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The Secret To Ending Homelessness: Prison For Hard Drug Use


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2023 Jan 26, 7:43pm   1,516 views  17 comments

by Patrick   ➕follow (59)   💰tip   ignore  

https://public.substack.com/p/the-secret-to-ending-homelessness


It's not about giving away free apartment units.



But jail also saved my life. Not only was I able to break the chains of physical heroin addiction, but I also got a lesson in life that you couldn’t put a price tag on. I learned how to be grateful for many things, like taking a hot shower anytime I want, and sleeping on a real mattress. Being able to eat anything other than jail gruel is something I will never take for granted. When I find myself on the brink of self-pity and ingratitude, both of which are precursors to relapse, it’s much easier to realign myself and smile at the thought of how great my life is today compared to the hell I put myself through.

Moreover, in jail, I developed social skills I’d never learned, including handling the most precarious people in society. Shame and consequences are good at changing behavior. If it weren’t for getting cut off from everyone who loved me and locked up in a cage for a few months, I’d be dead today. ...

But for people who can’t quit, who destroy their relationships with family and friends, and regularly break laws to feed their addiction, being arrested and mandated treatment is our best answer. Addicts need a system that provides them with long-term treatment and recovery as an alternative to long-term incarceration. Many addicts need one to two years of forced abstinence in a program with cognitive behavioral therapy, sobriety-based community building, and, most importantly, employment and independent living training. ...

People want to make homelessness about housing, and to some extent it is, but not in the way many people believe. Everyone living on the street once had housing and lost it. Some lost it because they are seriously mentally ill and won’t take their medicines. A tiny number are there because of poverty, but they’re also the easiest to help.

The truth is that most people living on the streets are just addicts like I was. They had homes, as well as families and friends. They lost them all because some combination of life’s hardships and drug use gave them a psychiatric disorder. The good news is that there is a solution. The bad news is that it’s not giving them their own apartment unit.


Prison is the secret to ending homelessness.

All guards who sneak drugs into prison must themselves immediately be tried and imprisoned themselves.

Comments 1 - 17 of 17        Search these comments

1   WillyWanker   2023 Jan 27, 1:10am  

The first thing is to stop referring to these people as 'homeless' and accept the fact that they are vagrants. Homelessness is the least of their problems. Alcoholism/drug addiction and mental health issues are what these people need to address. But the ACLU will not allow these vagrants to be locked up if they are insane and a danger to others and to themselves. The addicts refuse to get clean.

Spending money on trying to house them is a waste of time energy and funds.
4   Patrick   2024 Jan 18, 6:54pm  

https://alexberenson.substack.com/p/yet-again-the-better-we-get-at-harm


Yet again, the better we get at "harm reduction," the more people overdose and die

Four years ago, the Canadian province of British Columbia gave addicts legal access to fentanyl and other opioids, hoping to reduce hospitalizations and deaths. The results have been catastrophic.
5   socal2   2024 Jan 18, 6:59pm  

The US Supreme Court is finally reconsidering the infamous Martin v. Boise case that made it practically impossible to remove homeless from the streets.

https://www.ktvb.com/article/news/local/idaho-press/supreme-court-ruling-prevents-homeless-people-ticketed-sleeping-outside-idaho-new-case-could-change-that/277-3566fd5f-37ae-4df1-b0d5-406ef1aca02c
6   fdhfoiehfeoi   2024 Jan 19, 9:41am  

I don't understand why spending money housing addicts and the poor in prison is a viable solution? Have we become that callous to homeless people that we can't even stand to see them in our world? Get used to it, because the way things are going, that population will keep getting bigger. In a central bank economy the weakest are pushed down until they wind up on the streets. Whatever happens to them on that journey, or once they find themselves destitute, I don't think that gives anyone a right to judge them. And certainly not to take away their God given right to freedom of movement(4th Amendment).

Obviously no one here has been in a 12 step. You don't force help on people who don't want it. It's pointless. If they want to over-dose, it's their life, leave them the fuck alone. Do you propose next to slap the bag of Big Mac's out of the hands of fat people? Maybe you want to force inject Vitamin C into everyone? Or other stuff..?

I'm a fan of 60 days in, never seen a jail that didn't have a HUGE drug problem. And the stuff in their is WAY worse. Look up what a roach is in jail, fucking nasty.

It's as if the people proposing this know nothing about the subject, and have put zero thought into the long-term repercussions.

You certainly have a lot more in common with the Scamdemic architects than you might want to admit...
7   Booger   2024 Jan 19, 9:45am  

Death penalty for hard drug use.
8   RWSGFY   2024 Jan 19, 5:49pm  

Look at NB pushing liberal propaganda wrt "homeless are just folks who don't have enough money because Capitalism and central bank hurr durr".

LOL

Even NPR admits that 1/3 of them are illegals. The rest are addicts and/or mental (which, most of the time, is the same thing). Because no normal person would stay in an expensive area like Ess Eff and sleep in the rough when there are much cheaper places to live in this enormous country, getting there is cheap and unemployment is at fucking 4%.
9   Bd6r   2024 Jan 19, 7:32pm  

Alcohol prohibition worked out mightily well…

I do not know the solution but I do not see how complete prohibition or current attitude could work. Prohibition is enforced by the State and we know how efficient the State is in anything it does. BTW while a lot of druggies are losers/illegals/etc, in each recession I see on street corners the new homeless in relatively good clothes. Means that there is also an economic component to homelessness as @Nuttboxer says.
11   Ceffer   2024 Dec 10, 10:19pm  

Many homeless have places or relatives they can stay with if they were sober and not needing to stay close to their connection to drugs. Some homeless interviewed in LA came from middle and upper middle class homes, but they were on the street to maintain availability of drugs for their habits (also the weird lifestyle appealed).

Boz Skaggs' son died in a cheap tenderloin room in SF of an overdose at 21, and he could waltz over to Pac Heights to live if he weren't chronically addicted.

A woman who was homeless in Santa Cruz, but not a drug addict (she was only homeless a short time) said that she didn't meet anybody amongst the homeless outside of herself who didn't have some kind of substance abuse problem.

Shelters have the requirement of not smoking or using, but homeless beat and steal from each other for drug resources, even alcohol and cigarettes. The police reports in Santa Cruz are often about 'bum fights' between homeless. The homeless come and go from shelters because they can't take the rules about not smoking, drinking or using.

However, as we have seen in unaudited California, the homeless and their ersatz services are an extremely handy tool for laundering billions of dollars of tax money. They serve a purpose for the politicians robbing the constituency.

Politicians are also routinely bribed by the dealer networks, and many politicians (can you say Cartel Katie in Arizona?) are directly linked to dealer support. Of course, we know how the Intels, Royals etc. are hooked into the dealing and distributing networks. Drugs corrupt everything and everybody involved with them.
12   FuckTheMainstreamMedia   2024 Dec 11, 6:54am  

I don’t know how I didn’t see this at the time…housing and services without enforcement do absolutely nothing. When combined with criminal enforcement, you can clear the streets.

Currently there’s zero enforcement in City of Los Angeles and it’s been that way since 2013 when that despicable asshole Eric Garcetti took office.

So the Dems keep more and more money running through the Gov and their “partnerships” while the homeless encampments continue on.

At this point, anyone who thinks that housing plus services will make a dent in the number of homeless is an absolute fucking moron. Completely naive. You can see the results of that visable and if you are one of the ostriches that refuses to see, I can drive you to a few hundred homeless encampments in and around City of LA and then drive you to bordering cities that have none.
13   Ceffer   2024 Dec 11, 10:33am  

SF cleaned up the homeless overnight for Emperor Xi's entourage. Some even speculate that they disposed of some of them with extreme prejudice (CCP style), but where they put the bodies is anybody's guess. It was a very strange operation and interlude, without a lot of publicity. It is speculated that Newsom was trying to sell California to Xi in some manner, and that a plan was somewhere afoot to remove California from the Republic to become an independent country (under Chinese auspices?). Main streets in downtown SF were lined with Chinese flags.

So, obviously homeless are allowed to proliferate both because they are good customers for the anointed drug dealers (and good provenders for bribed politicians) and they seriously demoralize and partially paralyze the larger society, which is an end in itself for the subversives.

Drug addiction and alcoholism tend to be 95 percent to 98 percent fatal, with a long intervening period of live deterioration and zombification, depending on how sturdy the victims are and how much access they have to effective medical care. Unfortunately, the extremely high recidivism rate makes any rehabilitation fantasy a very low yield process. Cost effectiveness of financed rehab is dubious, except to create another tax sucking, self promoting bureaucracy with virtue signaling handles.
Addicts and alkies can't be effectively marshaled as combatant units, so the subversives use them to profit from drug sales, as local crime squads and intermediaries when they are vertical and in more passive aggressive ways to undermine society (or, as we see, launder tax money).
14   Patrick   2025 Feb 15, 9:32pm  

Wife ran across this bc she reads the NY Times:


February 13, 2025
By Nicholas Kristof
Opinion Columnist

I’ve been thinking a lot about how liberals like me ended up perceived as out-of-touch elitists by voters who then went to the polls and voted for Donald Trump. I don’t doubt my core convictions, but I think it is worth acknowledging that it is not possible to walk today through some of the bluest cities in America, like San Francisco or Portland, Ore., and think: This is a triumph of good governance.

I wrote recently about one area where I’ve been forced to adjust my thinking. Like many on the left, I was appalled by the 50-year war on drugs, which shattered families, destroyed lives, devastated Black communities — and was still accompanied by a surge in overdose deaths. I thought people with addictions needed health care, not handcuffs.

And then to my surprise and dismay, I found myself praying that my old pal Drew Goff would be arrested. Drew, 40, was homeless, on the run from the police, using fentanyl and also selling it. His wife, who was with him, was pregnant and had overdosed 27 times. It seemed only a matter of time before Drew killed himself or one of his customers.

In the end, Drew agreed. He hit a low and realized that prison and treatment was the best path to save his life. He turned himself in, and a judge obligingly sentenced him to 15 months in prison. “Thank you, your honor,” Drew replied.

I detail what came next in my column, but suffice to say it’s left me with a more nuanced view of how to handle addiction. Here’s Drew’s story and how it changed my thinking.


(paywall)

Prison is the answer for hard-core drug users.
15   steverbeaver   2025 Feb 15, 10:50pm  

I respectfully disagree with many of your assessments on this. The homeless don't need prison, they need proportioned supervision to learn what being a person is in many cases. Sometimes people lose their way and just need the opportunity for redemption.
Our education system fails people, neighbors and friends fail each other. People that make it have a competency bias, people that never stumble don't truly know, I get it. Of course, in my model, the closer one is to troglodyte the stricter the supervision so yes, in those cases a prison may be possible until they graduate. But progress must be leaned into. I also support humane eugenics in cases where they are so far gone they lack coherent conscious, and no sponsors will step forward to help carry their burden.
16   FuckTheMainstreamMedia   2025 Feb 15, 10:52pm  

The worst thing liberals do…and by liberals I me

A those who support Democrats…is to presume that things aren’t done that are in fact done, just because they aren’t readily visible.

For instance I’m sure many of us have heard the argument that someone shouldn’t serve prison time for drug use. This argument presumes individuals are sent to prison for posession charges. In California it’s one of the stupider arguments one can make since there been drug court for over 30 fucking years. That argument is part of why that evil asshole George Gascon got elected. I can’t begin to emphasize enough how incredibly ignorant Democrat voters in Los Angeles are.

Truth is that if someone is arrested for drug possession in Los Angeles…or even for drug sales..they will be diverted to drug court and be given multiple chances at rehab. If they successfully complete rehab then the court reversed the charges and the persons arrest record is sealed with the state DOJ.

Bottom line is drug arrests almost never result in prison time in California.

Oh and the public defender pricks are plenty guilty. They know this is what goes on but not a one of them makes any effort to have this information widely available to the public.
17   AmericanKulak   2025 Feb 15, 11:46pm  

Another solution to the farm labor problem.

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