Being Petty On Petty Crimes

The following article from the San Francisco Chronicle shows how the “tough-love” policies towards homeless people are not only ineffective but very expensive.   Note that the number and intensity of complaints does not necessarily reflect the actual number and intensity of the crimes being committed.

The Chronicle
San Francisco prosecutors have quietly begun enforcing citations associated with homelessness more aggressively, after hearing community complaints that the crimes were on the rise and believing that defendants were getting off too easily.

“In interactions with neighbors, people were complaining of quality-of-life type crimes – urinating in public, sleeping in doorways, defecating on the street,” said Assistant District Attorney Paul Henderson.

For the first time, the district attorney has begun assigning prosecutors to make sure they are in court whenever defense lawyers challenge quality-of-life citations handed out by police. The crimes, which are less serious than misdemeanors, include blocking sidewalks, public drunkenness, trespassing and camping in parks.

In the past, San Francisco prosecutors, like those in other California counties, would leave it to court commissioners who preside over vagrancy and minor street crimes to impose penalties in the form of fines and to issue warrants for defendants who fail to appear.

“When lawyers presented legal (arguments) against the citations … cases were dismissed,” Henderson said. “The defendants weren’t being held accountable for transgressions.”

The tougher stance isn’t popular with advocates for the homeless who say issuing quality-of-life citations to homeless people who can’t pay them – and without providing more housing for the poor – perpetuates homelessness and misuses resources. Enforcing the infractions is a further waste, they say.

“This is costing the city a lot in police resources and court resources,” said Elisa Della-Piana, an attorney with the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights. “It is not getting people off the street, and it is costing the city a lot of money.”

Despite the harder line being taken by prosecutors, it remains the case that defendants fail to appear in court for roughly 90 percent of the about 10,000 quality-of-life citations issued by San Francisco police annually.

Those failures to appear result in commissioners issuing arrest warrants that are rarely enforced.

To defense attorneys, the citation-to-warrant pattern suggests ticketing is the wrong way to address minor crimes associated with homelessness.

“The fact that we’re fighting over the small number of cases that don’t go to warrants exemplifies that the criminal justice system is an inappropriate venue for social service delivery,” said Della-Piana, who coordinates volunteer attorneys to represent homeless people in court.

Prosecutors insist that they are simply trying to uphold the law – and are trying to use the system to push offenders into social programs.

In recent months, they have offered defendants substance abuse treatment and other social services as an alternative to paying fines, Henderson said.

Earlier this month, a homeless advocacy group, Religious Witness with Homeless People, said a review of public records showed that the city has spent more than $7.8 million filing and adjudicating the citations since Mayor Gavin Newsom came into office in 2004.

The fact that police officers steadily issued citations, however, doesn’t mean they were being enforced.

Police typically don’t arrest homeless people for citation-related warrants because they know they can’t pay fines. The alternative is throwing them in jail for a day – but that’s an unattractive option because city jails are overcrowded, said Jerry Washington, division chief of the San Francisco courts.

Public attention generally has been more focused on street crimes in recent months.

Newsom announced in May that he wanted a new court in the Tenderloin that would handle crimes such as prostitution and public drunkenness. He has said the court could open early next year.

In July, he started a crackdown on people camping in Golden Gate Park after The Chronicle reported widespread homeless encampments there.

After taking a closer look at citations, Henderson said it appeared that without a prosecutor present, court commissioners were reducing fines or tossing out cases.

Henderson, who oversees quality-of-life cases for District Attorney Kamala Harris, said that about nine months ago he started assigning prosecutors to cases being challenged by the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights.

Henderson also directed prosecutors to offer defendants the choice of completing counseling or undertaking other social programs in lieu of fines – a sentencing option judges have in the city’s special drug courts but that isn’t available to court commissioners unless requested by the district attorney.

Court Commissioner Frank Drago said he reduces fines to a level that he believes a person with little income will realistically be able to pay.

“I reduce fines with the hope that it is severe enough that it will make them think about it,” Drago said.

Drago said he issues warrants for defendants who fail to pay a fine. A warrant record can cause a person to lose state and federal benefits for the poor and disabled, he said.

Della-Piana said the most serious consequence of low-level citations becoming warrants is the loss of those government benefits.

“If you have a warrant, you’re not eligible for any federal program, like Social Security or federal public housing, so if you’re homeless, it just makes your situation worse,” she said.