Searching for a Violation: Officer-Initiated Policing and the Street-Level Criminalization of Homelessness

• In Event: Homelessness and the Criminal Justice System

Abstract

People experiencing homelessness are more likely than members of the general public to interact with local law enforcement personnel and to experience negative physical, social and economic impacts as a result of these interactions. Still, as street-level bureaucrats, police officers have significant discretion at their disposal when interacting with homeless individuals so the exact line from engagement with law enforcement to further criminal justice entanglement (arrest, fines, or jail) continues to be explored. To better understand the factors that lead to the arrest of a homeless individual, this article reviews officer-written reports of quality-of-life ordinance violations for people experiencing homelessness from 2018-2024 in Orange County, Florida (N=745). The authors first perform a narrative analysis of officer testimonies to identify the various reasons given for an arrest and then further explore that variations in arrests occurrences using an interrupted time series design following the passage of additional quality-of-life ordinances. 

The narrative analysis findings reveal three primary reasonings for an arrest: the citizen-complaint responsive-policing pathway; the officer-initiated search-for-violation pathway; and the combination pathway in which officers rationalize an arrest based on both citizen concerns and their own desire to identify and eradicate ordinance violations. Critically, this research shows that while the first and third pathways are evident in the data, officers most frequently choose the search-for-violation pathway to investigate the behavior of a homeless individual while on a routine patrol effort.  Moreover, the time series findings reveal that as additional quality-of-life ordinances are passed, more arrests occur, throughout all hours of the day/night, concentrated in certain areas, and often with the same homeless individuals being arrested multiple times. These findings further emphasize the role of officer-initiated criminalization since homeless individuals frequently revisit familiar sites, and these particular street-level bureaucrats work all shifts of a given day and are assigned to specific areas. 

While living without a home is not a crime in the United States, the vast majority of encounters with police officers occur while homeless people are engaged in activities that are illegal solely due to their public occurrence and the appearance of aggression (such as exposure, urination, camping, and panhandling) which results in the de facto criminalization of homelessness itself. The significant prevalence of the search-for-violation pathway highlights the tendency of these street-level bureaucrats to actively criminalize homelessness out of their own desire and through their own initiative. As such, the authors make the case for a two-pronged behavioral-science approach to reducing arrests: 1) nudge efforts that promote more safe, private spaces - such as public bathrooms and having designated panhandling areas - which limit officers' natural tendencies to search for quality-of-life concerns and 2) proactive retraining efforts that can teach officers to deescalate and redirect the actions of homeless individuals.

Author

• Andrew Alfred Sullivan, University of Central Florida
  Presenting Author