Vagrancy
[2] Vagrants have been historically characterised as outsiders in settled, ordered communities: embodiments of otherness, objects of scorn or mistrust, or worthy recipients of help and charity.
[5] The Belgian Criminal Law of 1867 had high levels of recidivism, leading to questions concerning its effectiveness in combating vagrancy[5] From 27 November 1891, a vagabond could be jailed.
Legal protection was mandatory already in medieval Swedish law, but Gustav I of Sweden began strictly enforcing this provision, applying it even when work was potentially available.
Russian law recognized one as a vagrant if he could not prove his own standing (title), or if he changed residence without a permission from authorities, rather than punishing loitering or absence of livelihood.
Punishments were harsh: according to Ulozhenie, the legal code, a vagrant who could not elaborate on his kinship, standing, or permanent residence, or gave false evidence, was sentenced to a 4-year imprisonment and a subsequent exile to Siberia or another far-off province.
In the Criminal Code of the RSFSR (1960) [ru], which came into force on 1 January 1961, systematic vagrancy (that which was identified more than once) was punishable by up to two years' imprisonment (section 209).
162 of 8 December 2003, provides that the section does not apply, if such act is performed by a parent of the juvenile under harsh life circumstances due to the loss of livelihood or the absence of living place.
They are to be tied to the cart-tail and whipped until the blood streams from their bodies, then they are to swear on oath to go back to their birthplace or to serve where they have lived the last three years and to 'put themselves to labour'.
For the second arrest for vagabondage the whipping is to be repeated and half the ear sliced off; but for the third relapse the offender is to be executed as a hardened criminal and enemy of the common weal.
If the slave is absent for a fortnight, he is condemned to slavery for life and is to be branded on forehead or back with the letter S; if he runs away three times, he is to be executed as a felon...
If a person were apprehended as a rogue, he would be stripped to the waist, whipped until bleeding, and a hole, about the compass of an inch about, would be burned through the cartilage of his right ear with a hot iron.
The same act laid the legal groundwork for the enforced exile (penal transportation) of "obdurate idlers" to "such parts beyond the seas as shall be […] assigned by the Privy Council".
Forcing Down of Wages by Acts of Parliament), Karl Marx wrote: James 1: Any one wandering about and begging is declared a rogue and a vagabond.
Whilst in prison they are to be whipped as much and as often as the justices of the peace think fit … Incorrigible and dangerous rogues are to be branded with an R on the left shoulder and set to hard labour, and if they are caught begging again, to be executed without mercy.
[20]In late-eighteenth-century Middlesex, those suspected of vagrancy could be detained by the constable or watchman and brought before a magistrate who had the legal right to interview them to determine their status.
The select committee found that the existing vagrancy laws had become over-complicated and that they should be amended and consolidated into a single act of Parliament.
It also found that in many instances the punishment for vagrancy offences were insufficient and certain types of vagrants should be given longer prison sentences and made to complete hard labour during it.
[27] After the American Civil War, some Southern states passed Black Codes, laws that tried to control the hundreds of thousands of freed slaves.
Homeless or unemployed persons could be forced into labour on public or private works, for very low pay, for a statutory maximum of three months; if fugitive and recaptured, they must serve the rest of their term at minimum subsistence, wearing ball and chain.
In effect, though not in declared intent, the Act criminalized attempts by impoverished freed people to seek out their own families and rebuild their lives.
Since at least as early as the 1930s, a vagrancy law in America typically has rendered "no visible means of support" a misdemeanor, yet it has commonly been used as a pretext to take one into custody for such things as loitering, prostitution, drunkenness, or criminal association.
Vagrancy laws proven unacceptably broad and vague may have been found to violate the due process clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution.
[citation needed] In Papachristou v. City of Jacksonville, 405 U.S. 156 (1972), the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that a Florida vagrancy law was unconstitutional because it was too vague to be understood.
