Punishing the Poorest

Punishing the Poorest is the result of participant-led research, a collaboration between San Francisco homeless people and academics from UC Berkeley. Through this unusual collaboration, we have shown:that homeless people find themselves very frequently to be the focus of police attention;that homeless people are forced to move by police often, despite lacking other places to be;that anti-homeless laws are entirely ineffective in moving homeless people out of public spaces, or in preventing the prohibited activities of sitting, standing, or sleeping;that police interactions do not lead to homeless people's getting access to services;that incarceration for status crimes ("quality of life" offenses such as sitting, resting, or sleeping) perpetuate homelessness; andthat the criminalization of homelessness disproportionately affects people of color, those with mental illnesses, and gender non-conforming people