bridge behind you, stolen from the people who love you, and broken a lot of well-meaning people's hearts.
And you're really not sorry, you just wish you could have used and milked everyone a little longer.
Probably linked to extreme Leftist positions on preserving “The Commons”.
So forcing someone to sleep outside in Boise, during winter, is not cruel. But requiring them to go to a shelter is cruel.
Got it
Yeah, it’s a crime to punish them for being homeless, but a bloody act of charity to punish other people for being successful.
Freepers tried to warn us
People with half a brain cel left tried to warn us
We're smack dab in the middle of the worst political/govermental position a nation could face ....
The elimination of saboteurs in our judicial structure.
well, the alternatives would be to take them to jail where the taxpayers can pay for their bed and breakfast or to take them to a camp for undesirables.
Wow...what tortured logic. Somehow NOT allowing somebody to sleep outside in our parks and on our sidewalks is cruel and unusual punishment? They are not incarcerated; they were not convicted of a crime; they are not being punished by the State, yet somehow not letting them crap all over us is punishing THEM?? More lunacy from Obama designed to make the U.S. third world hellhole.
Gee. When it was “Bush”; homelessness was a drum beaten to death. - Then, magically, overnight, when ANY Democrat takes over - homelessness just disappears like a miracle! Voila!
Someone kindly articulate the objective legal difference between me pitching a tent where I want on Western BLM “square miles of nothing” land, vs me pitching a tent where I want on city parks.
(Not being antagonistic here, there’s a objective difference which isn’t being articulated & addressed properly.)
Please don’t wantonly confuse public vs private property. This issue is screwed up enough as it is without advocating outright trespassing.
If our so-called “Department of Justice” has an office in Boise, then Boise needs to commandeer that office as an “emergency homeless shelter” immediately and place the “homeless” in it.
Then, if those poor homeless souls need to steal food from the vending machines there — so be it!
Or, if those poor homeless souls need to pile up DOJ’s files to make soft mattresses for themselves — so be it!
Or, if those poor homeless souls can’t be bothered to use the sanitary facilities in that building — so be it!
Or, if those poor homeless souls threaten and harass the DOJ “workers” during the “work-day” — so be it!
How can the DOJ protest? Any such protest would be “cruel”...
Now where did they dig that up?
Way to misrepresent the situation.
Along with your two scenarios, there’s someone _choosing_ to sleep outside (I’m from NY and grew up enjoying winter camping), and there’s someone _refusing_ compulsion to go to a dirty warehouse for drunks/criminals/nuts/etc.
I view the “sleep outside in Boise during winter” as the preferable alternative. Grab my “bug out bag” and I’m good for the night.
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