The Vagrancy Act remained in force until 1904. Although it was amended in 1874, 1886, 1895 and 1899, it retained the provision that some tramps had to carry a ball and chain. In January 1904, a new law, a Vagrancy Act, replaced the Vagrancy Act and made vagrancy an offence punishable by bail and good behaviour for one year. This change is impossible to separate from the great upheavals that shook American legal, social, intellectual, cultural and political life between the 1950s and 1970s. Those who had long lacked social and political power began to organize, march and protest; stand firmly in front of fire hoses and combat equipment; Hire lawyers and appeal. In doing so, they projected a new image of American society, in which the wandering police were anathema. Unlike wandering laws, which target people who live on the streets, have no visible means of subsistence, and can beg passers-by for money, loitering laws do not define a loitering person in the same way as by mere presence and discernible lack of intention. But what is the wandering law and why is it time to abolish it? Let the big problem explain to you. That should change. The case that followed Edelman`s arrest in 1949 marked a new era in the history of wandering laws. Although Edelman himself did not emerge victorious, his case marked and triggered a process of rapid and fundamental legal transformation. Laws that had been in place for four centuries suddenly found themselves on the constitutional defensive.
Over the next twenty years, alleged tramps and their lawyers, social reformers, activists, the media, state legislators, state and lower federal courts, and, somewhat belatedly, the Supreme Court condemned the vagabond laws and their enforcement. Even the staunchest defenders of the laws – the police who relied on them – severely limited their justifications for the legitimacy of laws. In a trio of cases in 1971 and 1972, including that of Papachristou, the court ruled that laws against vagrancy, vagrancy and suspects were unconstitutional. This lasted until 5 December 1991, when section 209 was repealed and vagrancy was no longer a criminal offence. [11] Many world religions, both historically and today, have wandering traditions or refer to vagrants. In Christianity, Jesus is shown in the Bible as compassion for beggars, prostitutes and disenfranchised people. The Catholic Church also teaches compassion for people who live in vagrancy. [4] Vagabond lifestyles are observed in Christian movements, such as mendicant orders. Many still exist in places like Europe, Africa and the Middle East, as preserved by Gnosticism, hesychasm and various esoteric practices. [ref. needed] On January 9, 1866, the House of Delegates passed the law punishing vagrants, followed six days later by the Virginia Senate.
The bill passed by vote in both houses and left no record of the delegates and senators who voted for or against. There were few or no comments in the newspapers, reports of speeches by Members or explanations of vote. There is no record of whether Pierpont supported or opposed the law; In any event, he had no veto power. At the end of the Civil War, white lawmakers were also concerned about the hundreds of thousands of African Americans roaming the streets of Virginia. Many had just been freed from slavery, many were without homes or stable jobs, and many were traveling in search of relatives who had been dispersed by the slave trade. Their freedom overturned a centuries-old racial hierarchy and left many whites concerned about public safety and, more importantly, white social and political supremacy. Recalling the old definitions of vagrancy—in fact, adopting almost word for word the definition of an 1836 Pennsylvania law—the General Assembly found an appropriate way to control these African Americans and expose them to punishment for unemployment or homelessness. After the American Civil War, some Southern states passed black codes, laws that sought to control the hundreds of thousands of freed slaves. In 1866, the state of Virginia, fearing to be „invaded by dissolute and abandoned persons,” passed a law punishing vagrants. Homeless or unemployed persons may be forced to work in public or private works at very low wages for a maximum period of three months prescribed by law; If they are on the run and are captured again, they must serve the rest of their imprisonment at subsistence level and carry bullets and chains.
Indeed, although not with a stated intent, the law criminalized attempts by impoverished released people to seek out their own families and rebuild their lives. The commander of Virginia, General Alfred H. Terry, condemned the law as a form of trap, the attempt to reintroduce „slavery in all but its name.” He banned their application. It is not known how often it was used or what was done to prevent its implementation, but it remained in the Virginia Statute until 1904. [24] Other Southern states have enacted similar laws to infiltrate blacks into their convict rental system. The campaign against the vagrancy law has been long, and homeless charities, politicians and human rights activists have spoken out against it in recent years. „Instead of focusing on measures that could further punish people on the streets, the government needs to look at how to promote an inter-agency approach. This includes enabling the police to work more effectively with people in this situation, being trained to empower them to do so, and also looking at what broader support is needed from local authorities and other organisations. Second, wandering laws have criminalized being a certain type of person — anyone who fits the description of one of these colorful Elizabethan characters.
While most U.S. laws required people to do something criminal before they could be arrested, the vagabond laws explicitly did not. Thus, wandering laws were not only a fact of the legal landscape in the mid-twentieth century.