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John Everett Millais "The Blind Girl": vagrant musicians

See also vagrancy (biology) for an alternative use of the term.

A vagrant is a person, usually poor, who wanders from place to place without a home or regular work. Urban vagrants are commonly called "street people". Some towns have shelters for vagrants, such as The Rescue Mission in Syracuse, New York.

Vagrancy is a crime in some European countries, but most of these laws have been abandoned. Laws against vagrancy in the United States have largely been invalidated as violative of the due process clauses of the U.S. Constitution. However, the FBI report on crime in the United States for 2005 lists 33,227 vagrancy violations. In legal terminology, a person with a source of income is not a vagrant, even if he/she is homeless.

In the fairy tales of medieval Europe, beggars cast curses on those who insulted the beggar, or who were stingy with their money. Witches would beg door to door for "milk, yeast, drink, pottage" in England. ^[1] In some East Asian countries, vagrants are still revered and feared, believed to possess semireligious spiritual powers.

In 16th and 17th century England, a vagrant was a person who could work, but preferred not to (or could not find employment, so took to the road in order to do so), or one who begs for a living. Vagrancy was illegal, punishable by branding, whipping, conscription into the military, or transportation to penal colonies. Vagrants were different from impotent poor, who were unable to support themselves because of age or sickness. However, the English laws usually did not distinguish between the impotent poor and the criminals, so both received the same harsh punishments. The Poor Law was the system for the provision of social security in operation in England and Wales from the 16th century until the establishment of the Welfare State in the 20th century.

In colonial America, if a person wandered into a town and did not find work, he/she was told to leave town or be prosecuted. In the U.S., vagrancy laws were vague and covered a wide range of activities and crimes associated with vagrants, such as loitering, prostitution, drunkenness, and associating with known criminals. Under the vagrancy laws, police arrested people who were suspected of crime, but who had not committed a crime. Eventually, punishments were changed to a fine, or several months in jail.

After the U.S. Civil War, the South passed Black Codes, laws that tried to control freed African American slaves. Vagrancy laws were included in these codes. Homeless unemployed African Americans were arrested and fined as vagrants. Usually, the person could not afford the fine, and so was sent to county labor or hired out to a private employer.

In the U.S., good children were encouraged to go door to door to get treats from homes and shops, to keep troublemakers away on Halloween. By the 1930’s, these “beggar’s nights” were widespread. The term “trick or treat” was popular from the late 1930’s.

In the U.S. of the 1960s, vagrancy laws were found to be too broad and vague, and in violation of the due process requirements of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, as citizens were not informed of what behaviors were illegal. Police had too much power in deciding whether or not to arrest someone. Vagrancy laws could no longer violate Freedom of Speech, such as when police use them against political demonstrators and unpopular groups. U.S. vagrancy laws became clearer, narrower, and more defined. Since then, the status of being a vagrant is punished by the vagrancy laws, while other actions are punished under other laws.

In 1972, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that a Florida vagrancy law was unconstitutional because it was too vague to be understood, in Papachristou v. Jacksonville, 405 U.S. 156, 92 S. Ct. 839, 31 L. Ed. 2d 110. When court such as this strike down the vagrancy laws, vagrancy becomes mostly legal.

In the 1990s, new local laws in the U.S. were passed to reduce aggressive panhandling, begging, and other activities by vagrants.

In the U.S., local officials encourage vagrants to move away instead of arresting them. The word 'vagrant' has been replaced by 'homeless person'. Prosecutions for vagrancy are rare. England eventually changed its poor laws, and today vagrancy is legal, while crimes are punished separately. [1]

• Vagabond (person)
• Hobo
• Squatting
• Homelessness

• Encyclopædia Britannica Article on Vagrancy