By Vanguard Staff
PHILADELPHIA — The Defender Association of Philadelphia is condemning the city’s renewed police sweeps in Kensington, calling them a harmful and ineffective response to a complex public health crisis. The Association argues that arresting and displacing unhoused residents and people living with addiction only worsens instability in the neighborhood.
In a statement issued this week, the Defender Association expressed deep concern over the city’s reliance on law enforcement to manage homelessness and addiction in Kensington—a strategy the group opposed in 2023. “These tactics target people who are already struggling: people without housing, people living with addiction, and people who need care—not cuffs,” the statement read. “Pushing people from one block to another without real support doesn’t make anyone safer.”
City officials previously promised a more humane approach, including the creation of a “Wellness Court” intended to offer treatment alternatives instead of punishment. But defenders say those reforms have yet to materialize in a meaningful way. “People are still facing charges without a clear path to treatment, housing and other critical supports,” the statement continued. “Once again, we’re seeing the system respond to a public health crisis with arrests and incarceration.”
While public defenders remain active in Wellness Court, helping clients resolve bench warrants, they report that anyone with out-of-county detainers is still being sent to city jails—placing already vulnerable individuals at greater risk. This, the defenders say, undermines hard-fought progress to reduce the local jail population in response to a federal court’s contempt order regarding conditions in the city’s carceral system.
The Association also highlighted the broader context of dwindling social infrastructure, noting that four more treatment programs in Philadelphia have recently closed. That, combined with insufficient funding for legal and supportive services, has created what they describe as a crisis of unmet need.
“As public defenders, we work every day to connect our clients with the services they need,” the Association stated. “But we’re doing it with too few resources—and now with even fewer treatment options.”
The group is calling for a fundamental shift in strategy, urging city leaders to include public defenders in public safety planning and to direct funding toward what they say actually works: stable housing, harm reduction, mental health care, and legal advocacy.
“We’ve seen that real investment makes communities safer,” the statement concluded. “Displacement and arrest do not.”
As the city grapples with how best to respond to the ongoing crisis in Kensington, the Defender Association is making clear that lasting safety won’t come from handcuffs and jail cells, but from meaningful support and systemic investment.
