Reducing the Revolving Door of Incarceration and Homelessness in the District of Columbia: Population Overlaps

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Abstract

As part of the Reentry Housing Forum, "Reducing the Revolving Door of Incarceration and Homelessness in the District of Columbia," this paper presents the number of people who used jail only; shelter only; jail and shelter; jail, shelter, and Fire and Emergency Medical Services (FEMS); multiple spells in each, and a mental illness disability, for people using the D.C. Jail between October 1, 2004 and March 31, 2008, public emergency shelters between October 1, 2005 and September 30, 2007, and FEMS between January 1 and August 31, 2008.

Introduction

It is obvious to all who are familiar with the people who find themselves in the District's emergency shelters, on its streets, and in its jail that many times the same people will be in one system one day and the other system the next. This revolving door is not good for the people affected, nor for the systems that see them far too often.

For various reasons having to do with different data systems and confidentiality, until now the District has not been able to do any systematic analysis to identify these multi-system users who spend some time homeless or learn more about them.¹ However, last year, under agreements with the relevant District agencies and The CommunPartnership for the Prevention of Homelessness, which maintains the District's homeless management information system, Urban Institute researchers obtained the relevant data and conducted the cross-agency matching analysis.

We present our analysis of 42 months of jail data, 24 months of shelter use data, and 8 months of information on Fire and Emergency Medical Services responses to crisis calls.² All data refer to unique, unduplicated individuals.

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