Abstract
Homelessness and related community ailments have plagued society for a number of years, and governments have found it difficult to get these under control. The sheer number of homeless with mental health afflictions and problematic substance use problems leaves no doubt about the need for a stronger, more urgent government response. Community ailments such as these have led to increased crime rates and incarcerations and overcrowded prisons without a lasting solution in sight. This chapter uses the transformative justice model, with the expectation it produces better results than current models, by examining the source of homelessness, mental health afflictions, and problematic substance use and their bi-directional relationship with crime. This inter-jurisdictional study compares the current situations in the state of California and the province of Ontario, which have a high percent of homeless populations. It proves that special attention to vulnerable populations such as racialized groups, the socioeconomically disadvantaged, and youth is warranted.
TopThere is a good reason homelessness and associated mental health afflictions and problematic substance use are associated with criminogenic behavior. The Institute of Fiscal Studies and Democracy (2018) explains that jurisdictions deal with the symptoms of homelessness but not the underlying issues also known as the feeder roots of homelessness. Groups of people such as those in foster care, military veterans, prisoners, and discharges from hospitals have all experienced serious life disruptions only to find themselves at a point where desolation intersects with criminality. In its attempt to address this criminality, the chapter reviews the merit of three approaches to justice as follows and finds that the transformative justice model is most suitable from a criminal justice reform perspective.
Retributive Justice
The retributive approach to justice asserts that criminals must be punished for their actions and has its foundations in the philosophies of Georg Hegel (1942), Immanuel Kant (1956) and Herbert Morris (1968). Ezorsky (1972) contends that moral balance is the centerpiece of retributive justice where a criminal act is countered with retaliatory punishment of equal magnitude and where punishment restores the unfair advantage a person has gained in society by failing to exercise what another has exercised: self-control and self-restraint. Norval Morris (1974) argues that while the victim’s desire for punishing the perpetrators may impede any immediate hopes for peace, reconciliation may be achieved in the long run by limiting retributivism.
Key Terms in this Chapter
Incarceration: The result of a decision by the courts to confine an individual to corrections as a result of the individual being in conflict with the law.
Reentry and Reintegration: The moment a person is released from a correctional facility and enters into and assimilates with society through residence, education, or employment.
Discharge Planning: The process of transitioning care for individuals once they leave a correctional institution to which they have been confined often carried out by a social worker or a case manager.
Intervention: A strategy that is deployed for the purpose of changing the behavior or the health status of individuals usually through educational programs.
Recidivism: The probability that those who have come into conflict with the law will do so again after their release from corrections.
Community Service Work Order: This is a decree issued by a court that allows individuals who come in contact with the law to perform unpaid work for their communities in lieu of incarceration for a specific period.
Victim Offender Reconciliation Programs: A program through which victims of crime meet with those who have wronged them to make them understand the impact of their actions and achieve reconciliation.
Evidence-Based Policy: The concept of adopting and implementing policies that have empirically proved to be successful as a result of the evaluations of past programs.
Homeless Court: A court set up to care for the homeless that focuses on treatment and rehabilitation for minor offences rather than punishment (incarceration).
Deinstitutionalization: A government program that resulted in mental health patients being switched from psychiatric hospitals to mental health clinics for treatment with the hope that community care will promote integration.