By Jenny Deam | Colorado Politics
Despite prevailing public and political wisdom that removing homeless encampments is necessary to reduce crime in an area, a new national study looking specifically at Denver’s crime rates after sweeps found the narrative was, in fact, mostly false.
“There is no evidence that sweeps make our community safer,” said Pranav Padmanabhan, the Denver-based lead author of the study published Wednesday in the national Journal of Urban Health.
Padmanabhan is a graduate student in Public Health at the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus and one of four authors affiliated with the medical school. The fifth is with the University of California-San Diego School of Medicine.