The beginning of America’s criminalization of poverty This nation has criminalized poverty from the very start. In the 16th and 17th centuries, some 800,000 people crossed the Atlantic Ocean to occupy the English Eastern Seaboard of North America, many arriving in Jamestown, Virginia. Among the 800,000 people, 500,000 were Europeans [this number included 55,000 convicts and POWs with about 52,000 …