MIAMI _ Amid a growing national movement away from jailing people for low-level crimes _ which critics say can trap defendants in a cycle of poverty and incarceration _ Miami Beach has taken the opposite approach.
Last January, after learning that the Miami-Dade state attorney's office was routinely dropping charges for "quality of life" offenses such as drinking in public and entering a park after hours, Miami Beach hired its own prosecutor to target people who violate city laws. The program, which is the only one of its kind in Miami-Dade County, was part of a broader effort to address nuisance crimes.
But despite residents' complaints about rampant public drunkenness during spring break and other times that draw a lot of tourists, a review of the cases prosecuted by the new program shows that few tourists have been arrested and prosecuted for drinking in public or for other nuisance crimes.
Instead, public records show, the majority of the cases have involved homeless people. An analysis of 212 cases prosecuted between mid-January and mid-August 2018 revealed that at least two-thirds involved a homeless defendant. In another 15 percent of the cases, the defendant's circumstances were unclear, although details on many of the arrest reports suggested that he or she was homeless. In contrast, just 12 arrests involved defendants who may have been tourists, based on the address listed on the arrest report. In another 13 cases, the arrest report did not include an address.
Most of the prosecutions were for drinking in public, although roughly a dozen were for urinating in public and a few were for camping in a prohibited area or entering a park or the beach after hours.
While the number of arrests for violating Miami Beach ordinances decreased last year, the number of convictions rose dramatically. More than 40 percent of the cases resulted in jail time. Many also resulted in "stay away orders" _ court orders that bar a defendant from returning to the area where he or she was arrested for a certain period of time.
The number of homeless people prosecuted raises red flags for activists and lawyers who work with this population.
"I thought my tax dollars were going to target actual crime," said Valerie Navarrete, who serves on the city's Committee on the Homeless. "If you're talking about 60 to 80 percent being homeless, that's targeting."
Carey Haughwout, president of the Florida Public Defenders Association, echoed these concerns.
"There is a growing consensus that these types of prosecutions that really are prosecutions based on poverty are not appropriate," she said. "We're just housing them in the jail instead of housing them somewhere else."
Miami Beach officials said that neither the police department nor the city prosecutor are targeting homeless people or avoiding charging tourists. The city prosecutor is responsible for prosecuting all cases involving only criminal municipal ordinance violations, according to the city attorney's office. If a city law is broken and there is an accompanying state charge, the case is prosecuted by the state attorney's office.
"An important component in maintaining a high quality of life throughout the City involves the enforcement of the laws under which all citizens and guests must live and abide," the city said in a statement. "And while no such leniency is shown for felony or most misdemeanor offenses, the officers of the Miami Beach Police Department typically provide a warning to those individuals who violate the City's municipal criminal ordinances prior to effectuating an arrest."
Mayor Dan Gelber said that the people prosecuted were "mostly repeat and habitual offenders," which was the idea behind the program when it was first created. City officials did not say at the outset that most of the people prosecuted would be homeless, however, although Police Chief Daniel Oates said that police wouldn't prioritize tourists who were unaware of the city's laws.
"The people that are arrested are self-selected as people who generally refuse to comply with lawful direction from police," Gelber said. "They may include part of the homeless population but that's not why they're being arrested at all. When a police officer asks somebody to not drink in public and they refuse, it's very likely they're going to get arrested. I think tourists tend to comply. That's the difference."
Some of the arrest reports reviewed by the Miami Herald indicated that the defendant had been previously warned or arrested for the same offense _ sometimes that same week or even that same day. There were also cases in which defendants were walking in traffic or yelling at pedestrians when they were arrested for drinking.
But in other cases, according to the information on the arrest reports, homeless people were arrested for simply drinking a beer on the beach or for trying to find a place to sleep. Of the 156 people prosecuted between January and August, 78 percent were arrested only once over that seven-month period.
Nearly 88 percent of the cases were for drinking in public, which is punishable by up to 30 days in jail and carries a fine of up to $250 for a first violation.
The Miami Beach Police Department recently started a new program to help homeless people with an alcohol or drug problem get treatment. In collaboration with the South Florida Behavioral Health Network, police so far have gotten court orders to send 11 homeless people to 90-day treatment facilities.
But at least 95 homeless people were booked for "nuisance crimes" in those seven months, which advocates say isn't an effective or humane way to address homelessness.
"Arresting a person experiencing homelessness may temporarily remove that person from the streets of Miami Beach," Jeffrey Hearne, director of litigation at Legal Services of Greater Miami, said in an email. "But, in the long run, the arrest ultimately makes it more difficult for the person to access housing, jobs, and public benefits _ things they need to get back on their feet."
Advocates say that prosecuting homeless people typically ends up being more expensive than providing housing and other services.
It costs Miami-Dade taxpayers roughly $230 per inmate per day to put someone in county jail, according to a spokesman for Miami-Dade County Corrections. That's in addition to court costs and, in Miami Beach, funding the municipal prosecutor program, which costs the city $129,000 a year.
