What images do the words "quality of life" bring to mind? A peaceful beach? A beautiful park? A farmers market full of healthy produce? In the realm of policing, the phrase "quality of life" carries different connotations. It means a veteran getting hauled in for sleeping on the sidewalk, a homeless woman being prohibited from resting on a park bench, or even brutal scenes like these from San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Fresno.
For poor, homeless, queer, transgendered, and disabled people, "quality of life" is a zero-sum game. It means someone else's life is better only if theirs is worse. It also means no begging, no sitting or lying on public benches or sidewalks, no congregating in public space, and no sleeping outside. In this context, "quality of life" is an array of ordinances being used against people deemed "abnormal" or "undesirable," especially in gentrifying areas. Quality of Life campaigns have been driven by the concerns of Chambers of Commerce, Business Improvement Districts, and residents uncomfortable with the unsightliness of extreme poverty, especially middle-to-upper class whites.
The heavy-handed tactics shown in the video clips above are extreme expressions of the daily harassment visited upon those who have to struggle with poverty, addiction, mental illness, and disabilities in open public view because they lack basic amenities such as housing. These tactics help the police clearly demarcate urban boundaries and enforce who belongs where. They're part of a social system where welfare and punishment have become almost indistinguishable.
This is the second part in a series of articles we're running on Quality of Life campaigns. Here we explore their theoretical basis, what they actually do, and what their implications are for our society.
Quality of Life laws are based on the Broken Windows theory, first popularized in an influential 1982 Atlantic Monthly article written by James Q. Wilson and Edward Kelling. The article reflected the ascendant conservative ideology that New Deal and Great Society programs had turned the U.S. into a "nanny state" that reinforced the laziness and criminality of the lower classes, especially people of color. This is the theory's dubious starting point.
The premise of the Broken Windows argument is simple: it is necessary to come down hard on the "disorderly" (e.g. homeless panhandlers, drunks, prostitutes, and rowdy youth) to discourage more serious criminals from taking over a neighborhood. This was to be done by saturating selected areas with beat cops that have the "discretionary authority" to not only respond to actual crimes, but to "manage street life." These tactics go by the various names of zero tolerance, order maintenance, and broken windows policing.
Wilson and Kelling write:
"The unchecked panhandler is, in effect, the first broken window. Muggers and robbers, whether opportunistic or professional, believe they reduce their chances of being caught or even identified if they operate on streets where potential victims are already intimidated by prevailing conditions."
"Tough on Crime" advocates saw Broken Windows as a panacea to the problems facing their cities. The cumulative effects of economic stagnation, growing inequality, unemployment, rampant privatization, and government neglect were ravaging urban centers. The first to apply it were New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani and his Police Commissioner William Bratton. In 1994, they put forward Police Strategy No. 5: Reclaiming the Public Spaces of New York. Giuliani and Bratton made their careers off exporting this model. Giuliani created a consulting company and Bratton took jobs in other major cities such as Los Angeles.
In recent years, activities associated with being homeless became the most glaring signs of disorder that needed to be eliminated, and as a result the problems faced by homeless people were transformed into a criminal justice issue. Today, more than 50 cities have passed laws that prohibit sitting or lying down in public places and 100 localities have passed some form of anti-begging ordinance. To bolster Quality of Life policing efforts, Business Improvement Districts have hired private security guards to monitor and patrol public space with scant oversight to limit civil rights violations.
Consequently, public funds are being redirected from social services to homeless courts, jails, and prisons. So much so that in 2007, a public defender in Los Angeles told the Daily Journal on the condition of anonymity: "It's not abnormal for the DA to have a policy. But this policy is about targeting the homeless in that area because the city is redeveloping that area. It's a policy to get people off the streets and into state prison, jumping right over rehab and jail."
Quality of Life campaigns have been credited for cleaning up and making business, entertainment, and shopping districts more enjoyable for their intended users, namely tourists, shoppers, and concertgoers. In New York City, for example, the campaign was so successful that only one homeless man remains in Times Square, but at the same time homelessness in the city was up 34%.
So the question must be asked: Do these ordinances actually work or are they "politically successful policy failures?" Who exactly do they work for and at what cost for society as a whole? Do the ends justify the means? Or are we once again developing a repertoire of exclusionary mechanisms that further tarnish our country's claims on freedom, equality, and justice for all?
There is no clear evidence that Quality of Life campaigns have seriously reduced crime. In his book Illusion of Order: The False Promise of Broken Windows Policing, University of Chicago law professor Bernard Harcourt calls attention to a Harvard study in which the authors conclude that "the current fascination in policy circles on cleaning up disorder through law enforcement techniques appears simplistic and largely misplaced, at least in terms of directly fighting crime."
In the pursuit of "safe," "sanitized," and "livable" cities, we're systematically stripping people of basic civil and human rights and banishing them beyond the realm of human decency. By reactivating or expanding the application of archaic vagrancy laws, we're criminalizing the basic necessities of living and keeping in existence a disgraceful system of second-class citizenship. Nightsticks and jail time cannot address the lack of housing and services that put millions of people on the streets in the first place.
Even Wilson and Kelling concede that:
"Of course, agencies other than the police could attend to the problems posed by drunks or the mentally ill, but in most communities especially where the 'deinstitutionalization' movement has been strong -- they do not."
They go on to raise concerns about equity:
"How do we ensure that age or skin color or national origin or harmless mannerisms will not also become the basis for distinguishing the undesirable from the desirable? How do we ensure, in short, that the police do not become the agents of neighborhood bigotry?...We are not confident that there is a satisfactory answer except to hope that by their selection, training, and supervision, the police will be inculcated with a clear sense of the outer limit of their discretionary authority. That limit, roughly, is this -- the police exist to help regulate behavior, not to maintain the racial or ethnic purity of a neighborhood."
So, why have police become our society's primary service providers? Aren't other agencies better trained to deal with health, social, and economic problems? In the next part of this series we will take a look at the "long and unbecoming" history of other exclusionary social policies carried out in the name of "regulating behavior." Histories that should make us think twice about the police's ability to provide safety for everyone. We hope that looking at Ugly laws, anti-Okie laws, and Jim Crow laws will give us the distance and perspective we need to illumine our own blind spots and democratic failings. The fact of the matter is, we can only police the gross inequality riveting our society for so long.
This series is a collaboration between researcher Casey Gallagher and Western Regional Advocacy Project.
Follow Paul Boden on Twitter: www.twitter.com/@withouthousing
If you can't dream it you can't do it! If you are not willing to share that dream it will not happen. The American party has a dream for America, its people and future and they are going to share it with you and work to make your lives better and the American dream real again!
The outcome of this policy would be to give all citizens a share in the natural wealth of the nation. ...
It is an injustice that landowners can speculate on empty sites, denying their use for jobs or homes.
It is an injustice that a factory owner can sack all their workers, smash the roof of their building to let in the rain and be rewarded with elimination of their rates bill.
It is an injustice that the poorest residents pay the highest share of their incomes in Council Tax.
It is an injustice that people are denied their share of the earth's resources.
The Location Benefit Levy is a simple way to start addressing the world's last great injustice."
http://www.wealthandwant.com/themes/Justice_Changing.html
Similarly, let's consider our distribution of natural resources.
By definition, natural resources are not made by human effort. Our planet offers every inhabitant a bounty -- an amazing treasure chest of wealth that can supply our needs for food, shelter and every aspect for our survival.
Surely, “justice” demands that this natural wealth should be equally available to all and that nobody should starve, be homeless or suffer poverty simply because they are excluded from tapping in to this enormous wealth that nature has provided. ...
If our whole economy, with the private possession of land and other natural resources, is built upon an injustice -- then can any of us really be surprised that we continue to live on a planet where wars predominate, intolerance is common, crime is rife and where poverty and starvation is the norm for a huge percentage of earth's population.
Is this inherited system really the best we can do?
There must be a method for fairly utilising the earth's natural resources."
http://www.wealthandwant.com/themes/Justice_Changing.html
Here in Colorado Springs, there is a growing number of tents going up in public places as the economic meltdown is forcing entire families onto the streets, as our underfunded and overwhelmed public assistance programs have been pushed to its beaking points and cannot handle the overflow.
In an effort to "clean up" the public parks and other areas of interest prior to "tourist" season the local business owners put pressure on the city council to "beautify" these areas and move these people in such "unfortunate" circumstances somewhere more appropriate. (These are the same areas that the property owners of the Springs voting against paying a bit more via property taxes to maintain, resulting in a shutdown of trash pick up, closing public bathrooms, turning off street lights (making the city less safe) even watering the grass in these public areas. Wonder what THAT will do to beautifying the city come tourist season? Yet the same defunding also has forced the city to cut back on police and other emergency services? It makes very little sense other than a simple feeding of "Me, myself and I" mentality but that always comes back to prove self destructive as we cannot benefit from the protections of community and society without contributing and paying into it.
Cont...
IMO, the idea of making the less fortunate or those that are different than the norm, become invisible, makes the problem nonexistant so there's no need to feel compassion or worry that someday they too will become a part of that crowd.
However, with the growing greed of corporate resource raiding and outsourcing for profit banks forclosing at will and the privatization of property taxes, there's going to be more and more people that will become a part of those they enabled the police to abuse into them into invisibility as well.
As long as we support the free market model, without an equal balance of social protections, there's some people that are goung to be in for a VERY rude awakening! And it will be all of their own making and they'll be to blinded by their own misery to connect the dots of "sow as you reap"!
Exactly, if it's "out of sight, out of mind" then people think, "Gee, we don't have a homelessness problem - I never SEE homeless people anywhere..." Then they can continue to be for "lower taxes" and "cutting services," never realizing that the problem is actually growing, because they've not had to 'see' it.
An invisible underclass is being created, right under our noses, but completely out of sight.
And won't it be such a shocker to them when they become a part of the invisible class?
Not to be all conspiracy theorist but its hard not to connect the dots when its being done out in the open with such disregard for who knows anymore...
With such an amazing transfer of wealth up to a few folks... with corp raiding of resources and increasing the poverty levels at an alarming rate, how more people haven't asked themselves... why? What's the purpose behind it? To think that these intelligent class of people that rule our economic destinys did all this by hapstance is naive!
So why?
Why take lower middle class families, that had manageble lives, set them up for failure, into situation that the financial class knew they couldn't afford or sustain for long, just to toss them into abject financial misery? Why are the banks more interested in foreclosures, instead of working with homeowners to restructure these "toxic assets" thereby helping stave off even further economic down turns? Why create such a huge homeless problem, while so many homes now sit empty? Where's the profit in that?
While the police are helping "disappear" the problem without question don't they stop to think about why their pay and benefits are being frozen or even cut as less homeowners means less taxes and less money to pay for all the services they provide along with so many other social services?
Why do we have so many people trying to convince the masses that climate change and a mass depletion of our resources doesn't exist?
We all of a sudden, such a loud push to privatize the public funds that protect our seniors, disabled, veterans and others that have hit hard times, giving control over these funds to the very people that created this mess?
We have more people worried about race and religion then asking these questions. Its kinda scary when you think that we're willingly becoming the architects of our own demise and with self righteous anger, demanding it!
Why aren't more people asking these questions is the most alarmaing thing of all?