State law, court ruling mesh to threaten homeless with jail

A new Georgia law that already raised fears of packing more homeless people into crowded jails may be exacerbated by a recent U.S. Supreme Court decision, according to activists and some elected officials.

Georgia Senate Bill 63, which went into effect July 1, adds criminal trespass and many other charges to the list of offenses that require a cash bond for release. Trespass is a charge that homeless people often face.

Then in June, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that governments could ban sleeping in public places, leaving homeless people even more open to criminal charges. That decision — Grants Pass v. Johnson — could send an influx of homeless people into Georgia jails.

The issue could be particularly devastating in Fulton County, which could see the biggest surge because it is home to the state’s largest homeless population, and already has chronic jail overcrowding issues, said Roland Behm, co-founder of the Georgia Mental Health Policy Partnership.

The law and court ruling act together as a “multiplier” of what has already been the primary factor in Fulton jail overcrowding: “poor and unhoused people being trapped in jail because of an inability to pay a bond,” said Devin Franklin, movement policy counsel for the Southern Center for Human Rights.

As of July 8, Fulton jails held 186 inmates who said they were homeless, according to the sheriff’s office. Ten inmates were held on criminal trespass charges alone.

Sheriff Patrick Labat “and his team and our criminal justice partners have been meeting to discuss the potential impact this will have on jail operations,” a sheriff’s spokesperson said.

Labat has consistently backed the push for a new, $1.7 billion jail with more beds and greatly expanded medical and mental health care. He has said a new jail with upgraded supervision and security would be safer for everyone there. Three inmates have died in county custody so far this year, after 24 the past two years.

In 2022, one booking in every eight at the jail was of homeless people, Behm said. More than a third of prearrest diversions that same year involved criminal trespass.

About one in five homeless people reports having serious mental illness, and about one in six has a substance abuse problem, Behm said. That makes them more likely to be arrested, be jailed for misdemeanors, spend more time in jail and be arrested again, he said.

Credit: John Spink

Georgia has more than 1,400 people in jail awaiting a competency evaluation, which can take months, Behm said. That can run afoul of federal law, and may eventually require the state to spend hundreds of millions to improve its evaluation system, he said.

The justice system is not doing the kind of evaluation and diversion of homeless arrestees that is needed, said Elizabeth Appley, attorney and public policy advocate on social issues.

“We know that homelessness is a housing problem,” but it often intersects with mental health and substance abuse problems. Homelessness can be a “causative factor” for those issues, she said.

A trespassing charge, particularly when the person is mentally ill, should not result in jail time, Appley said.

“As Gov. (Nathan) Deal used to say, we need to distinguish between people we’re afraid of and people we’re mad at,” said Appley, who co-chaired a state criminal justice reform commission under Deal. “For Georgia, concern about homelessness requires us to increase our investment and commitment to providing affordable housing (and) needed wraparound services, not to arrest and incarcerate people who have no place to live.”

Local governments should invest in housing and services to “end, rather than manage” homelessness, said Caprice Brown, chief programs officer of Partners for HOME, part of the area’s Continuum of Care. But some state policymakers clearly “think we can criminalize our way out of this problem,” he said. “We cannot use this ruling as an excuse to shift the burden of this human problem onto law enforcement,” Brown said.

Many local jurisdictions already ban sleeping outside , Behm said. Some have refrained from passing anti-camping ordinances because they were considered potentially unconstitutional, but now those cities and counties may move ahead, he said.

Behm noted that Atlanta police have cleared encampments under bridges, threatening to arrest those who resisted for criminal trespass .

Legislation like SB 63 offers only “performative solutions” and wastes resources that should target real threats, said state Rep. Tanya Miller, D-62, a civil rights attorney and former prosecutor. Until now, Georgia had made bipartisan progress to cut jail costs and improve public safety, she said.

“This legislation, along with the implications of the Grants Pass decision — which essentially gives states the green light to criminalize poverty and homelessness — threaten to reverse these gains by filling our jails with nonviolent misdemeanor offenders and will severely impact the most vulnerable among us: the poor, homeless people and those with mental illness,” Miller said. “Our jails are not warehouses for those experiencing homelessness, nor are they de facto mental health facilities.”

Those accused of criminal trespass would have to pay to get out of jail for second and subsequent offenses. But excluding first offenses is “at best a mere fig leaf,” since many homeless already have previous criminal trespass charges, Behm said.

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