Is ticketing homeless individuals considered a harsh and unconventional penalty?
During a meeting in 2013, local officials in Grants Pass, Oregon, brainstormed solutions to address the city’s increasing “vagrancy problem”. Suggestions included driving repeat offenders out of town and purchasing bus tickets for homeless individuals to relocate elsewhere. The objective, as stated by Lily Morgan, a city-council member, was to create discomfort for them in the city so they would be inclined to move on.
Situated between the Cascade and Siskiyou mountains near the California border, the city prohibited sleeping and camping in public areas. Over the following years, Ed Johnson, the director of litigation at the Oregon Law Centre, received reports from homeless individuals in Grants Pass. They were awakened by law enforcement, fined beyond their means, and incarcerated. In 2018, Mr. Johnson filed a lawsuit against the city on behalf of his homeless clients. The Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in Grants Pass v Johnson on April 22nd. The central issue in the case is whether punishing homeless individuals for sleeping outdoors when they have no alternative constitutes cruel and unusual punishment, which is prohibited by the Eighth Amendment.
Two significant cases will serve as precedents. In 1962, the Supreme Court ruled in Robinson v California that a California law criminalizing drug addiction, rather than drug use, purchase, or sale, was unconstitutional. Justice Potter Stewart, in the majority opinion, stated that imprisonment alone is not cruel and unusual. However, the law targeted a condition rather than an action, deeming even a day in jail as a harsh and unconventional punishment for the “offense” of having a common illness.
2024-04-18 07:57:43
Originally posted on www.economist.com