Copy, Paste, Incarcerate. Turning Poverty into Profit and Policy.
Behind closed doors, a powerful conservative think tank is reshaping how America responds to homelessness—not with housing, but with handcuffs. The Cicero Institute, founded by billionaire Joe Lonsdale, has become a driving force behind a dangerous legislative movement that prioritizes arrests over assistance, prisons over permanent housing, and criminalization over care.
This organization doesn’t just advocate for criminalizing homelessness—it packages mass incarceration into ready-made legislation, distributing it nationwide with the backing of wealthy elites who profit from the expansion of the prison, military, and homeless industrial complexes.
The result? A sweeping campaign to make homelessness a crime. Cities and states adopting Cicero-backed policies are funneling homeless people into jails, government-run detention camps, and forced institutionalization—while stripping resources from real housing solutions.
Cicero Institute: Making Homelessness Illegal in the Most Jailed Country on Earth
Homelessness in America is not a coincidence—it is the predictable outcome of decades of dismantled social safety nets, skyrocketing inequality, and profit-driven policy decisions. It is a by-product of toxic colonialism, capitalism, individualism, racism, and global oppression. As the National Homelessness Law Center’s founder, Maria Foscarinis, aptly explained, homelessness is so closely linked to poverty that it is nearly synonymous with being poor in America.
Solving homelessness is possible by creating permanent affordable housing. But instead of addressing poverty, lawmakers—guided by think tanks like Cicero—are weaponizing policy against homeless people, pushing laws designed to:
- Ban public survival activities like sleeping, resting, and eating.
- Turn homelessness into a crime
- Cut funding for housing programs, ensuring homelessness remains an endless cycle.
In previous decades, anti-homeless laws were passed one at a time, carefully framed to avoid public backlash. The Cicero Institute has changed that. Its strategy? Flood State Legislatures with pre-written, copy-paste bills that rapidly escalate the criminalization of homelessness—before the public even has time to fight back.
How the Cicero Institute Advances Criminalization
Billionaire entrepreneur Joe Lonsdale founded the conservative think tank Cicero Institute in 2016 and has used it to bring anti-homeless legislation packages to dozens of states. The blueprint for pushing homeless criminalization is as follows:
Packaging and Promoting Anti-Homeless Laws. Present a bill that appears to help homeless people but actually criminalizes them. The most notorious example of this is the Cicero-backed “Reducing Street Homelessness Act,” which sounds like a positive piece of legislation. In reality, it seeks to redirect funding away from long-term solutions while increasing police enforcement of anti-camping laws. According to NPR, homeless people arrested under this strict anti-camping ban can face misdemeanor charges. The bill itself pressures local governments to enforce these laws or face harsh penalties like a loss of funding.
Coordinated Nationwide Efforts. The Cicero Institute’s strategy hinges on presenting nearly identical legislation across multiple states—a tactic often referred to as “copy-paste” lawmaking. After the Reducing Street Homelessness Act passed in Georgia, a wave of similarly worded bills appeared in state legislatures across the country. By early 2025, 32 states had passed or strengthened anti-camping laws, and hundreds of cities have followed suit.
While language and titles may vary, many of these new laws appear to mirror the Cicero Institute’s model legislation. A 2022 investigation by Stateline found that eight states had already enacted bills with strikingly similar language, propelled by a multi-million-dollar lobbying campaign. Since then, Cicero’s influence has only expanded—often under the radar—replacing proven housing interventions with criminalization tactics that further punish homeless people without reducing homelessness.
A Strategy of Speed and Secrecy. As awareness grows around the Cicero Institute’s role in shaping punitive homeless legislation, the think tank has adopted increasingly opaque tactics. Rather than introducing standalone bills openly, Cicero-backed legislation is often filed late in sessions, rushed through committees, or quietly embedded into unrelated bills that are already moving forward.
This strategy isn’t just stealthy—it’s persistent. In Georgia alone, lawmakers attempted to pass Cicero-inspired legislation three times. When standalone bills fail, they have provisions inserted into existing, already-progressing legislation. Across the country, housing advocates have mobilized in response, but the rapid pace and behind-the-scenes maneuvering continue to challenge transparency and public engagement.
Lonsdale’s Investments in Criminal Justice and Surveillance
While Lonsdale does not directly invest in traditional private prisons, his investments and policy initiatives financially benefit industries that profit from increased incarceration and surveillance.
Performance-Based Prison Contracts – Through Cicero, Lonsdale has championed “performance-based” prison funding models, which tie government funding for incarceration to specific metrics, such as recidivism rates. While framed as reform, critics argue that these models create financial incentives that can lead to harsher sentences, forced labor, and reduced rehabilitation services.
Investments in Law Enforcement and Military Tech – Lonsdale is the co-founder of Palantir Technologies, a data mining and defense technology company that sells its services to government agencies and U.S. immigration authorities, including a $92 million contract with Immigration and Customs Enforcement. In addition to co-founding Palantir Technologies, through his venture capital firm 8VC, Lonsdale has invested in:
- Anduril, which develops AI-powered drones used in military and border enforcement.
- Chaos Industries, a defense contractor that raised $145 million for military tech.
Lonsdale’s Own Words: The Push for a Profitable Prison Model
Lonsdale has openly acknowledged his interest in for-profit criminal justice models, writing in his blog:
“The policy organization I chair, the Cicero Institute, writes model legislation for state lawmakers in this area, among others — to align incentives between the prison system and the community it exists to protect.”
His support for privatized criminal justice solutions, combined with his push for laws that increase the criminalization of homelessness, demonstrates a clear financial alignment between his policies and industries that benefit from incarceration. This financial alignment is one he openly professes:
“Specifically, we’re interested in establishing performance-based contracts that reward results. Multiple types of providers can compete for these types of contracts, whether they’re public or private, for-profit or not-for-profit,” says Lonsdale, adding that he does not think profiting from prison is a dishonorable endeavor. “Believe it or not, not everyone involved in prison policy thinks profit is dishonorable — certainly not myself as a lifelong entrepreneur that has actually built government contractors and defense companies,” Lonsdale concludes.
“When somebody tells you who they are, believe them the first time.” – Maya Angelou
Why This Matters: Housing Should be a Human Right
Instead of investing in permanent housing solutions, lawmakers influenced by Cicero’s policies are prioritizing jails, surveillance, and institutionalization.
The United States already has a shortage of more than 7 million affordable homes. As the cost of living continues to far outpace the median wage, America’s wealth gap—the widest of any developed nation—continues to grow. For those experiencing homelessness, this means navigating a landscape where basic survival is criminalized, while people in power present so-called “solutions” that resemble punishment more than care.
From outdoor encampments made of shack-like structures the size of prison cells to policies that funnel unhoused individuals into jails and psychiatric institutions, it’s clear that many of the wealthy see this crisis not as a moral failing to be addressed, but as an opportunity to be exploited. Where the rich see potential for profit or political gain, the poor face barriers to survival.
Jesse Rabinowitz, Campaign and Communications Director for the National Homelessness Law Center, has been a vocal figure in the growing wave of protests against the Cicero Institute. As legislation inspired by the think tank spreads across the country, Rabinowitz warns that its influence extends far beyond statehouses—and into the rhetoric of national leaders.
“What Donald Trump is talking about when he mentions rounding up homeless people and forcing them into government-run detention camps is a key way to dehumanize people and to ‘other’ people,” Rabinowitz said. “That’s a dangerous step because once we otherize people, it makes it easier for folks to feel disdain and be violent toward them.”
Advocates like Rabinowitz see a troubling alignment between Cicero’s criminalization agenda and political platforms that frame unhoused people as threats rather than neighbors in need.
Why Is the Cicero Institute Criminalizing Poverty?
The Cicero Institute is pushing policies that criminalize homelessness and poverty for a few key reasons—ideological, political, and financial:
Ideological Beliefs: The Billionaire ‘Tough Love’ Approach
Lonsdale, the billionaire founder of Cicero, subscribes to a libertarian-conservative worldview that sees poverty and homelessness as individual failings rather than systemic failures.
- Personal Responsibility Over Social Safety Nets: Cicero argues that government-funded housing solutions “enable” homelessness rather than solve it. Instead of addressing the root causes—skyrocketing housing costs, wage stagnation, and lack of mental health care—Cicero promotes “self-sufficiency” through forced institutionalization and policing.
- Distrust of Government Spending: The institute claims that housing first policies “waste” taxpayer money despite overwhelming evidence that housing is the most cost-effective solution to homelessness. Instead, they push for policing and institutionalization—despite these methods being far more expensive in the long run.
- Privatization Over Public Investment: Rather than advocating for robust public investment in affordable housing or supportive services, the Cicero Institute promotes privatized alternatives—solutions that often redirect public funds to private contractors and surveillance firms. Some of these companies are backed by Lonsdale’s venture capital firm, 8VC (see above), raising concerns about conflicts of interest and self-serving policymaking.Cicero frames its proposals as “data-driven” and “measurable,” appealing to technocratic ideals of efficiency. But critics argue that these metrics prioritize short-term cost-cutting and enforcement statistics over long-term outcomes like housing stability, community health, and human dignity.
Political Strategy: Aligning with Conservative Tough-on-Crime Narratives
Cicero has aligned itself with Republican lawmakers looking to appear “tough” on homelessness without addressing the root causes. By pushing laws that criminalize survival, they provide a political playbook for conservative leaders who want to appear strong on crime while ignoring the real crisis of housing unaffordability.
- Anti-“Woke” Politics: Lonsdale has openly criticized progressive policies on homelessness, calling them soft and ineffective. Cicero’s model legislation reinforces the false narrative that homelessness is a choice and that Democratic-led cities are failing due to “woke” policies.
- Discrediting Government Solutions: By pushing policies that intentionally fail, Cicero can later claim that public programs don’t work—justifying even more privatization, more policing, and less investment in social programs.
Financial Interests: Who Profits from Homeless Criminalization?
While Cicero claims to be a policy think tank, its policies align with industries that profit from criminalizing poverty. These include:
- Private Prison & Detention Facility Investors
- Cicero-backed policies increase arrests and institutionalization, which means more bodies in jails, detention centers, and forced mental health facilities. (Note: should a person be criminally punished for being too poor to afford housing?)
- States that adopt Cicero’s laws are funneling more public money into incarceration, benefiting private contractors running these facilities.
- Surveillance & Data Analytics Firms
- Palantir Technologies—a company Lonsdale co-founded—sells law enforcement surveillance software used to track and monitor vulnerable populations.
- Defense & Security Contractors
- Cicero’s policies lead to more police budgets, more surveillance contracts, and increased militarization of law enforcement.
- Companies like Anduril (another Lonsdale investment) create AI-powered surveillance drones that are already being used for border security and law enforcement.
The Bottom Line: Power, Money, and Social Control
The Cicero Institute’s push to criminalize poverty isn’t just ideological—it’s a business model. By steering public money away from permanent housing solutions and into jails, detention facilities, and surveillance tech, Cicero’s backers protect their wealth and expand their influence.
The more homelessness grows, the more they can justify punitive policies—and the cycle continues.
Tell Your Legislators: Reduce Street Homelessness Through Housing
The only way to truly reduce street homelessness is by making housing a human right for all. While billionaires are powerful, the rest of us are plentiful. Make your voice heard today.
