Crimes of the Homeless or the Crime of Homelessness? On the Dialectics of Criminalization, Decriminalization, and Victimization

• NCJ Number: 120497
• Journal: Contemporary Crises: Law, Crime and Social Policy Volume: 13 Issue: 3 Dated: (September 1989) Pages: 275-288
• Author(s): G Barak; R M Bohm
• Date Published: 1989
• Length: 24 pages
• Publication Format: Article
• Publication Type: Issue Overview
• Language: English
• Country: Netherlands
• Note: Earlier version presented at the annual meeting of the American Society of Criminology, Montreal, Canada, November 12, 1987.

Annotation

This paper is a limited attempt to synthesize the older and newer trends in radical criminology -- to integrate the issues of criminalization, decriminalization, and victimization.

Abstract

The object of our endeavor is homelessness and how society responds to it. In the paper, we first examine the dialectics of criminalization, homelessness, and economic crisis in relation to some of the general trends in the developing political economy of welfare capitalism. Second, we argue that criminologists should support and focus on efforts to "criminalize" the condition of homelessness and, at the same time, to decriminalize most of the acts of survival of the homeless. In pursuing this end, we urge criminologists to respond by doing things "with" rather than "for" or "to" the homeless. Ultimately, we hope this paper contributes to the ideological and practical struggle for achieving stable institutional methods for satisfying basic human needs. 19 notes. (Author abstract)