Homelessness and the Criminal Justice System

Session Submission Type: Panel

Abstract

People experiencing homelessness in the United States are overrepresented among the population of people incarcerated in jails and prisons. People experiencing homelessness are more likely to interact with law enforcement, get arrested for low-level offenses and “quality-of-life” ordinance violations, and experience police harassment. As homelessness continues to rise, the use of jails and prisons as a means of controlling or punishing unhoused people is an increasing concern, even as recent research finds that the implementation and enforcement of policies that criminalize homelessness have no effect on the rate of homelessness (Lebovits and Sullivan, 2025). 

Together, the papers on this panel invite an important discussion on the intersection of homelessness and criminal justice policy in the United States. 

The first paper investigates whether and how shelter status is associated with police harassment and jail incarceration during episodes of homelessness. Using data from the California Statewide Study of People Experiencing Homelessness, the authors find that criminal legal contact is widespread, with nearly half of participants reporting police harassment and one-third experiencing jail incarceration. Unsheltered individuals face a higher risk of both police harassment and incarceration. 

The second paper examines officer-written reports of quality-of-life ordinance violations for people experiencing homelessness. Using narrative analysis, the authors identify the reasons given by officers for an arrest. Additional analysis that uses an interrupted time series design finds that as additional quality-of-life ordinances are passed, more arrests occur, often with the same homeless individuals being arrested multiple times. 

The third paper explores how shelter expansion triggered by extreme temperatures affects arrest rates for quality-of-life ordinance violations among people experiencing homelessness. This paper uses a regression discontinuity design that exploits cities’ shelter expansion plans, which are often triggered when the daily temperature reaches a predetermined high or low. 

The final paper examines whether the development of Permanent Supportive Housing (PSH) projects, meant to serve individuals experiencing chronic homelessness, leads to an increase in crime, as is commonly asserted by opponents of new PSH developments. Using crime and housing data from Los Angeles from 2010-2023, the authors implement a staggered difference-in-differences design that analyzes changes in crime near newly opened PSH facilities. They find null effects for total crime, violence, and property crime and imprecise null effects for drug and disorder crimes.

Policy Area

• Housing, Community Development, and Urban Policy

Chair

• Ashley E Orr, The Ohio State University

Discussants

• Ashley Bradford, Georgia Institute of Technology

• Emily Merola, Princeton University

Organizer

• Stephanie Casey Pierce, University of Tennessee (Knoxville)

Individual Presentations

• Policing, Jail Incarceration, and Homelessness: Evidence from a Representative Study in California - Presenting Author: Dallas Augustine, San José State University

• Searching for a Violation: Officer-Initiated Policing and the Street-Level Criminalization of Homelessness - Presenting Author: Andrew Alfred Sullivan, University of Central Florida

• The Effect of Shelter Availability on Arrests of People Experiencing Homelessness - Presenting Author: Stephanie Casey Pierce, University of Tennessee (Knoxville)

• The Effects of Permanent Supportive Housing Facilities on Neighborhood Crime: Evidence from Los Angeles County - Presenting Author: Rosanna Smart, RAND Corporation