Harris County District Attorney Sean Teare on Monday warned of a potential crime spike this month amid a loss of SNAP benefits for nearly half a million residents across the county.
Teare said that food insecurity is one of the largest crime drivers in the world. Teare’s comments came during a press conference on Monday, as the Trump administration said it would only restore partial food benefits to SNAP recipients in November. An estimated 3.5 million Texans will be affected by a loss of SNAP benefits as the federal government shutdown enters its second month.
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It wasn’t immediately clear Monday when benefit payments would resume, but the administration’s announcement came after two federal judges ordered the federal government last Friday to use emergency funds for the safety net program. The U.S. Department of Agriculture said Monday it will dip into contingency fund dollars to allow partial SNAP payments for families across the country this month.
Teare on Monday called the federal shutdown a “completely fabricated and manufactured humanitarian crisis.”
"I am terrified about what we are going to see around crime increasing because of the actions of the federal government,” he said. “Because of that, we are going to see more thefts, more robberies, more violent crime because people have to eat. That was the point of SNAP benefits in the beginning."
An estimated 42 million Americans receive SNAP benefits. About 3.5 million Texans receive the payments monthly, including about 1.7 million children. In the Greater Houston area, about 425,000 households use the program.
Thousands of residents across Harris County have turned out for food distribution events over the weekend and Monday. The Houston Food Bank will host additional food distribution events at locations across the county this week. Teare and Harris County Commissioner Lesley Briones encouraged residents to donate money and food to Harris County distribution sites and nonprofits during the shutdown.
Texas has the highest food insecurity population in the country, according to Feeding Texas, a nonprofit organization. About 5.3 million Texas are facing food insecurity — a rate that has risen from 16.4 percent to 17.6 percent in the past year. While county officials said there appears to be no end in sight to the federal shutdown, some studies, including one that reviewed the correlation between public health inequities and crime, have suggested that crime rates across the country increase in the final weeks of monthly SNAP cycles.
“Crime is going to go up because they want to score political points,” Teare said. “This is no different than the humanitarian crisis we are dealing with around ICE — ridiculous behavior that is going on around our country, but this is another example of the cruelty that we all have to push back on as Texans and Harris County residents.”
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