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Definition: vagrancy from Collins English Dictionary

n pl -cies

1 the state or condition of being a vagrant

2 the conduct or mode of living of a vagrant

vagrancy

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
in law, term applied to the offense of persons who are without visible means of support or domicile while able to work. State laws and municipal ordinances punishing vagrancy often also cover loitering, associating with reputed criminals, prostitution, and drunkenness. The punishment is usually a fine or several months in jail. Instead of arresting vagrants, local officials often attempt to induce them to move on. Beginning in the 1960s vagrancy laws came under constitutional attack. The vague statutory language was often held to be too broad, in violation of the due process requirements of the Fourteenth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution: individuals were not adequately warned of what conduct was forbidden and police had too much discretion in deciding whether to make an arrest. It was ruled that enforcement of the laws often violated the protections of the First Amendment, especially when police used them against political demonstrators and unpopular groups. U.S. vagrancy laws…
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Full text Article Vagrancy

From World of Criminal Justice, Gale
Vagrancy refers to idle individuals who have no visible means of support and who travel from one place to another without working. For much of U.S. history, state and local governments criminalized vagrancy. However, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 1972 that state criminal vagrancy laws are…
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Full text Article vagrancy

From The Columbia Encyclopedia
in law, term applied to the offense of persons who are without visible means of support or domicile while able to work. State laws and municipal ordinances punishing vagrancy often also cover loitering, associating with reputed criminals, prostitution, and drunkenness. The punishment is usually a…
| 271 words
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Full text Article Vagrancy Acts.

From The Oxford Companion to British History
Vagrancy was a phenomenon which particularly worried late medieval and Tudor society, not merely because it often led to crime, but because ‘masterless men’ seemed to threaten the whole social structure. The breakdown of the authority of lords of the manor freed men and women to move, and…
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Full text Article vagrancy

From Britannica Concise Encyclopedia
Act of wandering about without employment or identifiable means of support. Traditionally a vagrant was thought to be one who was able to work for his maintenance but preferred instead to live idly, often as a beggar. Punishment ranged from branding and whipping to conscription into the military…
| 114 words
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Full text Article Vagrancy, Mobility and Colonialism

From The SAGE Handbook of Historical Geography
By the late nineteenth century, the British empire's colonial periphery was a vast network of political territories and governments, laws, and mobile peoples. Although the historical study of mobility should not be reduced to an examination of immigration ( Ballantyne 2014 ), the stories of…
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Full text Article vagrancy

From The Hutchinson Unabridged Encyclopedia with Atlas and Weather Guide
Homelessness. English law classifies as vagrants not only tramps who do not make use of available shelter, but also prostitutes who behave indecently in public, pedlars who trade without a licence, those who collect for charity under false pretences, and those armed with offensive weapons. The…
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Full text Article VAGRANCY

From Poverty: An International Glossary
Controlling the wanderer with no settled abode or regular work has been a long-standing feature of social policy: The great object of our early pauper legislation seems to have been the restraint of vagrancy. (Poor Law Report 1834) More recently, vagrant men and women were seen in terms of…
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Full text Article Vagrancy and Workers

From The Oxford Encyclopedia of American Business, Labor, and Economic History
Able-bodied persons without steady work or stable home life were a threatening presence in the religiously infused social and moral climate of colonial America. As the ranks of the “strolling poor” increased over the eighteenth century, communities typically warned them out. By 1800, especially in…
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Full text Article vagrancy

From The Macquarie Dictionary
| 34 words
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Full text Article vagrancy

From The American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language
| 68 words
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