No Sit/No Lie: Media Framing and the Criminalization of Homelessness

• In Event: Media Constructions of Guilt and Innocence

Abstract

Many U.S. cities have enacted and enforce measures that criminalize life-sustaining activities such as lying or sitting in public, eating, asking for money in public spaces, and public camping. Such measures disproportionately target the homeless and serve as tools to limit homeless individual’s movements and activities in public, and include criminal penalties that unduly disadvantage the poor. Media representations of these measures play an important role in shaping and influencing people’s ideas and opinions towards homelessness, and serve to reinforce the effects of, and support for, such policies. This paper examines media framing of the homeless and restrictive measures targeting the homeless in twenty U.S. cities. Drawing on a content analysis of newspaper articles from the time frames surrounding the passage of anti-homeless ordinances, this paper examines the extent to which news coverage focuses on negative and positive attributes of the homeless, individual and structural causal attributions for homelessness, and the framing of the rationale behind the need for such measures that criminalize activities associated with homelessness.

Authors

• Hilary Smith, University of Colorado Colorado Springs

• Barbara Blackwell, University of Colorado Colorado Springs

• Karen Becknell, University of Colorado Colorado Springs