Check out Christian Parenti's new Verso book about these issues of
panhandling, policing and public space. etc in San Francsico and elsewhere
in the US
'Lockdown America: police and prisons in an age of crisis'
andy
Dr Andy C Pratt
Department of Geography and Environment
London School of Economics and Political Science
Houghton Street
London WC2A 2AE
Tel: +44 (0)171 955 7588
Fax: +44 (0)171 955 7412
Email: [log in to unmask] <mailto:[log in to unmask]>
**details of our new MSc Cities, Space and Society programme
and MSc Human Geography Research (with 2 ESRC studentships)
are on our web pages: please tell your students !!!
http://www.lse.ac.uk/graduate/geography/taught.shtml
<http://www.lse.ac.uk/graduate/geography/taught.shtml>
and http://www.lse.ac.uk/depts/geography/msc_cities.htm
<http://www.lse.ac.uk/depts/geography/msc_cities.htm>
-----Original Message-----
From: Tim Cresswell [SMTP:[log in to unmask]]
Sent: 16 November 1999 09:54
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: public space
Dear all
I'm not sure that anti-panhandling laws constitute a radical
realignment of
public space although the type of enforcement might. Begging has
been
illegal in England since the sixteenth century as has being in
public
without money and not being able to give an account of oneself.
English
anti-vagrancy laws were imported wholesale into the United States
and the
vast majority of states had anti-vagrancy laws until around 1880
when many
were supplemented by tramp laws that specifically made being a tramp
(a
crime of identity if ever there was one) illegal. Tramp were
defined as
pretty much the same as vagrants except that they were more mobile.
Chapter 159 of the general statutes of Connecticut 1902 states for
instance
that "All transient persons who rove from place to place begging,
and all
vagrants, living without labor or visible means fo support, who
stroll over
the country without lawful occassion, shall be deemed tramps'
To this very day most state have vagrancy laws on the books that
resemble
the English laws of the sixteenth century. As for trenchant critical
views
of such laws none does much better than the once Govenor Lewelling
of
Kansas who issued an order forbidding the arrest of tramps and
vagrants
for begging. This was applauded by one Elbert Hubbard who wrote
'In this country we say every man is assumed to be innocent until he
proven
guilty. This applies only to men who have money. No peaceable decent
man
with money is asked to "give an account of himself." But let him
have no
place to lay his head, and ask for a cup of cold water, immediately
we may
legally assume his guilt and drag him before the notary, who shall
demand
that he "give a satisfactory account of himself." Satisfactory to
whom
forsooth?'
Hmmm
Tim Cresswell
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