I HAD to rub my eyes when I heard that Brighton police had sent plain-clothes teams out to trap homeless people begging and then arrest them under the Victorian Vagrancy Act.

Has burglary, rape and armed robbery gone out of fashion?

Or perhaps homelessness is now classified as non-violent extremism?

This is nothing less than the persecution of the homeless for being homeless.

The police have discretion as to which legislation they enforce.

I haven’t heard of undercover teams going into factories and hauling their owners into court because of breaches of the Health and Safety Act.

In The Grapes of Wrath John Steinbeck describes how the LA police used to patrol the state border eager to stop the Okies from looking for work in California.

If you are homeless almost by definition you have little or no money.

You have no choice but to beg to keep yourself alive.

Your life expectancy is akin to someone living in the early Victorian era.

The reason they are on the street isn’t because of fecklessness or refusal to engage with some patchwork solution but because of the exorbitant cost of rented accommodation, the sanctioning of benefit claimants and the selling off of social housing.

If police have money for spying on the homeless, then clearly the cuts they complain about haven’t gone far enough.

The suggestion by Graham Cox, former Conservative councillor and head of CID, that the police are doing it for the benefit of the homeless themselves is risible.

Or is the idea to fine them and then jail them for not paying, thus providing a roof over their head?

  • Tony Greenstein is a political activist