Incarceration and Homelessness
Incarceration and homelessness are intimately linked. Homelessness is often the result of criminal justice involvement, and in turn, people experiencing homelessness are criminalized for living their private lives in public. Learn more from the resources below about this relationship.
NHCHC Resources
- How Health Center Care Teams Can Address Health and Housing for Patients Involved With the Justice System (2021)
- Law Enforcement & Homelessness: Forging Fruitful Partnerships (2018)
- Stopping the Revolving Door: How Health Centers Can Serve Justice-Involved Populations (2018)
- Overcoming Health & Housing Challenges for Justice-Involved Populations (2018)
- Healthy Release: Health Centers Working to Improve Health and Housing Outcomes for Justice-Involved Populations (2017) Slide Deck 1; Slide Deck 2
- Incarceration & Homelessness: A Revolving Door of Risk (2013)
- Keeping Homeless People out of the Justice System: The HCH Role(2004)
- Reaching in to Help Out: Relationships Between HCH Projects and Jails (2004) – Nancy McBride, Policy Research Associates, Inc., for the National HCH Council
Additional Resources
- Policing- and punishment-based approaches: A really expensive way to make homelessness worse (September 2021) | This statement from the National Coalition for Housing Justice, to which the NHCHC is a party, describes how the criminalization of unsheltered homelessness and encampments harms everyone and wastes money.
- Prison Policy Initiative: The Revolving Door Between Homeless Shelters and Prisons in Connecticut (2021)
- Policing, Incarceration, Homelessness, & COVID-19 (2020): Webinar by the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty
- Prison Policy report: Nowhere to Go: Homelessness among formerly incarcerated people (2018)
- Vera Institute: On Life Support: Public Health in the Age of Mass Incarceration (2014)
- RWJF: Mass Incarceration Threatens Health Equity in America (2019)
- Housing Not Handcuffs: Ending the Criminalization of Homelessness in US Cities: By the National Law Center on Homelessness & Poverty
Get Involved
This website is supported by the Health Resources and Services Administration (HRSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as part of an award totaling $1,967,147 with 20 percent financed with non-governmental sources. The contents are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement, by HRSA, HHS, or the U.S. Government. For more information, please visit HRSA.gov.
Copyright © 2021 National Health Care for the Homeless Council, Inc.
604 Gallatin Ave., Suite 106 | Nashville, TN 37206 | (615) 226-2292
Privacy and Payment Policies