Back to the Victorian Age: Tories use ancient law to criminalise the homeless
What a lovely scam (if you’re rich):
- Use neoliberal employment and wage policies to force the workforce onto benefits.
- Cut the benefits so those people are forced into debt.
- Evict those people from their homes when they fall into rent arrears.
- Arrest the now-homeless people for vagrancy.
- Send the now-criminalised vagrants to prison.
- Put them to work for no wages at all and make a big pile of money.
Is that about the size of it, Tories?
It’s an outrage, and must be stopped – so will you help repeal the 1824 Vagrancy Act?
Sign the petition to repeal the Vagrancy Act here.
1824 was … the year from which current government policy on rough sleeping gets its statutory backing.
According to the 1824 Vagrancy Act, police are given powers to arrest and detain for up to three months anyone found, “lodging in any barn or outhouse, or in any deserted or unoccupied building, or in the open air, or under a tent, or in any cart or waggon, not having any visible means of subsistence”.
This in effect allows for the arrest of homeless people simply for sleeping rough.
Not only is this law still on the books despite the efforts of campaigners, it continues to be enforced even today.
In 2016/17, a Freedom of Information request reported 1,810 prosecutions under the act, and as recently as 2015 the number was more than 3,000.
Yet those are only the prosecutions, and lying behind those statistics is the constant experience of harassment with threat of arrest. Speak to rough sleepers directly and you’ll likely hear countless stories of being moved on and threatened.
Source: The politicians resurrecting a Dickensian law to make homeless people into criminals – New Statesman
Vox Political needs your help!
If you want to support this site
(but don’t want to give your money to advertisers)
you can make a one-off donation here:
Here are four ways to be sure you’re among the first to know what’s going on.
1) Register with us by clicking on ‘Subscribe’ (in the left margin). You can then receive notifications of every new article that is posted here.
2) Follow VP on Twitter @VoxPolitical
3) Like the Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/VoxPolitical/
Join the Vox Political Facebook page.
4) You could even make Vox Political your homepage at http://voxpoliticalonline.com
And do share with your family and friends – so they don’t miss out!
If you have appreciated this article, don’t forget to share it using the buttons at the bottom of this page. Politics is about everybody – so let’s try to get everybody involved!
Buy Vox Political books so we can continue
fighting for the facts.
The Livingstone Presumption is now available
in either print or eBook format here:
Health Warning: Government! is now available
in either print or eBook format here:
The first collection, Strong Words and Hard Times,
is still available in either print or eBook format here:
If I was sleeping rough I would endeavour to be arrested. Not just for vagrancy but for a crime that would ensure I was warm and dry with access to medical care and social workers.. I have even considered this despite having a home but being trapped in it with no support and my lifetime DLA cancelled due to a random decision by a person with no evidence.
If the police were to arrest all homeless people where would they put them? So I’m not going to sign this petition until I have considered the consequences. If the police are allowed to ignore homelessness, more will die
a tent? so no holidaying under canvass anymore. no walking holidays etc..scouts and guides could be arrested too.??????…just a thought.
Forward to the 19th century has always been the Tory plan, right from the Thatcher era and before that they dreamed of being able to set the people back 100 years. They are heartless, evil people.
Where, on Earth, did you get that idea? The Tories, certainly since Margaret Thatcher, have been trying to take us back to the FOURTEENTH Century! Remember the Poll Tax? The 3rd Poll Tax, of 1381; riots… fast forward to 1989, here it comes, again. the following year… riots! Some people never learn!
So the much vaunted eu employment laws which diluted our own haven’t protected the workers then?
Into prison or assessment units that are privatised to mop up the £millions out of suffering they created.
There’s certainly much that needs to be examined. The £aw is never so simple that you can simply have an Act repealed in its entirety. Methinks that it might be more profitable to have it amended. Here it is:
https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/Geo4/5/83/section/4