Criminalizing homelessness

SPEAKER 1: What we're seeing in terms of homelessness is that we're seeing governments manage homelessness at the crisis point. And what that means is that we're no longer seeing measures, and outcomes, and funding, even, available for services to support homelessness at the prevention point, to support individuals and families to prevent them from becoming homeless. Since 2010, and because of this lack of funding and loss of funding now, we're seeing governments only able to deal with homelessness at the crisis point. As local authorities and governments are dealing with homelessness, we're seeing an increasing use of criminal and civil laws that are being used to displace the problem of homelessness.

SPEAKER 2: Perhaps, the most notorious piece of criminal law used in England is the Vagrancy Act, which dates back to 1824, but actually draws on laws from much earlier times. The Vagrancy Act allowed people to be criminalized for lots of activity, such as begging, trying to seek alms, or telling fortunes in exchange for money. Squatting has also been made a criminal offense during this period of austerity. We're seeing a shift from people that previously would have used squats to being on the streets and being displaced into rough sleeping.

We've also seen the use of civil laws, for example, Public Spaces Protection Orders, or PSPOs, as they sometimes known. These relate to criminalizing activities that take place in a certain place, for example, a town center or a local park. And we're seeing many local authorities using PSPOs, with one in 10 estimated to be using these powers to criminalize the activities associated with homelessness. And we've seen the use of these laws increase during this period of austerity.

Prior to this time, vagrancy law use was on a decrease and PSPOs and squatting laws weren't even in existence. So although rough sleeping itself isn't illegal, what we see is that many of the activities associated with rough sleeping are criminalized, such as begging, street drinking, or frequenting particular areas that rough sleepers are likely to inhabit.

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