Homless deliberatly getting jailed for winter?

[DrDeth]

[QUOTE=Don’t Call Me Shirley]
In 10 years as a probation officer I have never known anybody to do exactly what is described in the OP. That would be very difficult to time correctly because it takes 1-3 months after the commission of the crime for the case to work its way through the system. Even if you waived all your rights at the initial hearing and plead guilty, it still probably wouldn’t work.

I regularly have people come on probation that say they don’t want the hassle of probation and would rather just do the time in jail. I’ve never had anyone say, though, that the reason is because of the cold weather, they usually say they don’t want the hassle of counseling and community service and me showing up at their home and work unexpectedly.

I have known people that will arrange to spend one night in jail, if it is going to be really cold they’ll throw a brick at a police car or something so they can spend the night in jail. That’s quite different from arranging to spend the whole winter. The possibility of successfully negotiating all of the legal and timing issues would be pretty remote, even for someone like me that’s worked in the system.
[/QUOTE]

Right, and dudes? Jail is not “you get cable, 3-square meals a day, warm living arrangements, and all the books and library stuff you can imagine”. Jails are very overcrowded, with sometimes 8 dudes in a cell meant for 2. You may get Cable in a communal area, with one channel, and if you can hear anything you’re lucky. You run a very real risk of being beaten up, shanked, or raped. It’s a hard, cold, dirty, nasty, and dangerous place. The Youth camps and some minimum security workfarms aren’t so bad, but you have to be under 18 to get into one, and in the case of the other, generally commit a white collar crime, no priors and a 1-3 year sentence.

If a dude wanted a warm place to sleep there are shelters. Now about half the hardcore homeless won’t use shelters as they don’t like the rules: there is no drinking, no drugs, no pets, a certain bare minimum standard of cleanliness and usually no smoking. But there are none of those things in jail either (in some of either they still allow smoking). Thus all of the reasons for not going to a shelter apply to not going to jail, and there are even more "rules’ not to like.

[askeptic]

[QUOTE=Peter Morris]
BTW, Jeffery Arsehole is a British (and awful) author. I presume that the story is set over here. (guessing, I could be wrong) While comment about the US system may be interesting, they perhaps don’t answer the question.
[/QUOTE]

Then perhaps you furriners could specify that before posting on a board hosted here in the good ol US of A. Notice all the answers thus far have assumed we were talking about American homeless. If the OP is asking about homeless people in jolly old England then none of the responses posted so far are really relevant. I for one have no idea what sentencing schemes or jails or gaols are like over there.

[Jophiel]

I remembered a story along these lines and went hunting for it but all I could find was a trunducated version on a subscription archive.

HOMELESS MAN ROBS BANK FOR JAIL’S SHELTER, POLICE SAY

Source: Associated Press
An elderly homeless man who said he was tired of living on the street staged a bank robbery and then surrendered so he could enjoy the food and shelter of jail, police said. Ralph James Brunet, 70, robbed a branch of the Inland Empire National Bank on Monday, producing a note that demanded $2,000 and said he had a gun, police Lt. Gil Olivarria said. Brunet, who wasn’t armed, was arrested for investigation of bank robbery, police said.

That was from 1989. I know I saw a similar story within the last year or two.

Here’s another story teaser:

Deseret News, The (Salt Lake City, UT) - February 9, 2001

**Homeless man wanted jailing, prosecutor says **
Prosecutors believe a homeless man who allegedly broke into Salt Lake’s Matheson Courthouse last month wanted to be jailed.The 27-year-old man who had been living at the Salt Lake men’s shelter apparently believed conditions at the Salt Lake County Adult Detention Center were better than his situation at the shelter, court documents filed Thursday in 3rd District Court state.

Edited – I see, upon posting, that we weren’t speaking about the United States. Well, I can’t imagine that no one abroad has ever thought of the same plan, I guess.

[DrDeth]

[QUOTE=Jophiel]
I remembered a story along these lines and went hunting for it but all I could find was a trunducated version on a subscription archive.That was from 1989. I know I saw a similar story within the last year or two.

Here’s another story teaser:

Edited – I see, upon posting, that we weren’t speaking about the United States. Well, I can’t imagine that no one abroad has ever thought of the same plan, I guess.
[/QUOTE]

People do crazy things all the time, there are whole books about stupid criminals. I have no doubt that this has happened in the past, and will happen again. But the OP wisely posted “Do noticeable amounts of people in cold areas commit crimes purely to be kept warm over the winter?”

The answer has been given by several experts (Don’t Call Me Shirley, pravnik, and RGVChicano: no.

[An_Gadai]

I was at a seminar where a speaker talked about female prisoners in the Irish system. She said that in winter the number of inmates is always significantly bigger because homeless women find prison a better option than being on the street. However, I’m uncertain now whether she indicated that they commit crimes to be put in gaol or (and this was my interpretation at the time) that they are just allowed to stay by the authorities.