homeless, and urban camping rights

[Jhanananda]

The town looks just right.  So, I will have to get my van running, so that I can run up there to see how it is.

[Frederick]

A retreat center seems like a dream come true!

[DDawson]

One day at a time.  Just a place where friends can hang out.  Remember, this is a small town.  I'm happy you're interested and at the very least it will be a fun chance to explore a new place. 

[DDawson]

Here's an update.  I'm heading north at the end of the month and hope to be in Mitchell on the 25th.  I've written an e-mail to the city there asking for the water to be turned on.  After a night there I will drive to the Spokane area and deal with things there and stop in Mitchell on my way back down.  I don't know when, but probably around the 30th.  If you can't make it there around then, I'll hide a key somewhere and let you know where its hidden.  The address is 206 Nelson street.  Its a squarish two story house with a green hip roof and a sitting porch facing the road, right across from a cattle guard that makes noise when people drive over it.  The house is painted white.  Nelson street just appears to be a gravel driveway.  I'm sure you can find it without me.

I saw a picture of van somewhere that might be yours, Jhanananda.  If its a Toyota van, I used to have one just like it.  I had a problem with my distributor caps going bad on me and creating misfiring.  If yours is doing the same thing, my solution was to keep a new distributor cap in the van and change it out if it started acting out.  Just thought I'd mention that. 

[Jhanananda]

Good to know that you are serious about the GWV having access to your house.  I do plan to head that way as soon as I can, but my van is still down, but I expect to have it running by the end of the weekend.  I will need to run it through some gentle paces before I think of taking it on a long road trip.

No it is not a Toyota.  I retired that 9 years ago, and should retire this one next year, if it will make it that long.  I never had a problem with distributor caps on my Toyota 4x4 van.  I made the mistake of running the engine ON WVO at its motor oil, without draining the old motor oil.  Doing so glued the engine shut.

[Cal]

Mitchell is only a couple hours away from where I live. If you do plan on making the trip Jeff, let me know. I'd love to visit with you again. Also, you're always welcome to stay with me as well.

[Jhanananda]

Thanks, Cal.  Yes, I had thought of you and other people who live in the Pacific Northwest, who follow the GWV.  I finally got my engine running again, but it is still not ready for the road.  The vehicle just needs so much work that I doubt I will be able to make it soon.

[Jhanananda]

I have been doing research on homelessness in the USA.  Upon examining the Wiki article on Incarceration in the United States I found that there is a most probably a direct relationship between homelessness and Incarceration.  And, the drug war has been shown to be the direct cause of the high levels of Incarceration in the United States.

Incarceration in the United States is one of the main forms of punishment, rehabilitation, or both for the commission of felony and other offenses. The United States has the largest prison population in the world,[3][4][5] and the second-highest per-capita incarceration rate...

According to the US Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS), 2,220,300 adults were incarcerated in US federal and state prisons, and county jails in 2013 – about 0.91% of adults (1 in 110) in the U.S. resident population.[2] Additionally, 4,751,400 adults in 2013 (1 in 51) were on probation or on parole.[2] In total, 6,899,000 adults were under correctional supervision (probation, parole, jail, or prison) in 2013 – about 2.8% of adults (1 in 35) in the U.S. resident population.[2]

The Vera Institute of Justice reported in 2015 that jails throughout the United States have become warehouses for the poor, the mentally ill and those suffering from addiction as such individuals lack the financial means or mental capacity to post bail.[13]

According to a 2014 Human Rights Watch report, "tough-on-crime" laws adopted since the 1980s, have filled U.S. prisons with mostly nonviolent offenders.[14] This policy failed to rehabilitate prisoners and many were worse on release than before incarceration. Rehabilitation programs for offenders can be more cost effective than prison.[15] According to the Brennan Center for Justice, falling crime rates cannot be ascribed to mass incarceration.[16]

Prison population
At the beginning of 2008, more than 1 in 100 adults in the United States were in prison or jail.[20][21] Total US incarceration peaked in 2008.[/b] Total correctional population (prison, jail, probation, parole) peaked in 2007.[2] If all prisoners are counted (including juvenile, territorial, ICE, Indian country, and military), then in 2008 the US had around 24.7% of the world's 9.8 million prisoners.[8][19][22]

In 2008, approximately one in every 31 adults (7.3 million) in the United States was either behind bars or being monitored (probation and parole). In recent decades the U.S. has experienced a surge in its prison population, quadrupling since 1980, partially as a result of mandatory sentencing that came about during the "War on Drugs."

Duration
Main article: Criminal sentencing in the United States

Many legislatures continually have reduced discretion of judges in both the sentencing process and the determination of when the conditions of a sentence have been satisfied. Determinate sentencing, use of mandatory minimums, and guidelines-based sentencing continue to remove the human element from sentencing, such as the prerogative of the judge to consider the mitigating or extenuating circumstances of a crime to determine the appropriate length of the incarceration. As the consequence of "three strikes laws," the increase in the duration of incarceration in the last decade was most pronounced in the case of life prison sentences, which increased by 83% between 1992 and 2003 while violent crimes fell in the same period.[25]

Violent crime was not responsible for the quadrupling of the incarcerated population in the United States from 1980 to 2003. Violent crime rates had been relatively constant or declining over those decades. The prison population was increased primarily by public policy changes causing more prison sentences and lengthening time served, e.g. through mandatory minimum sentencing, "three strikes" laws, and reductions in the availability of parole or early release. 49 percent of sentenced state inmates were held for violent offenses. Perhaps the single greatest force behind the growth of the prison population has been the national "War on Drugs." The number of incarcerated drug offenders has increased twelvefold since 1980. In 2000, 22 percent of those in federal and state prisons were convicted on drug charges. [28][29] In 2011, 55.6% of the 1,131,210 sentenced prisoners in state prisons were being held for violent crimes (this number excludes the 200,966 prisoners being held due parole violations, of which 39.6% were re-incarcerated for a subsequent violent crime).[30] Also in 2011, 3.7% of the state prison population consisted of prisoners whose highest conviction was for drug possession (again excluding those incarcerated for parole violations of which 6.0% were re-incarcerated for a subsequent act of drug possession).[30]

The U.S. incarceration rate peaked in 2008 when about 1 in 100 US adults was behind bars.[21] This incarceration rate exceeded the average incarceration levels in the Soviet Union during the existence of the Gulag system, when the Soviet Union's population reached 168 million, and 1.2 to 1.5 million people were in the Gulag prison camps and colonies (i.e. about 0.8 imprisoned per 100 USSR residents, according to numbers from Anne Applebaum and Steven Rosefielde).[43][44] The Soviet Union's incarceration rates from 1934 to 1953 were historically the world's highest for a modern age country, according to The Gulag Archipelago book (1973) by Nobel Prize winner Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn.[45] In The New Yorker article The Caging of America (2012), Adam Gopnik writes: "Over all, there are now more people under 'correctional supervision' in America—more than six million—than were in the Gulag Archipelago under Stalin at its height."[46]

[Jhanananda]

Lawsuit: NYPD Harassing and Targeting Homeless New Yorkers

In New York, a new lawsuit accuses the New York Police Department of intentionally profiling and harassing people who live on the streets. The suit was filed by the ACLU and the group Picture the Homeless. It says the NYPD is engaging in discriminatory policing by targeting people who live on the streets with so-called "move along" orders, in which officers tell people sitting or standing on the sidewalk to go somewhere else, even though they have broken no laws.

[Jhanananda]

Wanted, Safe, legal sleep
There will be a meeting of supporters of the Prescott area homeless population, where a group of homeless people will present their problem of finding a safe, legal place to sleep in Prescott, AZ. Please come if you are interested in supporting this cause.  The event will be at the Congregational UCC Sanctuary at 216 E. Gurely St., Prescott, AZ., this Thursday, as 6PM.

[Jhanananda]

A friend of the GWV just sent me a link to freecampsites.net.  I plan to spend some time checking it out as a resource.  With a few minutes of investigation it did not give me much more information than I have now, but I will continue to use it as a resource for now.

Yesterday a fellow rubber tramp told me of a rubber tramp rendezvous, which was held nearby.  Apparently the forest service ran them off.  I did not find a website for them, but here are some photos of the rubber tramp rendezvous.

[Jhanananda]

Published Wednesday, February 5th, 1902 edition of the Daily Arizona Journal-Miner, Prescott, AZ.

A friend showed me this article that was published in the local Prescott, AZ newspaper around the early part of the 20t century.  It provides reasonable compelling evidence that old homeless people are not valued in any culture.

Attacks on homeless have police in manhunt, population on edge
By David Hernandez and Lyndsay Winkley | 6:28 p.m. July 5, 2016 | Updated, 8:16 a.m. | July 6, 2016

Fourth vicious attack targeting homeless leaves man critically hurt. Two dead, two critically hurt in what police say is series of attacks on men living on streets.

San Diego — San Diego’s homeless population and the organizations that work with it are on edge as police continue to hunt for the assailant believed to have killed two homeless men and left a third fighting for his life.

Investigators have been working around the clock to catch the killer, San Diego homicide Capt. David Nisleit said. Detectives and the department’s homeless outreach team have been patrolling known encampments to prevent any other attacks and to inform transients of the danger.

[Jhanananda]

As a homeless person I have found that there are a number of causes of homelessness in the USA.  Our punitive legal system is at the root of it: 

Being tough on DUI has its pros and cons; because, since 50% of the population is 1 paycheck from homelessness, then a tough fine for DUI means the first offense could lead to homelessness.

Strictest And Most Lenient States On DUI.  Arizona is considered the strictest state in the USA on DUI.

Comparing the lower chart with this chart we can see whether strictness on DUI leads to fewer death due to DUI. It seems so.

2013 Drunk Driving Fatalities by State

[Jhanananda]

I started an urban camping project for the homeless with the help of Paul Michelle of the Coalition for Compassion and Justice (CCJ) about 8 months ago in Prescott, AZ. Here is a link to an article about it.‘Safe Legal Sleep’: Project offers temporary shelter to the homeless

[Frederick]

Drinking and driving is dangerous, but there is too much emphasis on it for road safety.

Our roads are dangerous by design and engineers know that. So to get around having to make safer roads, they use drunk drivers as a scapegoat.

It's nice that we have less deaths due to drinking and driving. I'm a fan of that.

Last time I checked, 1/2 the people who died in car wrecks were sober. They can't give a dui for driving like an asshole, even if in some cases, that might be more dangerous.