Assessment of the direct social costs of criminalizing homelessness in Hungary

In our report we assess the direct (administrative) social costs of criminalizing homelessness in Hungary and our numbers are calculated per case. Our assessment focuses only on the variable costs of authorities. The main conclusion of our analysis is that criminalizing homelessness costs a non-trivial amount in terms of social resources. According to our assessment, the social costs of a whole legal procedure for “residing on public premises for habitation,” narrowly defined, range from 46,026 HUF (~144 EUR) to 448,850 HUF (~1407 EUR) depending on a number of factors, especially upon the severity of the sentence. To access the Helsinki Committee's video based on the results of the study, please click here. 

In earlier projects we worked on for the Helsinki Committee we calculated the social costs of sanctioning certain offenses (in 2016), the costs of incarceration (in 2014), and the costs of implementing the UN’s Protocol to the Convention against Torture (in 2012).

This short report was commissioned by the Helsinki Committee under their programme concerning the decriminalization of certain offenses.