In “Are Police the Key to Public Safety?: The Case of the Unhoused,” Barry Friedman argues that one of the problems with policing in the United States is that it encompasses too narrow a view of public safety. In the case of homelessness, this narrow view fails to understand that providing shelter and subsistence to the unhoused is providing them with a basic form of safety as well. By this view, enforcing most laws against the behaviors associated with homelessness is unjust because it penalizes people for seeking a form of personal security that the government should have provided them with. This Essay argues that while this concern should guide police conduct in many cases, it does not mean the police have no legitimate reason to regulate the behavior of homeless people using discretionary enforcement of the criminal law. Police are not only tasked with providing some conception of safety but have a man-date to equitably broker and enforce the cooperative use of a community’s public spaces, which is a critical feature of democratic equality for both housed and unhoused people. Enforcing laws against the behaviors associated with homeless-ness should therefore be a balance between ensuring everyone has access to public spaces for various conceptions of recreation, transportation, expression, and commerce, and an awareness that even the most disruptive and uncooperative uses of public space by homeless people are a product of duress rather than choice. Both the housed and the unhoused have a legitimate claim on the commons, and while one is more urgent than the other, this does not mean the more urgent claim is an unrestricted one. Requirements of social cooperation may still apply to unhoused citizens, and when they do, it is the criminal law that empowers the police to broker and enforce them as necessary.

中文翻译：

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“逮捕所有街头乞丐和乞丐：”无家可归、社会合作和民主警务的承诺

在“警察是公共安全的关键吗？：无家可归者的案例”中，巴里弗里德曼认为，美国治安的问题之一是它包含了对公共安全的狭隘观点。在无家可归的情况下，这种狭隘的观点无法理解为无家可归者提供住所和维持生计也为他们提供了基本的安全形式。根据这种观点，针对与无家可归相关的行为执行大多数法律是不公正的，因为它会惩罚人们寻求政府本应提供给他们的某种形式的人身安全。这篇文章认为，虽然这种担忧在许多情况下应该指导警方的行为，但这并不意味着警方没有正当理由使用刑法的自由裁量权来规范无家可归者的行为。警察的任务不仅是提供一些安全概念，而且还有责任公平地调解和强制合作使用社区的公共空间，这是有房者和无房者民主平等的一个关键特征。因此，针对与无家可归者相关的行为执行法律应该是在确保每个人都可以进入公共空间进行各种娱乐、交通、表达和商业概念之间的平衡，以及意识到即使是对公共空间最具破坏性和不合作的使用无家可归的人是胁迫而非选择的产物。有房者和无房者都对公地拥有合法要求，虽然其中一个比另一个更紧迫，但这并不意味着更紧迫的要求是不受限制的。