Yes, it is a crime to be homeless - and why it should be abolished

Let’s take a piece of legislation that defines homelessness as a crime. It is still on the statute book almost 200 years after it was created. Yet the Vagrancy Act, which dates back to 1824, makes it a crime merely to sleep rough or beg in England and Wales.

The time for legislative action is now, according to an alliance of organisations dealing day-to-day with the homeless. #ScraptheAct campaign supporters are calling for the Vagrancy Act to be terminated. Provisions in the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014 make up an alternative framework of referral and intervention.

Using data from 11 forces, CCJS research, in collaboration with Crisis, showed how arrests under the Act for sleeping rough totalled just 47 between 2010 and 2016. The latest more comprehensive figures bear out the trends. But ups and downs in use of the Act do not mean that people cannot continue to suffer criminalisation in the future.

The latest government bill on Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts is a vast compendium of controversial new provisions, and old ones being given a tweak. Modernisation and rationalisation are words on everyone’s lips, but are there not more opportunities here for some very simple and overdue changes?

It is time now for legislators to clear out the archaic baggage of a long past century.