Incarcerating the homeless is not an economic decision, it’s an emotional one. Society doesn’t mind wasting endless amounts of money doing it, because the cruelty is the point.
All law enforcement is not economical in this approach, when you are pricing only immediate costs. E.g. prosecuting a murderer is a complete loss of hundreds of thousands dollars if not millions. And we are not even getting the victim back for all these money spent.
>Murderers aren’t really representative of the homeless.
Nobody is arguing they are.
>Bear in mind mere homelessness is not unequivocally a crime in the states
Nobody is for prosecuting homelessness. Vagrancy, loitering, public consumption of drugs and alcohol, obstruction of public right of way, public nuisance, public defecation, trespassing etc, etc, are crimes though and we should be going after their perpetrators regardless of their having a home.
CA prison might be 3x expensive per year, but would CA be looking to house 3x or more people if they offered free housing?