Manteca, CA made it illegal to set up shelter anywhere outside – and even went as far as make it illegal to pick food or recyclables out of the trash!
Fort Lauderdale policed repeatedly cited 90-year-old Arnold Abbott for feeding hungry people in public. In Oahu, it is illegal to sit or lie in a number of public areas. These types of laws are common in cities throughout the United States, but do nothing to address the root causes of incarceration.
Diversion programs work better than incarceration – for everyone. In cities like Seattle, San Antonio, and Salt Lake City, we see that successful solutions are a viable option to help end serious social problems. These services alter the course of people’s lives in a positive way and save taxpayers huge amounts of money. We cannot continue to isolate and imprison people who suffer from mental illness, substance abuse, or homelessness. We must treat them with compassion and care to better serve our communities and our pocketbooks.
It’s time we got serious about pulling our money out of incarceration and putting it into systems that foster healthy communities. Hundreds of thousands of people are locked up not because of any dangerous behavior, but because of problems like mental illness, substance use disorders, and homelessness, which should be dealt with outside the criminal justice system. Services like drug treatment and affordable housing cost less and can have a better record of success.
~~GALLERY~~
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This summer, news stories from around the nation provided the American people with a litany of issues about how police officers respond to community members. By highlighting programs like Crisis Intervention Training (CIT), Law Enforcement Assisted Diversion (LEAD), and Housing First, OverCriminalized explores the possibility of ending incarceration for millions of Americans who, through successful intervention programs, can put their lives back on track.
OverCriminalized focuses on the people who find themselves being trafficked through this nation’s criminal justice system with little regard for their humanity and zero prospects for actual justice.
They are victims of unwillingness to invest in solving major social problems, and the consequent handling off of that responsibility to the police, the courts, and the prisons. They are the mentally ill, the homeless, and the drug addicted. Sometimes they are all three.
Homeless Hate Laws are spreading throughout the country.
Quick facts on over criminalization:
Approximately 20 % of state prisoners and 21 % of local jail detainees have a “recent history” of a mental health condition.
Approximately 26% of homeless adults staying in shelters live with serious mental illness and an estimated 46% live with severe mental illness and/or substance use disorders.
In 2012, it was estimated that 23.1 million Americans needed treatment for problems that related to drugs or alcohol.
Pew Research finds that 67% of Americans say that the government should focus more on providing treatment for those who use illegal drugs such as heroin or cocaine. Just 26% think the government’s focus should be on prosecuting users of such hard drugs.
It’s unconscionable that in the wealthiest country in the history of the earth, millions languish in poverty while billionaires and corporations are showered with tax cuts and loopholes.
The Lockheed Martin F-35 Lightning II is a family of single-seat, single-engine, all weather stealth multirole fighters undergoing testing and final development. The fifth generation combat aircraft is designed to perform ground attack, reconnaissance, and air defense missions. The F-35 has three main models: the F-35A conventional takeoff and landing (CTOL) variant, the F-35B short take-off and vertical-landing (STOVL) variant, and the F-35C carrier-based Catapult Assisted Take-Off Barrier Arrested Recovery (CATOBAR) variant.
In February 2011, the Pentagon put a price of $207.6 million on each of the 32 aircraft to be acquired in FY2012, rising to $304.16 million ($9,732.8 million ÷ 32 aircraft) if its share of research, development, test and evaluation (RDT&E) spending is included.
The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) is working diligently to take care of homeless veterans, but the scope of the problem is so vast that no one agency can do it alone. Eradicating homelessness among veterans requires partnerships between a myriad of government and private entities. Think of it like the American Cancer Society or the American Lung Association. While the government funds a considerable amount of medical research, those organizations have existed for years because of the general public’s desire to see even more done in the fight against killer diseases.
In our case, the fight is against homelessness and the despair, PTSD, substance abuse and other factors that contribute to homelessness. If you agree that veterans facing these life-threatening challenges, many the result of serving in combat, deserve more help than the government can provide, we ask you to contribute.
New Report Reveals Nation Still Not Fully Equipped to Support Women Veterans
While the federal government has raced to establish programs to serve combat veterans, the current system that awaits women transitioning from military service is a disjointed patchwork of programs marked by serious gaps in health care, housing, other community support services, employment and efforts to eradicate sexual assault, according to a landmark report released today by Disabled American Veterans.
A veterans service organization that offers a variety of programs, service and events for wounded veterans of the military actions following the events of September 11, 2001. It operates as a nonprofit 501(C)(3) organization with a mission to “honor and empower Wounded Warriors” of the c, as well as provide services and programs for the family members of its registered “alumni,” as its registered veterans are called.
It Is What It Is 