Home -> Law Blog Directory -> Criminal Law Blogs -> The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

Criminal Law

: The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

Is It Now a Crime to Be Poor? By BARBARA EHRENREICH

By Real Cost of Prisons Project (The Sentencing Project)

August 9, 2009 OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR Is It Now a Crime to Be Poor? By BARBARA EHRENREICH 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 officials boast that there is nothing discriminatory about the ordinances that afflict the destitute, most of which go back to the dawn of gentrification 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, Fla...continue to full post

Full post as published by The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog on August 10, 2009 (boomark / email).