Crime Against the Homeless

It may not be surprising that the rate of crime is much higher among the homeless than it is for those with stable housing. But, despite regular calls for legislation to curb a supposed rise in violent attacks on homeless, very little research has been done around the subject. In fact, the last time data was collected on the subject was in response to a 2001 resolution introduced by California Senator John Burton, which would have designated violent crimes against the homeless and immigrants as "hate crimes." Since then, at least two other very similar pieces of legislation have been introduced in California – including SB 122, which is still pending – but very little research has accompanied those calls.

The 2001 report was produced by the California Dept. of Justice. No funding was provided for it, which limited the extent of the research. According to the report, that meant that "specifically, the location of cities was limited to those that could be driven to within three hours or less from the California Department of Justice in Sacramento. The number of cities, and therefore the sample size, was limited to the number of participants who could be interviewed by one individual."

Still, the report found that 2/3 of the homeless people surveyed had been victims of crime – many of violent crime – within the year they were surveyed, and found that "[t]he absence of a standardized and centralized reporting system for homeless victims makes it difficult, if not insurmountable, to analyze the distribution of victimization and to explore factors that impact reporting rates for homeless victimization across California cities." The report recommended that a statewide Dept. of Justice program collect data on crimes committed against the homeless. It also found that homeless are often the perpetrators of crime against other homeless, and that the difference in experience between the "episodic," "cyclical" and "chronic" homeless populations hadn't been thoroughly explored. It advised against making crimes committed against the homeless "hate crimes" until more research had been done on the subject.

The report was never followed up, and the research never done. Meanwhile, a rising tide of extremely violent acts against homeless nationwide has pushed California lawmakers to introduce new legislation targeting only the most egregious acts of violence, without the data to understand the full picture.

– Eric Zassenhaus