Why begging should be legal

More than 60 councils in England and Wales already do so. Mark and his dog are sitting opposite cashpoints, which would be considered aggressive begging under some PSPOs in other parts of the country. I mean, people are quite happy to ignore me and be aggressive to me. Birmingham had the second highest number of recorded rough sleeper deaths in , the most recent year for which figures are available. But apocryphal tales of professional beggars who are not homeless making hundreds of pounds a day in the city have hardened attitudes to rough sleepers.

There are people with mental health problems that have basic accommodation of some sort and head into the city centre for company. Some of them do some begging at the same time. Jamieson hit national headlines last year for his opposition to posters put up by his police force that said giving money to beggars could inadvertently kill them by supporting drug addictions.

In the city centre, Mark has had enough of talking and returns to playing penny whistle to the sodden, sparse high street, not caring if it could be a criminal act. Really, how am I meant to? Should I just go to prison so I can stay alive?

Fuck that. This article is more than 2 years old. Furthermore, the state laws contradict the ninth entry in the state list of duties — relief of the disabled and unemployable — that is laid down in the Seventh Schedule of the Constitution.

The BPBA considers the acts of singing, dancing et al as begging. Hence, the person is earning through his skills and not begging in this case. What do the courts say? In , the Delhi High Court ruled that begging in the national capital would no longer be treated as an offence, saying the provisions penalising the act were unconstitutional. This landmark judgment came in response to two PILs seeking basic human and fundamental rights for beggars apart from decriminalising begging.

The Centre as well as the Delhi government at the time had told the court that begging should not be a crime if it was done due to poverty but maintained that begging will not be decriminalised. Flash forward to , and the issue of criminalising beggary is taken up by the apex court. In February, the Supreme Court sought a response from the Centre, and five states — Maharashtra, Gujarat, Punjab, Haryana and Bihar — on a plea seeking a direction to repeal the provisions criminalising begging.

The plea referred to the August verdict of the Delhi High Court. Two months on, Bihar was the only state to file a reply so the top court set a new hearing. More recently, while hearing another petition seeking the removal of all beggars from public places and traffic junctions to check the spread of the pandemic, the Supreme Court made it clear that it would never restrain people from begging.

The bench said that begging was a soci0-economic problem, stemming in large part from the absence of education and employment, which cannot be remedied by ordering the removal of beggars. In , the Centre scrapped a draft bill to decriminalise begging and rehabilitate beggars and homeless people. The following year, the Abolition of Begging and Rehabilitation of Beggars Bill was introduced in the Lok Sabha in , where it languishes to date.

Though the Bill still imposes penalties on those forcing others to beg, the main thrust is on rehabilitation at the estimated cost of Rs 5, crore per annum.

However, more recently, the minister of state for social justice and empowerment A. The focus of the scheme is extensively on rehabilitation, provision of medical facilities, counselling, basic documentation, education, skill development, economic linkages and so on.

The ministry has previously initiated pilot projects geared towards the sustainable settlement of beggars along these lines in 10 cities, namely Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad, Indore, Lucknow, Mumbai, Nagpur, Patna and Ahmedabad. Read 0 Comment post a comment. Continue without login. Login from existing account Facebook Google Email. All Comments Your Activity. We have sent you a verification email.

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Some cities in Sweden adopted begging permits which means that beggars are requested to pay for a licence before they can ask for money in the streets. The situation in Hungary deserves particular attention.

In , the Hungarian government adopted a statutory law criminalising people experiencing homelessness. As the Hungarian Constitutional Court declared this law unconstitutional in , the Government has amended the Fundamental law, giving municipalities the competence to regulate and criminalise homelessness.

After five years of legal disputes on the implementation, the Government amended the Fundamental Law in , inserting a general ban on rough sleeping. With the pandemic, the criminalisation arrived at a new level with curfew breaches being heavily fined. In its decision of 11 May , [13] the Hungarian Constitutional Court examined the law on "aggressive" begging and ruled that the provision prohibiting begging as a form of regulatory offence was not unconstitutional.

In this regard, it considered that such an act did not violate human dignity or the right to life. Similarly, in its decision of 6 November [14] , the same Constitutional Court held that the criminalisation of begging did not violate any fundamental right. At the local level, 'silent begging' could be prohibited as well. Only the local laws were challenged before the Government Office responsible for the legal supervision of the municipalities. These actions initiated by the Ombudsman or NGOs are successful only to the extent that they invoke the prohibition of parallel legislation as certain forms of begging begging with children, aggressive or door to door begging are already punishable under national legislation.

Therefore, they were and could be successful based not on a substantive, but merely on a formal argumentation regarding law-making. Statistics from the Ministry of Interior show that in , the poorest have been fined for begging under the national law much more and for much higher amounts than in Compared to the previous year, the number of cases and even more the number of fines imposed for begging has increased significantly.

There are no official statistics on fines imposed by municipalities. In Belgium, in a recent case that did not deal with begging but with food shoplifting, the judge decided that sending the homeless person to prison for this crime was useless because for this type of offence another type of response than prison needs to be given from society.

In a case concerning a general and permanent city-wide ban on begging, it held that the ban in question was disproportionate to the objectives pursued.

Criminalisation leads to the stigmatisation of homeless people and can lead to violence and even hate crime against homeless people. A Hungarian study proved that the amendment of the Fundamental Law in Hungary that criminalised homelessness and vagrancy led to violence against homeless people being morally accepted and hence somehow justified by the new law.

The question arises of how to challenge the penalisation and criminalisation of beggars and more broadly of people experiencing homelessness and in poverty. Discrimination is both a cause and a consequence of poverty. Researcher Sarah Ganthy, argues that anti-discrimination law can be used to address socio-economic inequalities. At the EU level, antidiscrimination law is widely used but not referring to economic and social grounds. The EU anti-discrimination directives refer to discrimination in employment and occupation, discrimination based on gender and race.

There are currently limited possibilities to refer to social or economic status. Switzerland case has provided an interesting point of view on the anti-discrimination approach. The applicant argued that she has been discriminated against on grounds of her social and economic situation and because of her origin. She invoked Art. The Court did not follow this argumentation and considered that there is no need to give a separate ruling on the complaint under Article 14 in conjunction with Article 8 of the Convention.

In their partially dissenting opinions, judge Lemmens and judge Ravarani regretted that the Court has refused to examine the complaint under Art. Political discourse leading to the penalisation of begging links homeless people and beggars often with aggressive and violent attitudes or unsanitary situations and danger to public tranquillity.

In an increasingly privatised public space, the stigmatisation and penalisation of beggars and poor people have heavy consequences for their dignity. Banning begging but also other penalisation strategies can push the people targeted by these measures further into poverty and social exclusion.

A way forward can only be a change of mindset on begging as a criminal economic activity. If begging should be eradicated, then it should not be through penalisation and criminalisation but thanks to a more supportive approach, helping low-income families to receive assistance and resources.