PANHANDLERS IN JAIL FOR THE 30-DAY PLAN

On occasional visits, long before I moved here, I remember downtown as a blown-out moonscape. Now, as a resident, I delight in its renaissance and walk its length and shop its stores almost weekly.

Just like you, I get panhandled. Even for this bleeding-heart liberal it’s annoying, disruptive, sometimes threatening. But I have news for you: It’s only going to get worse. If you want your downtown to look upscale and prosperous, the number of panhandlers will keep pace.

Linda, who works professionally with the homeless, and I know the wariness that should accompany the approach of a panhandler. He may be a druggie, an alcoholic, a scam artist, simply too lazy to work or interested in using your buck for some other nefarious activity. Sometimes to hedge our contribution, we will accompany the panhandler to Subway and talk with him while he finishes his sandwich. Other times we too avert our eyes, sometimes with a twinge of guilt, sometimes with an edge of disdain.

But even the most hardhearted among us realize that many, if not most, panhandlers we encounter are deeply troubled people. They may be so impaired as to be incapable of finding the simplest kinds of self-support, unable to find or keep jobs, foraging for food, no network of family to accept even minimal responsibility, perhaps the scars of abuse or incest. The chronically mentally ill among them are people will likely survive only with supervised housing and intensive, professional case management, and never get better at all.

And let us also acknowledge that some panhandlers know where the resources are but simply refuse to avail themselves of them, consciously opting for a life on the street. Is this, too, a kind of mental impairment? There is no simple answer.

At first blush, the “just arrest ‘em” crackdown now imposed on panhandlers in downtown Greenville seems shortsighted, if not ridiculous. But, on second thought, I say yes-and-no. Assuming that your typical panhandlers cannot pony up a $541 fine, the question is “What happens to them during their 30 days in jail”?

The cynic’s assumption is that they will simply go back to panhandling, either here or up the road in Spartanburg. Despite county jail being a place of punishment, not a social service agency, we might still anticipate that it could make some minimal intervention during the panhandlers’ 30-day stay. The ultimate objective: What, if anything, can be done to point this person to the resources that will keep him from returning to the streets?

The jail could, or perhaps it already does, have a rudimentary link-up with various social service organizations to assess deficiencies and move panhandlers into to therapeutic programs: mental health, treatment for substance abuse, job-skills training, homeless and spousal abuse programs. It could attempt to locate families of men and women who make their lives begging on the street. It could identify those who are chronically mentally ill who will never make it alone, who will probably forever require a supervised living situation.

And yes, it could also identify the spongers and those who consciously refuse to avail themselves of extant resources and give them no more than a swift kick in the pants, which may be all they require.

To what extent does our county jail offer such interventions for its 30-day denizens? One would have to assume not much. Please God, may we soon be proved wrong.

The liberals among us may see these 30 days as a window to the possibility of public institutions restoring to wholeness victimized, spat-upon, social outcasts. Other people who maintain with equal credibility that government need stay out of social welfare should still see those 30 days as a strategy for keeping undesirables off our pristine streets and one day with the right help even watch them become responsible contributors to the commonweal.