zlacker

—— If you have the money to imprison the homeless you could use that very same money to just build more affordable housing and that would give you more in terms of results per dollar spent. But that doesn't jive well with the American idea of having to morally punish unwanted behavior, instead of just helping people. Jailing homeless people is like jailing people who break a leg: —- Forgive me if i misinterpret you. But i think theirs three relevant perspectives here whereof two and a half disagree with your points that americans dont punish people down on their luck.

first perspective is the common american sympathetic or not to homeless and their perspective on penal code. then 2nd, theres reactive use and enforcement of code, which is the main punishment for homelessness. and third is the figurative cognitive behavior modifiers but instead of being therapists they are american rulers who want subjects to behave in a certain manner ( more on that at the end).

first perspective is divided into two camps i think. empathetic yes lets not punish homelessness, lets help them out. they seem to have more influence in liberal states. then theres the “lazy bum” castigators, like trump said or would say. no sympathy, get a job types.

2nd perspective matters more because homelessness in-effect criminalized if police enforce laws and the laws are sufficient to cause more than a minor inconvenience to the homeless. Most states technically have all types of laws to put homeless people in jail, but in certain states and certain contexts do homelessness get more aggressively targeted and thus punished. its in the form of no body wants to deal with homeless people where they hang out at (nimbyism) so they have police remove them however the police are instructed and allowed to do, which might be making and enforcing laws incidentally target behavior homeless are more likely to do but everyone does like loitering.

3rd perspective is more conjecture but is based on academic documented equivalent cases in french and british colonies (found in david graebers writings) and extrapolated to say that people who make the laws in america must think like cognitive behaviorists specifically to wielding the threat of homelessness as a tool to modify the populations behavior to their agendas. this is conjecture but not unreasonable, and its substantiated.

But places in America do penalize homelessness if not intentionally implicitly. examples include hostile archtecture, no sitting rules in transportation hubs, sleep police in new york, and consequences for being, acting, or appearing homeless in various municipalities which sometimes results in jail.

>>Agentu+(OP)
People get jailed/locked up when they are a physical danger to those around them. The reason jails are the way they are is not so much to punish the inmates but far more relevantly, to protect them from one another. As it turns out, unfortunately, much of the supposed problem with the really long term homeless is that, rightly or wrongly, they are perceived as a physical threat to others. So, even assuming the best possible intentions on your part, whatever place you put the homeless is going to look a lot like jail.

>>Agentu+(OP)
>no sympathy, get a job types.

This was a valid perspective in the 1960s - jobs grew on trees, most people who didn't have a job just didn't want a job. Some people built that perspective in the 1960s, and then never updated it despite jobs no longer growing on trees.