Trump’s homelessness order: Keep tabs on sex offenders

Under President Trump’s sweeping new executive order intended to rid the nation’s cities of homeless people, sex offenders will be forced to register under the Sex Offender Registry and Notification Act even if they have no fixed address.

The “home” location, even if it’s under a bridge, must be mapped, particularly in the case of registered offenders with no fixed address. Law enforcement is expected to check the location of homeless offenders and keep tabs on them, according to the order.

But beyond that, the Trump administration wants to “ensure that homeless individuals arrested for federal crimes are evaluated, consistent with 18 U.S.C. 4248, to determine whether they are sexually dangerous persons and certified accordingly for civil commitment.” Not all homeless people are sex offenders, so this is stigmatizing and presumptuous. In fact, the sex offenders making headlines lately are Hollywood and political elite, not homeless people.

The history of institutionalization reveals that in the 1950s, some families committed their relatives because they were gay, according to NeuroLaunch, a mental health information website. One wonders what, exactly, could deem a person a danger to themselves or others and qualify for institutionalization.

Half a million Americans lived in mental institutions in the 1950s

According to Psychology Today, in the 1950s a record half a million people lived in mental institutions in the United States. People could be institutionalized for mental illness for all matter of things, from a woman in post-partum depression to teenagers rebelling against their parents, according to NeuroLaunch. “Behind the stark white walls and meticulously polished floors of America’s psychiatric facilities in the 1950s lurked a nightmarish reality that would forever change our understanding of mental health care. The gleaming facades of these institutions masked a dark underbelly of neglect, abuse, and misguided treatments that would haunt the annals of psychiatric history for decades to come.”

In a book review posted on the University of Virginia College of Law website, "Vagrant Nation" published by Oxford University Press explains how the laws of the 1950s led to people being institutionalized or jailed, sometimes for being homeless or addicted. “In 1950s America, it was remarkably easy for police to arrest almost anyone for almost any reason,” according to the review. “The criminal justice system — and especially the age-old law of vagrancy — served not only to maintain safety and order but also to enforce conventional standards of morality and propriety. A person could be arrested for sporting a beard, making a speech, or working too little.”

Struggle between policing and Constitutional rights

According to the review, the book explains that a struggle continues to this day between policing interests and a person’s constitutional rights. “Vagrancy laws were so broad and flexible that they made it possible for the police to arrest anyone out of place: Beats and hippies; Communists and Vietnam War protestors; racial minorities and civil rights activists; gays, single women, and prostitutes. As hundreds of these ‘vagrants’ and their lawyers challenged vagrancy laws in court, the laws became a flashpoint for debates about radically different visions of order and freedom.”

The debates continue today, according to the book review. “The Supreme Court's 1972 decision declaring vagrancy laws unconstitutional continues to shape conflicts between police power and constitutional rights, including clashes over stop-and-frisk, homelessness, sexual freedom, and public protests. Since the downfall of vagrancy law, battles over what, if anything, should replace it, like battles over the legacy of the sixties transformations themselves, are far from over.”