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Criminalization of Homelessness

Municipal Violations by Housing Status
research questions

  • Which municipal code statutes are most enforced by Providence police officers?

  • Are there any demographic patterns identifiable in the police logs for municipal code violations?

  • Is there a geographic pattern for the identified statutes and/or demographic groups?

  • Does the data reflect the community groups’ sense of bias in criminalization?

 

  • Formally, disorderly conduct (16-3 A-H) and open container (23-32) disproportionately target homeless, African American & Black individuals

  • Informally, the smoking ban (23-37) is reportedly being used by police to forcibly move homeless people (source: Andy Horwitz)

  • For all municipal code violations, disorderly conduct and open container "hotspots" are located Downtown, in the West End, a bit of Elmwood, Upper South Providence, and Providence College

    • Most notably, for all codes, when you take it down to NPA level, the Providence College hotspot disappears, while the West End/Upper South Providence hotspot (where Broad St is) grows.

  • The absolute number of municipal code violations have decreased in the past five years. [After discussion with community partners, they believe a reason might be that numbers are dropping because of Judge Frank Caprio in the municipal court is much more lenient with the law]

  • However, the share of those coded with "No Permanent Address" (NPA) has risen slightly, a trend opposite to the trend seen in the absolute number of violations.

  • Violations, including disorderly conduct and open container, spiked in 2015. [After discussion with community partners, they cited the introduction of a municipal court judge as a possible reason.]

 

findings

access our full presentation

data

  • The Providence Municipal Code: https://library.municode.com/ri/providence/codes/code_of_ordinances?nodeId=COORPRRHIS

    • Specifically looking at ordinances against “quality of life” and “social control”

      • 16-3.A-H: Disorderly conduct

      • 23-32: Open container

      • 23-37: Open tobacco use

  • We made a public records request for Providence Police records dating back to 2006

    • Case logs

    • Arrest logs

      • This data includes demographics, home address, address of arrest, officer on duty

methods

  • We started by doing literature reviews on the subject of legislation relating to people experiencing homelessness from around the country.

  • We then read through the Providence Municipal Code to identify all potential statutes that might disproportionately affect homeless and/or vulnerable communities

  • We then conducting interviews with community partners (listed above), who were able to give us great insight into the Providence/Rhode Island criminal justice system, specific statutes that are frequently used for the aforementioned communities, historical context specific to Providence, anecdotes on relevant individual experiences, and reported informal practices / less well known elements regarding policing in Providence

  • We submitted a public records request through the city’s online data portal (https://providenceri.nextrequest.com/requests/new) for over ten years of police case logs and police arrest logs. It took approximately one month to receive this data in full, which was provided first as an excel document, and then in the form of ‘shape’ files.

  • This data was analyzed using Excel and ArcGIS to provide descriptive statistics for the selected statutes as well as the demographic information of those arrested. We used the code “No Permanent Address” (and its many spelling / abbreviation variations), and common shelter addresses as proxy indicators for an individual that may possibly be experiencing homelessness. We recognize this is an imperfect equivalency considering the vast and varied reasons for why an individual may be listed as having “No Permanent Address (NPA)”.

    • In general, our data set is imperfect because it is reported by police officers, who gauge demographic information and ask for permanent locations versus being self-reported by the individuals themselves.

 

access our full presentation

potential next steps

In the future, there is much more to be done, whether by us or by another group using our research. Questions and thoughts that will give very telling information include:

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  • Who are the forces behind this criminalization? (Small businesses? Large corporations?)

  • Seasonal Analysis (we know from the literature that arrests are more frequent in the summer)

  • Are there officers making disproportionate numbers of arrests?

    • Separate arresting officers with sergeants

  • Missing data

    • What could it be hiding?

  • Separate data in other ways

    • Investigate disproportionate targeting of Black & African American individuals

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We would appreciate any feedback on our work, any leads to begin our future work, any improvements to robustness in our methods (i.e. a better data set to use? Way to measure homelessness with a better proxy, or without one?)

 

See here that total number of municipal code violations (MCV) are falling, while the share of violations for those coded as NPA slightly increases (with that spike in 2015).

 

access our full presentation

researchers

Ellie Koschik, Urban Studies & BEO Business Economics ’21

Hanna Wells, Urban Studies ’21

Josh Danielson, Urban Studies & Modern Culture and Media ’20

Amy Miao, Applied Math-Econ & Public Policy ’20

 

community partners

The Homeless Bill of Rights Defense Committee

Megan Smith 

PhD Candidate BU, House of Hope outreach worker  

Andy Horwitz 

RWU Professor of Constitutional Law 

Annie Vos-Altman 

Public defense lawyer for Providence municipal court

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