CASE STUDY ON CRIMINALIZATION OF POOR: ATLANTA 1996

* See also Homelessness section and Case Study on Atlanta.

“The 1996 Atlanta Olympic Games were characterized by the criminalization of poor and homeless people and the introduction of ordinances and policies that targeted minorities. As part of the preparations for the Olympic Games, six new pieces of legislation, called Quality of Life Ordinances, were adopted in the year after Atlanta won the bid. The QOL ordinance criminalized people sleeping in derelict buildings, begging, or walking through parking lots if they did not own a car.”
(Fair Play for Housing Rights, p. 119)

Under this new legislation, 9,000 arrest citations were issued against primarily Black, homeless men.
“Many people arrested were held for trial after the Olympic Games: advocates allege that there were deliberate delays during the Olympic Games period in bringing people before the court.”
(Fair Play for Housing Rights, p. 119)

In fact, one of the first Olympic venues to be completed on time was a new prison:
“Many community groups believed that this prison was designed to house homeless people over the course of the Olympic Games.”
(Fair Play for Housing Rights, p. 119)

To compound Atlanta’s homeless problem, those with criminal records are ineligible for public housing. This attack on the homeless also included harassment of soup kitchens and shelters.

“In a 1996 federal lawsuit, five homeless men sued the City of Atlanta police force for wrongful arrest. Their case included documentation of arrests and harassment of homeless people, loss of shelters, affordable housing, and public housing a s result of Olympic preparations. The federal judge issued a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction two days before the Olympic opening ceremonies—thus causing considerable embarrassment to the city. The subsequent settlement in mid-1998 included $3,000 compensation for each person…”
(Inside the Olympic Industry, p. 140)

“A key instrument in the cleanup campaign was the business community’s private security force. Downtown businesses had taxed themselves in order to hire a special force of private security guards officially called the Ambassador Force…”
(Inside the Olympic Industry, p. 139)

Sources

Fair Play for Housing Rights; Olympic Games & Housing Rights, Centre on Housing Rights & Evictions, Geneva, Switzerland 2007, www.cohre.org

Inside the Olympic Industry; Power, Politics and Activism, by Helen Jefferson Lenskyj, State University of New York Press, Albany NY 2000