{"id":27516,"date":"2024-11-23T12:09:55","date_gmt":"2024-11-23T20:09:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=27516"},"modified":"2024-11-23T12:09:55","modified_gmt":"2024-11-23T20:09:55","slug":"cartoon-the-criminalizing-homelessness-cycle","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=27516","title":{"rendered":"Cartoon: The Criminalizing Homelessness Cycle"},"content":{"rendered":"

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On Governing Magazine’s<\/em>\u00a0website, Thea Sebastian, Hanna Love and Tahir Duckett wrote<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Criminalizing homelessness is bad financially and bad for public safety. Homelessness and incarceration have long been linked<\/a>, as many people shuttle between jails, prisons, emergency rooms and the streets. This cycle occurs at the front end<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0<\/em>the back end<\/a>. Homeless individuals are more likely to contact the criminal\/legal system<\/a>\u00a0\u2014 especially as police enforce low-level \u201csurvival\u201d crimes<\/a>\u00a0such as trespassing, sleeping in public or loitering \u2014 and formerly incarcerated people are nearly\u202f10 times more likely<\/a>\u00a0to experience homelessness.<\/p>\n

This cycle undercuts safety in multiple ways. The collateral consequences of even short-term jailing \u2014 such as loss of employment, separation from families, and fines and fees \u2014 increase the likelihood of future arrest<\/a>\u00a0while exposing arrested individuals to health risks and unsanitary conditions<\/a>\u00a0associated with jails.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I read that and knew I wanted to do a cartoon about how making sleeping in public a criminal act just adds to the cycle of homelessness.<\/p>\n

\n

As I was drawing this cartoon, I decided to finish this cartoon in black and white, and really dive into the cross-hatching as well as I could.<\/p>\n

I love cross-hatched illustrations. I very distinctly remember the first time i saw the book Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. I flipped through it, and the pen and ink illustrations by Joseph Schindelman<\/a>\u00a0– which were almost entirely made of crosshatched shading, with very few contour lines – just blew me away. I had no idea anyone could draw like that!<\/p>\n

I\u00a0had such a blast drawing this! You’d think that cross hatching like this would be boring to make, but I actually enjoy it, living for a short while in a simple word of parallel lines and forms. I’d love to illustrate a book in this style someday.<\/p>\n

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My first draft script called for the bottom panel to have a landlord and<\/em>\u00a0an employer, each saying a line. Which, let’s face it, made a little more sense than combining them into one person.<\/p>\n

The problem was, the direction the reader’s eye is moving in at the bottom, in a circular strip like this, is from right to left and a little bit from bottom to top – the complete opposite of the left-to-right, top-to-bottom way we read word balloons (in this country).<\/p>\n

I just couldn’t find a way to arrange two word balloons so I’d be confident that readers would read them in the intended order. So I decided to combine the two mean capitalist characters into a single character, so they could say their bit in a single word balloon.<\/p>\n

(As I’m typing this, another solution just<\/em>\u00a0occurred to me – I could have written the two word balloons so it didn’t matter<\/em>\u00a0what order they were read in. I hope I remember that the next time this problem comes up).<\/p>\n

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TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON<\/strong><\/p>\n

This cartoon has four panels, arranged so that they can be read in a clockwise circle. Each panel shows the same character – a homeless man wearing jeans, a hoodie, and a knit cap. I’ll call him “Knit.”<\/p>\n

TOP PANEL<\/strong><\/p>\n

Knit is lying on a park bench, looking like he just woke up, and with a confused expression on his face. A cop holding a billy club stands over him.<\/p>\n

COP: Get up! Public sleeping is now a crime. You’re going to jail.<\/p>\n

An arrow leads from that panel to:<\/p>\n

RIGHT HAND PANEL<\/strong><\/p>\n

Knit, looking confused and unhappy, is being kicked out of a building that has a sign over the door: “JAIL.” Knit looks confused and unhappy. We don’t see anything of the person kicking Knit out except for the shoe and leg that are doing the kicking.<\/p>\n

KICKING GUY: You’ve served your time. Get out!<\/p>\n

An arrow leads from that panel to:<\/p>\n

BOTTOM PANEL<\/strong><\/p>\n

Knit, with a disappointed expression, is listening to a businessman-looking type wearing a necktie talk. The businessman has a stern expression.<\/p>\n

BUSINESSMAN: You’ve been in jail! I’d never hire you, or rent to you.<\/p>\n

An arrow leads from that panel to:<\/p>\n

LEFT HAND PANEL<\/strong><\/p>\n

It’s dark out; the only light is coming from a door which has been open a crack. Knit stands in front of the door. A sign above the door says “SHELTER.” A woman inside is speaking to Knit through the crack.<\/p>\n

WOMAN: Sorry, out of beds. Good luck.<\/p>\n

An arrow leads from that panel back to the TOP PANEL.<\/p>\n

CHICKEN FAT WATCH<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Chicken fat” is an obsolete cartoonists’ term for little details the cartoonist puts in which don’t matter at all, but they amused the cartoonist.<\/p>\n

TOP PANEL: A newspaper lying on the ground, “Background Tribune,” says “IF YOU CAN READ THIS, YOU MAY HAVE WON A MILLION BUCKS!” Below that, in smaller print, it says “but probably not.”<\/p>\n

And the bench has a little graffiti, a heart with “E + MC2” written inside it.<\/p>\n

RIGHT HAND PANEL: Through the open door to the jail, we can see a poster on the wall, with a smiling cartoon bear wearing a guard’s cap and giving us a thumbs up. Above the bear, in large letters, it says “Protect Yourself From RSI.” In smaller letters below the bear, it says “always stretch before beating prisoners.”<\/p>\n

One of the stones of the building’s wall is missing, and a man with a handlebar mustache is looking out nervously.<\/p>\n

Another stone has a little barred window in it, and a mouse inside has its hands on the bars and looks out forlornly.<\/p>\n

LEFT HAND PANEL: Woodstock from “Peanuts” is standing atop the building.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

On Governing Magazine’s\u00a0website, Thea Sebastian, Hanna Love and Tahir Duckett wrote: Criminalizing homelessness is bad financially and bad for public safety. Homelessness and incarceration have long been linked, as many people shuttle between jails, prisons, emergency rooms and the streets. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,25,171,172,175,173,174],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cartooning-comics","category-economics-and-the-like","category-interviews","category-mandolin","category-my-publications","category-patreon","category-writing-advice"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27516"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27516\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27518,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27516\/revisions\/27518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}