The Real Cost of Prisons Weblog

"The Poverty Court (CJC) model formerly merges the Prison Industrial Complex (PIC) with the Non-Profit Industrial Complex (NPIC) to become "the Complex"- a new form of criminalized service provision brought to a neighborhood near you," said Lisa Gray-Garcia, executive director of POOR Magazine and author of Criminal of Poverty; Growing Up Homeless in America.

The CJC, borrowed from a model delivered originally by former New York mayor Rudy Guiliani and his push to rid Manhattan of its "peddlers, panhandlers, and prostitutes," creates a courtroom - equipped with holding cells and a space allocated for administrative, health, social, and community services for the defendant - designated specifically for misdemeanors, or as Mayor Newsom puts it - as did Guiliani - "quality of life" crimes. Many, if not most, of these infractions - loitering, shoplifting, panhandling, urban camping, etc - are crimes of poverty, crimes committed out of circumstance. Rather than addressing the circumstance, the Community Court addresses the action, sentencing the defendant to community service hours and providing vague links to social services, such as drug or alcohol counseling.

After a lengthy and heated debate in the Board of Supervisors Newsom managed to garner full funding for the court in July, allocating approximately $1,980,000 for start-up costs, lease costs, and personnel costs. Newsom requested a further $771,885 to keep operations going for a full year, all this during a $350 million deficit with a proposed city budget that devastatingly slashes funds from life-saving social and health services city-wide. It's a good thing the Board of Supervisors and voters saw right through the gimmick. Too bad their opinions did not matter.

Newsom, with the support of the District Attorney Kamala Harris, went ahead with the court, siphoning a grand total of $2.7 million for the project, some in federal grants and some from the city budget. It's now open for the public on 575 Polk St. None of the first five offenders summoned showed on opening day.

Contrary to the misleading messages used to fund the CJC San Francisco's poverty crisis is not being perpetuated by the houseless people that will be sentenced in the CJC . It is perpetuated by a lack of affordable housing, budget cuts in life-saving services, and the social stigma surrounding the poor. Spending vital funds on the CJC, a system that does nothing to address the systemic roots of poverty and homelessness, that does not offer any new solution other than to temporarily busy worn-out hands with free labor and anger management classes, precious time spent away from earning enough money for food, is a criminal act in and of itself, ESPECIALLY since it is against the will of the voters.