Introduction
Vagrancy is associated with homelessness and is not tolerated by the States with regulated society. Although homelessness is a pitiable condition, it is criminalized because of vagrancy. Once vagrancy was viewed unlawful for a different reason of shortage of workers. The first law of vagrancy was introduced by England in 1349 making it unlawful not to work if physically fit. Vagrancy was liable to be punished with 15 days of imprisonment. Vagrancy law in due course (by 1530) shifted its focus towards suspicious or criminal behavior. Originally vagrancy was not tolerated due to shortage of workers due to Plague in 1348. People started shifting to town for better quality of life. Serfs were leaving due to ever increasing wages because of labor shortage. Vagrancy law forced non-serfs to work for low wages and empowered authorities to arrest people who were found leaving the land owners for cities. It targeted people who were outsiders and became a tool for policing them as being suspicious and likely suspects of robbing traders. Besides, the law was used for policing trouble makers and scammers. The purpose was to bring about social order and social solidarity. These laws were emulated by the North American states to control the side effects of industrialization such as prostitution, gambling, scams, public drinking, and loitering. Loitering is associated with homelessness. The second era of the vagrancy laws in mid-20th gained significance by the emergence of the youth gang, the juvenile delinquent, and the runaways. There were concerns about hippie culture and bohemian counter culture. The third era of vagrancy is associated with structural inequality and street career. In Canada, vagrancy law considered a person to be a vagrant if he engages himself in whole or part in gaming or crime for his living with no lawful profession to earn a living and if he/she is found loitering in the vicinity a school ground, play ground, public park, or bathing area and will be punished on summary conviction. The vagrancy laws are broad and in the changing context of globalization, gentrification, peace in public places, the laws are used as tools to control homelessness. The Safe Streets Act 1999 was enacted to address panhandling, disorder, and solicitation. There were 21,000 ticket increases in Toronto and Ottawa between 2200 and 2006 representing 10 % increase in six years. There was 48 % increase in soliciting at persons in vehicles that includes 18 % aggressive solicitation. 8 % of the ticketed population accounted for 54 % of the tickets. Conviction for homelessness can affect credit rating, create a financial burden and loss of job. This paper proposes to examine the guilt of homelessness form the human rights angle.
International treaties and declarations enjoin adequate housing as a fundamental human right. States likes the United States have not recognized this as a right despite being signatories to such agreements. Homelessness denies the right to housing. Further, since the states criminalize homelessness, people suffer violation of other rights. Sitting, lying, sleeping in public places are criminalized despite being a violation of their constitutional rights. For want of accommodation, the victims have to perform prohibited conduct in public risking arrest solely for the reason of being homeless. Governments having failed to address adequately, and effectively the homelessness have rendered homelessness as a crime while the human rights recognize the autonomy and personhood of all homeless individuals. Article 11 of International Covenant on Economic, Social, and Cultural Rights guarantees right to housing. Modern homelessness emerged in 1970s among older, single, and white males living in urban areas. The 1981-82 recession and its effects increased the homelessness rendering individuals to live on the streets. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights in its Article 25 states that every individual has the right to a standard of living sufficient to maintain health and well-being of the individual and the individual's family that ensures food, clothing, shelter and medical care.
Punitive approaches to homelessness
Punitive approaches to homelessness
Homelessness is not only a subject matter of law enforcement in Canada but also is concerned with how it should be managed and sustained. It is both a crime control and welfare. In fact, Canada had it welfare approaches towards homelessness as a neoliberal strategy before the status of homelessness. Homeless became a socio-economic problem in Canada during the 1990s resulting in several policy decisions by the governments at all levels in keeping with their neo-liberal ideologies. Canada abandoned its National Housing Strategy that had been credited with creating about 18,000 new social housing units every year in the early 1980s. The abandonment was due to the expectations that market forces themselves could create affordable housing although it never became a reality. Governments in many States withdrew governmental benefits for low-income people and people living in poverty. The reforms in the Canadian economy resulted in 40 % the country’s population becoming lower income earners and several millions of them became homeless during the 1990s. The governments resorted to emergency services and support rather than preventive measures against homelessness which had started to increase. The outcry against homelessness was started being seen by the government as a law and order problem rather than supportive measures to solve the homelessness. This attitude stems from the fact that Canadians in general feel homeless people voluntarily brought about the homelessness situation as they do not want to works and would rather remain petty criminals. The attitude of the majority towards the homeless is age old and not new as longstanding prejudices against minorities especially aboriginal people and the prejudices are historically rooted as pointed by Sullivan.
Moral Panics among the public
The prejudices against the homeless individuals to the punitive extent are not explainable in spite of the size and visibility of the problem is ever increasing and wide spread in Canada. The local political situation and culture are significantly relevant. In 1990s Canadian homeless youth were literally seen begging and/or squeegeeing car windscreens in almost all the cities. This led to comments by the local politicians that the homeless youth were threat to public safety besides being dangerous and delinquent. Cities like Montreal, Toronto and the province of British Columbia went to the extent of making enacting legislation such as Ontario Safe Street Act (2000) making it an offense to beg in public and to use public spaces otherwise carefully avoiding the word “homeless”. Activists reacted to the new law as a ploy remove the marginalized who were poor, youth and minorities from certain places as there had been laws already existing to deal with minor offenses and disorderly conduct. The new law targeted drinking in public, loitering and even jaywalking and could be easily foisted on homeless people as argued by the activists. Stop and searches, demanding identification, interrogation, and searching the possession were the potential harassments against the homeless people. Police of Toronto, the largest city of Canada boasted of the declining crime rates due to widespread police presence following the “broken windows” policy of the Ney York City Police Department of the U.S. but behind it were the Canadian police’s obsession with meeting performance targets and the increased tickets issued from mere 782 in 2000 to over 15,000 in 2012 under the Safe Street Act.
Criminalization of homelessness itself is heinous crime for the homeless people have very limited rights in Canadian law. For example, Vancouver laws are discriminatory favoring the property owners over the homeless. The Trespass Act of B.C. makes it an offense for individuals to walk or camp on private property without the permission of the property owner and criminal and criminal penalties will apply. The City of Vancouver Parks Control By-Law prohibits stay in the night in city parks. The City of Vancouver land Regulation By-Law and the Parks Control By-Law prohibits shelters on city property even as tent or lean shed for protection from weather conditions. The Criminal Code of Canada (s.175) makes it an offense to loitering in public places in such a manner that obstructing others in such places. The City of Vancouver Health By-Law makes it an offense to urinate or defecate in public places. These laws literally puts the homeless people at a serious disadvantage without being able to find an emergency shelter without violating one of these laws. This criminalizes an essential human behavior without any intentional wrong doing by the homeless individual. Homelessness already creates inexplicable psychological stresses as the affected individuals worry about shelter, food, health, safety and sanitation which are exacerbated by these laws forcing homeless to choose dying or violating the law as if to add insult to injury. They need sleep but cannot spend their nights in parks. They need shelter to protect themselves from elements but cannot construct temporary shelters. Such needs are not exhaustive .
In April 2013, the U.N. directed Hungarian government to withdraws its legislation criminalizing homelessness. Hungarian government admits to about 30,000 people without homes and concedes that there is no national housing strategy for making available adequate housing for the homeless people but at the same time it has outlawed sleeping in public places violating its international obligations on human rights on equality and non-discrimination.
Florida in the U.S. has 86,000 homeless persons as against only 22,000 shelter beds available. But at the same time Florida has passed enactments criminalizing homelessness. The report of the National Alliance to End Homelessness 2012 states that there 57 homeless people for every 10,000 residents and 20 % of the homeless people are children. In 2013, the City of Tampa enacted a new ordinance forbidding people to sleep on sidewalks and keeping their belongings in public spaces. As already said, laws prohibit these acts which the homeless persons can perform nowhere except in public spaces. Ever since the passing of the Act, incarcerations have increased. The City of Orlando has also enacted a similar law prohibiting homeless individuals to survive. The Orlando Municicode Act bars prohibited activities in Parks and Recreational Facilities owned or controlled by the city. The Act does not permit lying or otherwise being in horizontal position on a park bench, sleeping during the time from sunset to sunrise, construction of shelter, cooking foods except at places permitted, setting or stroking fire except as provided, discharging or depositing human waste except in the city’s public toilets, sleeping in any bushes, shrubs, and bathing or remaining in water otherwise in a fountain or reservoir without naming the individuals as homeless. Yet is quite apparent that the targeted individuals are none other than the homeless people. The interview conducted among the homeless people revealed that their homelessness was due to their economic condition as result of loss of jobs. One young woman reported that her family was evicted for not having paid their rent and was forced to stay in motel which was expensive. These interviewees were unanimous in their reaction not blaming government for their woes. They expect help from NGOs. This attitude of blaming themselves rather than the Government is an offshoot of neo-liberalism ideology. But Harvey (2005) has argued that neo-liberalism ideology was actually to restore the power to economic elites who were about to lose their dominant positions. Harvey asserts that neo-liberalism is characterized by increasing social inequality. This neo-liberalism is actually destructive to homeless people .
The U.S.Federal Department of Housing and Development defines homelessness as a condition whereby a person does not have a fixed, regular and adequate night-time residence or having a primary night time residency in a publicly or privately supervised shelter as temporary living accommodations. Ronal Regans’s McKinney-Vento Homeless Assistance Act 1987 provided for several relief measures including shelter and traditional housing. In the U.S. there are about 3.5 million homeless people. 1.35 million of whom are children as reported by the National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty in 2007. In 2005, the estimated homeless population was 744,313 people. The report of 2007 by the Homelessness Research Institute of the National Alliance to End Homelessness reveals that 56 % of the homeless people are living in shelters and transitional housing and the remaining 44 % are not having shelters. 23 % of the unsheltered are reported as chronically homeless. The U.S. Conference of Mayors Hunger and Homelessness Survey of 2007 states that 12 out of 23 cities had to deny people shelter for want of capacity. Such homeless people have to live relatives in overcrowded housing or move to rural areas for shelter. The homeless population was expected to increase because of sub-prime crisis. Persons living poverty are most at risk of losing homes and demographic groups are more likely to become homeless. Homelessness first appeared in the U.S. in 1870 when there were no official figures on homeless population. At the time of the Great Depression of 1930s, there were an estimated 1.5 million homeless people. While in 1950s and 1960s, homeless people comprised of white males most of them in their fifties, at present 30-40 % comprise of families with children and they happen to African Americans. The homeless people in the U.S are also at the risk of being victimized because of their identity as there is ever growing tendency to criminalize this particular group. The crimes against the homeless individuals are not committed by organized groups, but individual citizens harboring a strong animosity towards them. They are called mission offenders set out to cleanse the world of this particular menace. Some individuals are known as scapegoats showing their disapproval of the growing economic power of the particular ethnic group. Still others are “Thrill seekers” who would exploit the vulnerable for satisfying their own pleasures. On the other hand, researchers contend that Government have to turn to criminal justice system to address homelessness in view of their experience for more than 25 years, Hence, the criminalization of homelessness.
Both advocates and critics of homelessness laws agree on homelessness and municipal wellbeing. It is agreed by them that homelessness should be addressed by the local authorities and residents. While they agree on some support to the homeless individuals, they cannot agree on the root causes of homelessness. In the U.S. some 30 cities have already passed laws of homelessness. Seattle, Washington was the first to introduce sit-lie law mainly to tackle vagrancy in downtown Seattle. Cities that followed suits were Santa Cruz, California and others .
Conclusion
The homelessness is an age old issue. People become homeless mainly due to economic circumstances. Hence, it is a crime to criminalize such an unfortunate situation. But by criminalizing homelessness, the laws seek to contain the aberrations on the part of the homeless individuals. Started as an issue to tackle labor shortages is 1300s and 1400s, homelessness has evolved from the causes of poverty to the criminalization for aberrations. Governments do try to accommodate homeless people and as in any other schemes, there have always been some shortfall in the availability for economic reasons and it cannot be said motivated. Those who have homes also suffer for economic reasons. Hence, it cannot be said that homeless people alone are singled out. In economic redistribution of wealth, haves and have-nots equally suffer or enjoy. It is also true that neo-liberalism seeks to wipe out individuals not economically fit and justify laws to keep them off the mainstream. Criminalization of homelessness has become handy for the purpose as argued by the protagonists.
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