Camping crimes

More local officials across the country are getting tough on tent cities. Roughly 150 cities across 32 states have passed new ordinances or bolstered existing laws prohibiting homeless individuals from camping on public property since last June, when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the constitutionality of penalties for homeless camping on public property, according to data WORLD obtained from the National Homelessness Law Center.

Many of the new penalties include jail time or fines of up to $1,000. Arizona voters approved a ballot measure in November that allows residents to apply for a property tax refund if municipalities fail to address public nuisances such as homeless camps. City officials in California, home to 30% of the nation’s homeless population, have passed or proposed almost a third of the new anti-camping ordinances.

Some cities have simply begun enforcing laws they already had on the books. In August, City Council members in Vista, Calif., voted to enforce a 1968 camping ban that hadn’t been prosecuted in years. Vista Mayor John Franklin argued the ban would help provide the incentive individuals need to move inside, and he said law enforcement officials would combine their warnings with offers of shelter.

But Jesse Rabinowitz, the National Homelessness Law Center’s campaign and communications director, argues punishing people for sleeping outside criminalizes poverty and pushes people deeper into the cycle of homelessness. “I get it that people are frustrated,” he said. But Rabinowitz believes policies that help lower the cost of housing, not penalties for camping, will alleviate homelessness.

To obtain its tally of homeless camping crackdowns, the center relied on news reports and legislative tracking software. Rabinowitz believes the total is likely an undercount of the actual number of new laws.

Associated Press / Photo by Sue Ogrocki

Opened door to private prisons

Among his lesser-known first-day initiatives, President Donald Trump reversed a Biden-era order prohibiting the Federal Bureau of Prisons and U.S. Marshals Service from contracting with private prisons.

The Department of Justice began housing some inmates in private facilities in the 1980s. By the time President Joe Biden took office, the Bureau of Prisons was relying on companies to house about 14,000 prisoners. (They were later moved to federally run locations.)

So far, it’s unclear how many inmates might be moved back into private facilities. Lauren-Brooke Eisen, a criminal justice analyst, told the Marshall Project that some federal prisons are in need of costly repairs.

Stock prices for GEO Group and CoreCivic, two of the largest private prison providers, surged after Trump’s November election win. Neither Biden’s executive order nor Trump’s reversal affected U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement, which detains many immigrants in private facilities and accounted for 43% of GEO Group’s revenue in 2023. —A.O.