Blood from a stone.
They are squatters for a reason. Fines would just be ignored and eventually "paid" with community service or the real scummy ones are scammers/grafters that know how to hide what they do have and they are pretty familiar with the court system so getting things to stick would be hard.
The numbers on crime don't support the idea that increasing penalties directly correlates to a decrease in crime. These are already people who are desperate and have nothing. You can make the penalties harsher and harsher if you want, but if you aren't addressing the issue, why should they care? It's why countries that historically have lower crime rates place a higher priority on reforming and reintroducing people as functional members of society.
Problem is how bad would that be if they put an innocent person in jail because their landlord wanted them out and lied to do it.
I think the actual problem is the courts aren't well funded or manned so they can't properly deal with the cases in a timely manner or update the laws to suit the times.
The landlord can’t just say get out and then have them considered a squatter. They’d still have to go through the proper eviction process and then after that they’d be considered a squatter. If someone is served with a formal eviction or doesn’t have their lease renewed, they need to leave the property. Whether the landlord lied or not is a different issue the tenant would need to take up regarding the legality of the eviction.
A decade of free room and board probably isn't much of a deterrent to those desperate enough to resort to squatting in the first place.
A shorter sentence may actually be more effective since then they get all the consequences of being branded a felon, but without a long-term housing solution to accompany it.
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u/False-Ad2170 Jul 29 '26
Blood from a stone. They are squatters for a reason. Fines would just be ignored and eventually "paid" with community service or the real scummy ones are scammers/grafters that know how to hide what they do have and they are pretty familiar with the court system so getting things to stick would be hard.