Question: Criminalizing Being Poor: Is It Ethical Public Policy? It's too bad so many people are falling into poverty at a time when it's almost illegal to be poor. You won't be arrested for shopping in a Dollar Store, but if you are truly, deeply, in-the-streets poor, you're well advised not to engage in any of the biological necessities of life-like sitting, sleeping, lying down, or loitering. City offi cials boast that there is nothing discriminatory about the ordinances that affl ict the destitute, most of which go back to the dawn of gentrifi cation in the '80s and '90s. "If you're lying on a sidewalk, whether you're homeless or a millionaire, you're in violation of the ordinance," a city attorney in St. Petersburg, Florida, said in June, echoing Anatole France's immortal observation that "the law, in its majestic equality, forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under bridges."
Instructions: 1. Go to the website www.cengage.com/criminaljustice/samaha.
2. Read "Is It Now a Crime to Be Poor? (Barbara Ehrenreich, New York Times op-ed column, August 9, 2009).
3. Assume you're a policy advisor to the mayor of your town or city. Write a one-page position paper on the "right" response to the "problem" of using the streets for the "biological necessities of life."