The criminalisation of homelessness and poverty is not truly ending—only being reshaped
~ Tony ~
On 10 June 2025 the Government confirmed it will repeal the Vagrancy Act 1824 by Spring 2026 (you just can’t rush these things), and whilst the news was widely and justifiably welcomed by homelessness charities, we should sound a note of caution: we have been here before.
The previous Government also said it would repeal the Act, only to announce even more reactionary laws to be put in its place. This time the Government says it will be replaced by amendments to the Crime and Policing Bill to include a new offence of facilitating begging for gain and an offence of trespassing with the intention of committing a crime, both of which are included under the 1824 Act.
Of course, the Crime and Policing Bill is already a thoroughly repressive piece of legislation, including so-called respect orders (which can be used to prohibit a wide variety of anti-social behaviour), youth injunctions (to be used against children aged 10 or over but under 18) and further restrictions on protests (prohibiting the wearing or otherwise using of an item that conceals a person’s identity, an offence of possession of pyrotechnics at protests, and an offence of climbing on a war memorial).
Whilst most of the Vagrancy Act was repealed over time, the part of the legislation that makes it a criminal offence to sleep rough or beg in England and Wales remains in force (it was repealed in Scotland in 1982), thus continuing to give the police both the power and the discretion to arrest people and Magistrates the power to impose a fine of up to £1,000.
According the Single Homeless Project, between April 2022 (when the last Government said it would repeal the Vagrancy Act) and June 2024 (when Parliament was dissolved), 177 people, including 148 men and 27 women, were arrested under the law.
To be clear this means that when you are starving and you beg for food or money to buy food you can be arrested. When you lose your home and are forced to sleep on the streets you can be fined. When you cannot pay the fine you can be imprisoned. As always the victims of capitalism are the scapegoats.
How we got here
An Act for the Punishment of idle and disorderly Persons, and Rogues and Vagabonds, in England, to give its full title, was part of the response of the ruling class to the rioting that followed the Napoleonic Wars. The price of bread increased but wages did not (I hope this does not sound too contemporary). As a result many agricultural labourers were plunged into poverty. Trade unions were effectively illegal (just 10 years later the Tolpuddle Martyrs were tried, convicted and sentenced to penal transportation to Australia for swearing a secret oath as members of a friendly society). Unemployment increased. The Corn Laws were enacted to impose tariffs on all imported cereal grains, including wheat, oats and barley, thus increasing the profits and power of land owners. Unrest was widespread.
The 1824 Act set a new model, which proved extremely influential around the world over the following centuries. Between the early nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, vagrancy laws were adopted or reformulated almost everywhere the British rulers colonised. Laws were adopted to cover a broad range of ‘offences’ and ‘offensive’ ways of being, including impoverishment, idleness, begging, hawking, public gambling, sex work, public indecency, fortune-telling, traditional religious practices, drunkenness, homosexuality, cross-dressing, socialising across racial groups, being suspicious, and many other activities as well.
They were adopted for a range of purposes: to control labour and limit workers’ bargaining positions, including after the abolition of slavery; to define the boundaries of civilized, industrious, and moral society; and to “clean up the streets” and reinforce urban boundaries. Most overarchingly, vagrancy laws served as a practical and rhetorical means through which the discretionary power of the state, as enforced through the police and magistracy, was expanded.
The Vagrancy Act 1824 comes from a largely forgotten era. Before the supposed Victorian values that so many reactionary politicians still like to espouse. A decade before the ‘new’ poor law which introduced the workhouses. Twenty years before Engels’ study of the Condition of the Working Class in England. Over a century before the welfare state.
As for the offences of leaving properties empty, making rents unaffordable and reducing people to poverty, unsurprisingly no legalisation is proposed—but law and morality rarely coincide.
Photo: Matt Collamer on Unsplash
