Democratic Mayor Bill DeBlasio has just made an initiative to retrain 600 peace officers who work in the shelters of New York.  This is in an effort to address the notorious violence that occurs in shelters throughout New York.  There is no doubt that the hostility and danger inside shelters is an issue, and is often a reason for homeless to choose to stay in the streets rather than go to a shelter.

Critics of this initiative claim that stricter, more highly trained peace officers (in controlling “escalation,” whatever that may mean) will only deter people from going into these shelters.  Personally, I would critique this initiative in a similar way.  Being from a city with a very poor public school system, I was thinking of an issue similar to the one presented in the article.  Oakland public schools have always addressed issues of violence and deviance by putting in more security.  Does this solve the issue inside the schools? Perhaps by a little bit at first, but in the long run, but it has an effect on the students that is quite severe.  Seeing all kinds of security and policing around and inside their schools conditions the students to naturally see themselves as deviant criminals.  This does terrible things for students confidence and sense of self-worth.  In turn, treating them as criminals will make them more likely to conform to the stereotype.

So, I would bet that increasing security in homeless shelters would have a similar effect.  This proposed initiative doesn’t even add that much more advanced security.  It is merely a three day retraining process.  To me, this seems like an attempt from the mayor to make it seem like he is at least doing something.

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/03/16/nyregion/new-york-police-will-retrain-security-staff-at-homeless-shelters.html?_r=0