How Policing and Housing Discrimination Propagate a Vicious Cycle of Criminalization and Homelessness for Black People

Read a PDF of our statement here.

Today, the Civil Rights think tank Thurgood Marshall Institute (TMI) released Locked Up, Locked Out: The Racialized Cycle of Criminalization and Homelessness, which exposes how the criminal legal system and the housing sector create a reinforcing feedback loop that traps Black people in a cycle of criminalization and homelessness. The report analyzing national and Atlanta-specific arrest data reported by the FBI, provides a historical account of how anti-Black laws have policed Black people in public spaces, and presents evidence-based policy recommendations to break this cycle.

For centuries, Black communities in the United States have faced unequal levels of aggressive policing, criminalization, and incarceration while simultaneously being denied equal opportunities and access to safe and affordable housing. Locked Up, Locked Out documents how these two systems of oppression are not separate but mutually reinforcing. The TMI report details a three-part cycle:

1: Locked Up: The criminal legal system targets people experiencing homelessness using laws with racially discriminatory roots.

2: Locked Out:Exclusionaryhousing laws and policies, coupled with the destabilizing effects of criminalization, create a high probability of homelessness for those trying to find safe housing to reenter society after incarceration.

3: Locked Up Again:The criminal legal system at its core is not designed to accommodate those experiencing homelessness. Barriers to attend hearings and securing pretrial release, restrictive conditions of community supervision, and insufficient reentry resources all increase the risk of reincarceration.

"Being unhoused should not subject a person to increased criminalization and punishment, but in America, this is the tragic reality, The cycle of policing and criminalization of homelessness draws from a long history of anti-Black racism and slavery, and it is up to our policymakers and elected officials to redress this history," said Dr. Sandhya Kajeepeta, Senior Researcher and Statistician at TMI. "Black people deserve housing and safety. Our research provides a path forward, encouraging investments in community safety and redirecting government leaders away from policies that fuel harmful, punitive practices."

"Locked Up, Locked out isolates a critical policy failure. Our criminal legal system and housing sector have become co-dependent drivers of a cycle that punishes poverty instead of solving it." said Karla McKanders, Director, TMI "Our analyses show that exclusionary criminal history policies and aggressive policing does not reduce homelessness but simply guarantees incarceration. Breaking this cycle requires redirecting resources from punitive measures to evidence-based models like housing first, reentry services or support systems; it requires compassion and the understanding that decriminalization is a prerequisite for public safety."

Currently, 48 states criminalize homelessness through vagrancy, loitering, and curfew statutes, as well as bans on camping and panhandling in public. Black people accounted for 22% of the 31,231 vagrancy related offenses nationwide and make up 47% of Atlanta's vagrancy arrests.

Evidence-based policy recommendations for state and local policymakers to break this cycle include: reducing criminal history restrictions in housing; adopting Housing First approaches that prioritize permanent housing access; investing in safe shelters and support systems; reducing pretrial incarcerations; eliminating overly restrictive supervision conditions and investment in reentry services.

Read the full report here.

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Founded in 1940, the Legal Defense Fund (LDF) is the nation's first civil rights law organization. LDF's Thurgood Marshall Institute is a multi-disciplinary and collaborative hub within LDF that launches targeted campaigns and undertakes innovative research to shape the civil rights narrative. In media attributions, please refer to us as the Legal Defense Fund or LDF. Please note that LDF has been completely separate from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) since 1957-although LDF was originally founded by the NAACP and shares its commitment to equal rights.