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Why do you make excuses for poverty being a reason to break society's rules? You suggest people who are poor get a more permissive set of rules? How about ri

Why do you make excuses for poverty being a reason to break society's rules? You suggest people who are poor get a more permissive set of rules? How about rich people? Your individual inclination of being charitable isn't a policy for regulating or governing a society successfully. I remember a Facebook acquaintance who decried someone charged with fare evasion on the subway, "because we're criminalizing being poor". What about the poor people who are paying their fare, obeying the law? Why are you forgiving the law breaker, and doing nothing for the law abider? Or actively showing them why following the rules is pointless? Consistently enforcing rules benefits the least advantaged people in society the most. And I agree with the commenter below that the reasoning on display in the court's opinion is really shady. You can be exempt from obeying law because of your circumstances or status? That's really workable? Who decides? What level of criminal act is justifiable for homeless people then? How about using the street as a public toilet? Are they exempt from that too because it's a biological imperative? This is full of holes.

supernova87a 8y ago
And by the way, congratulations to the commenters voting down my opinion above because it expresses conservative views. You really are living up to the liberal ideal of censorship when you disagree with an opinion.
- dang 8y ago
  Would you please stop breaking the site guidelines by going on about downvotes like this? It's off topic, and in the rules for good reason: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
sidlls 8y ago
This is full of holes. Self-reference? If so, agreed. The biggest hole in your comment is that in America, at least, it's possible for a law to be declared invalid in some contexts (e.g. sleeping on the street) but not others (e.g. urinating on it). You dance around this somewhat in your comment, so it's curious you take such a binary view.
TACIXAT 8y ago
What is someone supposed to do if they are tired or need to use the restroom but do not have the means to get a hotel? I would rather sleep in my car on the side of the road and get fined than continue driving in a sleep-deprived state. I usually get away with using restrooms in restaurants when I am out, but if it was refused and there were no public restrooms, you bet I would find an alley. Society's rules do not mean as much when there is no viable alternative.
- autokad 8y ago
  I think the issue is deeper than just 'no viable alternative'. should you not receive a parking ticket because you couldn't find a parking spot? Should homeless people be able to sleep in your yard? if so, do they need to provide proof there was no viable alternative? its inhumane to force them to sleep outside, shouldnt you be forced to let them into your house? does being homeless give them a special right to violate your private property? why cant anyone sleep in your yard? the issue is complex, but I do not agree with "Society's rules do not mean as much when there is no viable alternative."
  - TACIXAT 8y ago
    This is just a "slippery slope" argument. If you do not give people a place to use the restroom, do not be surprised when they use the restroom. If people do not have a place to sleep, do not be surprised that they still need to sleep. No, you do not need to let them shit in your mouth or sleep with your wife. No one is arguing to abolish private property and give it to homeless. People are saying that until there is an alternative, homeless people need a place to sleep and use the restroom, and that place is likely going to be public property such as parks. Let's say your friend is shot and you are driving them to the hospital. There is no parking at the hospital. You need to park. Will you just say "oh well" and head home. Sorry buddy, no parking. Nope, you need to park. You will do it illegally. It is like that. Not that we don't get parking tickets because we parked on the sidewalk to go to the mall.
    - autokad 8y ago
MattGrommes 8y ago
They're not saying the people are exempt from obeying the law, they're saying the law is wrong. If there's no room in shelters and someone has no home to sleep in or money for a hotel, what are they supposed to do? That's not a rhetorical question, what are they supposed to do? Go to jail? We already have laws against public indecency that cops are supposed to enforce but criminalizing the act of sleeping when you have no other choice is what this is about.
- gamblor956 8y ago
  Do you honestly believe that someone is better on the streets, exposed to the weather, without access to restroom facilities, food, or healthcare, than in a facility where they get all of that?
  - pmiller2 8y ago
    If that facility is a jail, then possibly yes.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
  - MattGrommes 8y ago
    No, I absolutely believe they should have access to all of that instead of sleeping on the streets. But I also absolutely know jail is not that place. See other comments about the quality of jail facilities or talk to somebody who has spent time in jail. This wouldn't be an issue if there were enough shelters for everyone who wanted to be in a facility.
    - gamblor956 8y ago
      As a former public defender, I've actually visited every jail and prison in California. They're not shitholes. Some, like Chino, or even downright luxurious compared to living in a trailer park like the kinds you would find in Appalachia or on a reservation. I agree that non-incarceration facilities would be preferable. But as a person who has actually represented the homeless I am 100% certain that a large number of the homeless would refuse to live in a homeless shelter if it meant giving up booze and drugs.
RobLach 8y ago
What are “society’s rules”? Laws? Laws are arbitrary and regularly criminalize particular demographics or even singular entities for whatever reason to enforce an agenda.
- supernova87a 8y ago
  Yeah, those stupid "society's rules" that give us the freedom to not be afraid to walk around without being armed, or worry about your house getting broken into. Such pesky laws that are so arbitrary and infringing on people's demographics.
  - jquery 8y ago
    You're being downvoted but you're making a valid point. The rich and poor alike are both restrained from robbing others for money, yet the rich are unlikely to attack you on the street because they have no need to. It sucks to be poor, but it sucks even worse to be poor in a lawless society.
skywhopper 8y ago
You are conflating a whole lot of things that are barely related to this specific case, which is about a very specific situation: criminalizing sleeping on public property when shelters are full. What would you have these people do, exactly, to avoid this punishment?
shindog 8y ago
I think you are correct. It’s about where you draw the line. The line should be adjusted to account for this. What that looks like I don’t know but I agree even application of laws when they exist is only just.
LeifCarrotson 8y ago
You do realize that the Anatole France quote is satire, no? The point is that the law already places a greater burden for the poor to comply than the rich. The rich don't need to sleep under bridges or steal bread, the poor can't help it, therefore the law itself unjustly discriminates against the poor.
- supernova87a 8y ago
  Friend, everything in this world can be said to discriminate against the poor. What do you propose? That being poor legitimizes breaking the rules that protect all of us?
  - geggam 8y ago
    If you are threatened by someone sleeping on the streets you should seek help.
    - supernova87a 8y ago
      I would think anyone who observes society carefully could see that homelessness does not yield good things from people in that circumstance.
    - whatshisface 8y ago
      Yes, from the police. When someone sleeping on the streets shouts threats at you, they might be willing to go through with them.
      - detaro 8y ago
        Same for people not sleeping on the streets, so maybe the threatening should be the thing that's illegal.
  - iNate2000 8y ago
    I propose that shelters are fare cheaper than jails.
olefoo 8y ago
If poverty is no excuse for breaking the rules then wealth should not be either... But that is not how it works in a land where a bunch of bankers can break all of the rules of sound lending and then demand that the government relieve them of them of the consequences of their actions and suffer few or no penalties. Literally the only people who have gone to jail over the 2008 mortgage banking crisis were whistleblowers who called out malfeasance on the part of their employers. We can start jailing homeless people _after_ the CEO of Wells Fargo is in jail.
imgabe 8y ago
What exactly do you propose? That we round up all the homeless and put them in jail? If we're going to house and feed them anyway, why not do it in a facility where they can leave at some point when they get on their feet?
LouisSayers 8y ago
Everyone in a first world country should by common decency, have access to clean water, food and a place to sleep. If your society is failing to provide this, then it's a failure of society, not a failure of the individual. If society does provide for it in a way that is adequate, humane, and without severe inconvenience then sure, prosecution can be an option (right after providing a humane option of a place to sleep). However, I doubt this is the case. If your laws don't provide for humane treatment of people in your society, then you need new laws. And staying in jail... well anyone that think that's an adequate place to sleep is confusing a place that's meant for punishment vs a place that treats people humanely and offers them shelter.
- throwaway917100 8y ago
  This is not the failure of the society, this is a decision collectively made by the society. Clean water , food and place to sleep has to be paid by the same society and largely US society through its law makers have made the decision that they don't want to pay for these things (they still pay for these up-to some limit). It's a decision. Every country is different, for better or for worse.
rinchik 8y ago
One of, unfortunately, not many comments based on rationale and not on feelings. Feelings do no good to society when we are policymaking. Feelings are so easy to exploit and overuse in modern day of public “platforms”, available to all. Law obedience should be the first and the main message we send, while worth mentioning that as fortunate citizens in developed society we have the power to vote and self-correct.
rayiner 8y ago
> This is full of holes. Well it’s a ninth circuit decision, and a 2-1 at that...
thecrash 8y ago
Your alignment: Lawful Neutral Your desire to organize society according to simple, elegant and absolute rules is understandable - it is in fact the quintessential engineer's mindset. But society is not a microprocessor, or a factory, or even a neural net. It's far, far more complicated than any of those things, and can't be governed by the same approach. This is why things like empathy, transgression, forgiveness, and rebellion exist within a society but not within a codebase. Trying to eliminate those things from a society is effectively trying to collapse the complexity: to dramatically simplify the system in order to make it possible to manage problems through absolute rules. While this is an understandable approach to an engineering problem, I rather enjoy the beautiful complexity of society, and would hate to see you have your way with it.
- modells 8y ago
  Nuance, thank you. Black & white thinking makes me suspect a person maybe either fresh off the turnip truck, tending towards dramatic narcissistic or never slept rough. The world is only easy and mertiocratic for the relatively rich. In real life, the very poor are put-upon, berated, judged, harassed, kicked and even murdered for the crime of being poor.
paultopia 8y ago
No. One of the most longstanding principles of functional legal systems is that the law must be capable of being obeyed. (See Lon Fuller's famous book "The Morality of Law" for the canonical discussion.) When legal rules are literally impossible to obey for some people, they cease acting as legal rules and just become status crimes. If it's illegal to sleep outdoors, then anyone who doesn't have the money to sleep indoors becomes a criminal no matter what they do. If you're seriously interested in engaging with this question, I've written about it some from pp. 1059 onward of this law review article.[1] Jeremy Waldron, a really important philosopher of law, has also written several articles on the subject, his "Homelessness and the Issue of Freedom" is particularly important. [1] http://paul-gowder.com/Equal_Law_in_an_Unequal_World.pdf http://paul-gowder.com/Equal_Law_in_an_Unequal_World.pdf
- modells 8y ago
  Smh. Zero tolerance is zero thinking is zero humanity. Common-sense by discretion must prevail where 8+ million are locked-up, the most overcriminalized country with the most prisoner per-capita in the world, save Seychelles. As John Oliver pointed out, DA's are elected based on "tough on crime" nonsense, have all of the power to decide whom/how to prosecute and there aren't enough public defenders so the majority of people plead guilty, even if they're innocent, because they have no hope of fighting a system that is broken and doesn't provide either a speedy trial or adequate representation.
shaki-dora 8y ago
You should rejoice: The court declared the law itself unjust. So you are also now free to sleep outside in the winter (when no shelter has vacancies).
carapace 8y ago
Speaking as one who was homeless for several years, yes, you do live according to a different set of rules when you get poor enough (or rich enough, for that matter.) Society's rules are different from society's laws. There's a place in Vancouver where you can walk around naked and buy dope and booze in public and no one will blink. Some people know about it, some don't, the police don't care. Law is a fiction, a tool we use to manage human wickedness (good folk need no law.) Sometimes it works and sometimes it's stupid and vicious. Throwing people in jail for having no better option than to sleep in the street, instead of giving them a house like Utah does, in this country, this richest of nations, is pathetic, and should not be lawful.

supernova87a 8y ago

And by the way, congratulations to the commenters voting down my opinion above because it expresses conservative views. You really are living up to the liberal ideal of censorship when you disagree with an opinion.

dang 8y ago
Would you please stop breaking the site guidelines by going on about downvotes like this? It's off topic, and in the rules for good reason: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

sidlls 8y ago

This is full of holes. Self-reference? If so, agreed. The biggest hole in your comment is that in America, at least, it's possible for a law to be declared invalid in some contexts (e.g. sleeping on the street) but not others (e.g. urinating on it). You dance around this somewhat in your comment, so it's curious you take such a binary view.

TACIXAT 8y ago

What is someone supposed to do if they are tired or need to use the restroom but do not have the means to get a hotel? I would rather sleep in my car on the side of the road and get fined than continue driving in a sleep-deprived state. I usually get away with using restrooms in restaurants when I am out, but if it was refused and there were no public restrooms, you bet I would find an alley. Society's rules do not mean as much when there is no viable alternative.

autokad 8y ago
I think the issue is deeper than just 'no viable alternative'. should you not receive a parking ticket because you couldn't find a parking spot? Should homeless people be able to sleep in your yard? if so, do they need to provide proof there was no viable alternative? its inhumane to force them to sleep outside, shouldnt you be forced to let them into your house? does being homeless give them a special right to violate your private property? why cant anyone sleep in your yard? the issue is complex, but I do not agree with "Society's rules do not mean as much when there is no viable alternative."
- TACIXAT 8y ago
  This is just a "slippery slope" argument. If you do not give people a place to use the restroom, do not be surprised when they use the restroom. If people do not have a place to sleep, do not be surprised that they still need to sleep. No, you do not need to let them shit in your mouth or sleep with your wife. No one is arguing to abolish private property and give it to homeless. People are saying that until there is an alternative, homeless people need a place to sleep and use the restroom, and that place is likely going to be public property such as parks. Let's say your friend is shot and you are driving them to the hospital. There is no parking at the hospital. You need to park. Will you just say "oh well" and head home. Sorry buddy, no parking. Nope, you need to park. You will do it illegally. It is like that. Not that we don't get parking tickets because we parked on the sidewalk to go to the mall.
  - autokad 8y ago

MattGrommes 8y ago

They're not saying the people are exempt from obeying the law, they're saying the law is wrong. If there's no room in shelters and someone has no home to sleep in or money for a hotel, what are they supposed to do? That's not a rhetorical question, what are they supposed to do? Go to jail? We already have laws against public indecency that cops are supposed to enforce but criminalizing the act of sleeping when you have no other choice is what this is about.

gamblor956 8y ago
Do you honestly believe that someone is better on the streets, exposed to the weather, without access to restroom facilities, food, or healthcare, than in a facility where they get all of that?
- pmiller2 8y ago
  If that facility is a jail, then possibly yes.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- MattGrommes 8y ago
  No, I absolutely believe they should have access to all of that instead of sleeping on the streets. But I also absolutely know jail is not that place. See other comments about the quality of jail facilities or talk to somebody who has spent time in jail. This wouldn't be an issue if there were enough shelters for everyone who wanted to be in a facility.
  - gamblor956 8y ago
    As a former public defender, I've actually visited every jail and prison in California. They're not shitholes. Some, like Chino, or even downright luxurious compared to living in a trailer park like the kinds you would find in Appalachia or on a reservation. I agree that non-incarceration facilities would be preferable. But as a person who has actually represented the homeless I am 100% certain that a large number of the homeless would refuse to live in a homeless shelter if it meant giving up booze and drugs.

RobLach 8y ago

What are “society’s rules”? Laws? Laws are arbitrary and regularly criminalize particular demographics or even singular entities for whatever reason to enforce an agenda.

supernova87a 8y ago
Yeah, those stupid "society's rules" that give us the freedom to not be afraid to walk around without being armed, or worry about your house getting broken into. Such pesky laws that are so arbitrary and infringing on people's demographics.
- jquery 8y ago
  You're being downvoted but you're making a valid point. The rich and poor alike are both restrained from robbing others for money, yet the rich are unlikely to attack you on the street because they have no need to. It sucks to be poor, but it sucks even worse to be poor in a lawless society.

skywhopper 8y ago

You are conflating a whole lot of things that are barely related to this specific case, which is about a very specific situation: criminalizing sleeping on public property when shelters are full. What would you have these people do, exactly, to avoid this punishment?

shindog 8y ago

I think you are correct. It’s about where you draw the line. The line should be adjusted to account for this. What that looks like I don’t know but I agree even application of laws when they exist is only just.

LeifCarrotson 8y ago

You do realize that the Anatole France quote is satire, no? The point is that the law already places a greater burden for the poor to comply than the rich. The rich don't need to sleep under bridges or steal bread, the poor can't help it, therefore the law itself unjustly discriminates against the poor.

supernova87a 8y ago
Friend, everything in this world can be said to discriminate against the poor. What do you propose? That being poor legitimizes breaking the rules that protect all of us?
- geggam 8y ago
  If you are threatened by someone sleeping on the streets you should seek help.
  - supernova87a 8y ago
    I would think anyone who observes society carefully could see that homelessness does not yield good things from people in that circumstance.
  - whatshisface 8y ago
    Yes, from the police. When someone sleeping on the streets shouts threats at you, they might be willing to go through with them.
    - detaro 8y ago
      Same for people not sleeping on the streets, so maybe the threatening should be the thing that's illegal.
- iNate2000 8y ago
  I propose that shelters are fare cheaper than jails.

olefoo 8y ago

If poverty is no excuse for breaking the rules then wealth should not be either... But that is not how it works in a land where a bunch of bankers can break all of the rules of sound lending and then demand that the government relieve them of them of the consequences of their actions and suffer few or no penalties. Literally the only people who have gone to jail over the 2008 mortgage banking crisis were whistleblowers who called out malfeasance on the part of their employers. We can start jailing homeless people _after_ the CEO of Wells Fargo is in jail.

imgabe 8y ago

What exactly do you propose? That we round up all the homeless and put them in jail? If we're going to house and feed them anyway, why not do it in a facility where they can leave at some point when they get on their feet?

LouisSayers 8y ago

Everyone in a first world country should by common decency, have access to clean water, food and a place to sleep. If your society is failing to provide this, then it's a failure of society, not a failure of the individual. If society does provide for it in a way that is adequate, humane, and without severe inconvenience then sure, prosecution can be an option (right after providing a humane option of a place to sleep). However, I doubt this is the case. If your laws don't provide for humane treatment of people in your society, then you need new laws. And staying in jail... well anyone that think that's an adequate place to sleep is confusing a place that's meant for punishment vs a place that treats people humanely and offers them shelter.

throwaway917100 8y ago
This is not the failure of the society, this is a decision collectively made by the society. Clean water , food and place to sleep has to be paid by the same society and largely US society through its law makers have made the decision that they don't want to pay for these things (they still pay for these up-to some limit). It's a decision. Every country is different, for better or for worse.

rinchik 8y ago

One of, unfortunately, not many comments based on rationale and not on feelings. Feelings do no good to society when we are policymaking. Feelings are so easy to exploit and overuse in modern day of public “platforms”, available to all. Law obedience should be the first and the main message we send, while worth mentioning that as fortunate citizens in developed society we have the power to vote and self-correct.

rayiner 8y ago

> This is full of holes. Well it’s a ninth circuit decision, and a 2-1 at that...

thecrash 8y ago

Your alignment: Lawful Neutral Your desire to organize society according to simple, elegant and absolute rules is understandable - it is in fact the quintessential engineer's mindset. But society is not a microprocessor, or a factory, or even a neural net. It's far, far more complicated than any of those things, and can't be governed by the same approach. This is why things like empathy, transgression, forgiveness, and rebellion exist within a society but not within a codebase. Trying to eliminate those things from a society is effectively trying to collapse the complexity: to dramatically simplify the system in order to make it possible to manage problems through absolute rules. While this is an understandable approach to an engineering problem, I rather enjoy the beautiful complexity of society, and would hate to see you have your way with it.

modells 8y ago
Nuance, thank you. Black & white thinking makes me suspect a person maybe either fresh off the turnip truck, tending towards dramatic narcissistic or never slept rough. The world is only easy and mertiocratic for the relatively rich. In real life, the very poor are put-upon, berated, judged, harassed, kicked and even murdered for the crime of being poor.

paultopia 8y ago

No. One of the most longstanding principles of functional legal systems is that the law must be capable of being obeyed. (See Lon Fuller's famous book "The Morality of Law" for the canonical discussion.) When legal rules are literally impossible to obey for some people, they cease acting as legal rules and just become status crimes. If it's illegal to sleep outdoors, then anyone who doesn't have the money to sleep indoors becomes a criminal no matter what they do. If you're seriously interested in engaging with this question, I've written about it some from pp. 1059 onward of this law review article.[1] Jeremy Waldron, a really important philosopher of law, has also written several articles on the subject, his "Homelessness and the Issue of Freedom" is particularly important. [1] http://paul-gowder.com/Equal_Law_in_an_Unequal_World.pdf http://paul-gowder.com/Equal_Law_in_an_Unequal_World.pdf

modells 8y ago
Smh. Zero tolerance is zero thinking is zero humanity. Common-sense by discretion must prevail where 8+ million are locked-up, the most overcriminalized country with the most prisoner per-capita in the world, save Seychelles. As John Oliver pointed out, DA's are elected based on "tough on crime" nonsense, have all of the power to decide whom/how to prosecute and there aren't enough public defenders so the majority of people plead guilty, even if they're innocent, because they have no hope of fighting a system that is broken and doesn't provide either a speedy trial or adequate representation.

shaki-dora 8y ago

You should rejoice: The court declared the law itself unjust. So you are also now free to sleep outside in the winter (when no shelter has vacancies).

carapace 8y ago

Speaking as one who was homeless for several years, yes, you do live according to a different set of rules when you get poor enough (or rich enough, for that matter.) Society's rules are different from society's laws. There's a place in Vancouver where you can walk around naked and buy dope and booze in public and no one will blink. Some people know about it, some don't, the police don't care. Law is a fiction, a tool we use to manage human wickedness (good folk need no law.) Sometimes it works and sometimes it's stupid and vicious. Throwing people in jail for having no better option than to sleep in the street, instead of giving them a house like Utah does, in this country, this richest of nations, is pathetic, and should not be lawful.