Vagrancy approach ineffectual

The PNM administration on Wednesday initiated an all-night exercise wherein the CID police, city police, and officials from the Ministry of Social Affairs rounded up vagrants and removed them from the streets. This exercise netted a grand total of 29 persons, and is supposed to continue throughout around the country. The 29 persons detained by the police were taken to the so-called "shelter" at Riverside Plaza and told that vagrancy was against the law and that they should stop living on the streets.

It is almost impossible to discern the logic behind this exercise. Indeed, of all the initiatives attempted over the years, this one seems the most foolish and ineffectual yet. It reflects extremely poorly on the mindset of the Manning regime that they should have taken an iron-fisted approach to a problem that is not criminal per se, but social and psychological. Our suspicion is that this approach is part of the "zero-tolerance" approach to crime reduction. Part of that action in New York city under Mayor Rudolph Giuliani was the targeting of panhandlers, who harassed passers-by for small change; "squeegee men" who would clean drivers’ windscreens unasked; and "bag ladies", who roamed the streets with shopping carts filled with all their worldly goods.

The idea is that the presence of such individuals creates an image of disorder, which sends cues that encourage law-breaking. But, as this newspaper has pointed out before, there is really no empirical evidence that the zero-tolerance policies actually reduce crime. And, in any case, common sense alone says that this rounding-up exercise isn’t going to keep the vagrants off the streets.

These are not people who are going to be impressed by warnings that they are breaking the law. Their very presence shouts that they now exist outside the society, collapsed into such desperate straits that no threat by the State can be effective. And what will the authorities do when these persons return to the street? Put them in jail? Some of them might be happy to have a roof over their heads, even if they have to share it with 10 other persons in a jail cell built for three.

Some of these persons simply have nowhere to go; many of them are suffering from mental illness. So the correct approach would be to treat these persons as individuals in need of social assistance — but it is quite clear that the welfare officers from the Ministry of Social Affairs who accompanied the police were there just for pappyshow.

There can be no argument that vagrancy needs to be dealt with. The presence of these hapless individuals in this energy-rich nation reveals the ugly face of the national character. But the solution cannot be an authoritarian one. Instead, an effective approach must embrace a sympathetic perspective that sees vagrants as human beings in need of help from a society that has failed them.