#criminalized vagrancy

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"WITNESS IS RELEASED HAS TWO BLACK EYES," Toronto Star. October 3, 1932. Page 2. --- "Got Into Squabble" With Police Officer, Lloyd Devitt Explains ---- A charge of being "found in" was withdrawn against Lloyd Devitt, a crown witness in women's court.

Devitt had a patch over one eye and a black ring around the other. He agreed with Counsel L. V. McBrady, that he had received it from P. C. Milling. Devitt explained that "we got into a squabble."

Jennie Rowe and Theresa Hawthorne were each given "another chance" when they appeared charged with being drunk. Ada Saylis asked for and got six months' probation when she appeared for sentence on a charge of fraud involving $72. She promised to make restitution for accommodation obtained at an hotel.

Simone Gounet, charged with vagrancy, explained through an interpreter that she wanted to get back to Montreal. She admitted having no home in Toronto, and the Salvation Army will help her.

Grace Mitchell agreed with the court that suspended sentence and probation would "teach her a lesson" when she was charged with theft of articles from a department store, and this disposition was made of her case.

For keeping a resort, Michael Kingdon was fined $100 and costs or two months, and thirty days. "The only place for people like you is the gasbox, suffocation." the bench told Kingdon, who has a previous record.

[odinsblog]

De-escalation is a skill set.

It is something that every single one of us could learn. It is something that could even be a matter of public education and public-health campaigns. Sometimes a person may be at a 10 emotionally, and the smallest gesture of humanity can help them out. I had a situation two weeks ago on the street in D.C. where it seemed like someone was popping off, and I said, “Hey, man, I’m gonna get you some lunch.” Jordan Neely was saying exactly what he needed, which was food. He narrated this tragedy himself. He said, “I’d rather be in jail than try to navigate what the city has become.” Every single one of us is at the brink right now.

Rents have skyrocketed to these absolutely extortionate prices.

When housing prices go up, homelessness goes up. It’s not a grand mystery. I’ve been just dismayed to see what the response to this has been at the highest levels.

(continue reading)

[talentforlying]

@beyondthescully: meta about those criminal records scully is 1000% going to look into — SEND META TOPICS.

constantine's criminal record with the british government is file #A571B, and he knows it by heart because he's spent years mind-tricking arresting officers into avoiding it so he doesn't come up against more trouble than he wants to deal with. it doesn't help much if someone researches him independently, when he's not aware they're doing it, but if he does know, he puts a little glamour down so that their eyes simply skip over it when they look him up.

i wouldn't say that he's afraid of people looking up his record, per se, but he certainly dreads it being brought up, since it lists him being convicted of the murder of a child + a nightclub full of people — which, obviously, tends to get a very strong reaction from anyone who didn't hear the real story of newcastle from him ahead of time; we all know that he inadvertently damned astra to hell by summoning (and failing to properly name or bind) the demon nergal to save her from the terror elemental she accidentally created, but without that important context, it reads horrifically — and because it includes the fact that he was committed to ravenscar secure facility in lieu of prison time, which tends to kill people's trust that he's telling the truth about the supernatural and knows what he's doing.

speaking of which, the newcastle incident was highly publicized across the UK at the time (1978), and continues to raise huge red flags when people go to look him up in government databases, but since it was pre-internet, there are no news articles online other than ones that were digitized later and mystery of the casanova club murders / what happened to mucous membrane? (his band) blog posts on conspiracy & occult fansites. it's kind of an urban legend these days, since constantine is now the last survivor of the original crew and band and his name is notorious in occult circles, but you'll never get him to talk about it unless he's being forced to defend himself or he trusts you with his fucking life, and good luck with that second one.

US databases will also include a murder conviction from new york in 2000, when he was framed for the death of a top gangster, sentenced to max security, and later cleared, but since he was cleared, under new york law, that record is now sealed and can only be seen by federal, state, and local law enforcement. unfortunately, that one's an azzarello storyline so i plan to rework the fuck out of those events, because fuck azzarello.)

[fatehbaz]

was thinking about this

To be in "public", you must be a consumer or a laborer.

About control of peoples' movement in space/place. Since the beginning.

"Vagrancy" of 1830s-onward Britain, people criminalized for being outside without being a laborer.

Breaking laws resulted in being sentenced to coerced debtor/convict labor. Coinciding with the 1830-ish climax of the Industrial Revolution and the land enclosure acts (factory labor, poverty, etc., increase), the Metropolitan Police Act of 1829 establishes full-time police institution(s) in London. The "Workhouse Act" aka "Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834" forced poor people to work for a minimum number of hours every day. The Irish Constabulary of 1837 sets up a national policing force and the County Police Act of 1839 allows justices of the peace across England to establish policing institutions in their counties (New York City gets a police department in 1844). The major expansion of the "Vagrancy Act" of 1838 made "joblessness" a crime and enhanced its punishment. (Coincidentally, the law's date of royal assent was 27 July 1838, just 5 days before the British government was scheduled to allow fuller emancipation of its technical legal abolition of slavery in the British Caribbean on 1 August 1838.)

---

"Vagrancy" of 1860s-onward United States, people criminalized for being outside while Black.

Widespread emancipation after slavery abolition in 1865 rapidly followed by the outlawing of loitering which de facto outlawed existing as Black in public. Inability to afford fines results in being sentenced to forced labor by working on chain gangs or prisons farms, some built atop plantations.

---

"Vagrancy" of 1870s-onward across empires, people criminalized for being outside while being "foreign" and also being poor generally.

Especially from 1880-ish to 1918-ish, this was an age of widespread mass movement of peoples due to the land dispossession, poverty, and famine induced by global colonial extraction and "market expansion" (Scramble for Africa, US "American West", nation-building, conquering "frontiers"), as agricultural "revolutions" of imperial monoculture cash crop extraction resulted in ecological degradation, and as major imperial infrastructure building projects required a lot of vulnerable "mobile" labor. This coincides with and is facilitated by new railroad networks and telegraphs, leading to imperial implementation or expansion of identity documents, strict work contracts, passports, immigration surveillance, and border checkpoints.

All of this in just a few short years: In 1877, British administrators in India develop what would become the Henry Classification System of taking and keeping fingerprints for use in binding colonial Indians to legal contracts. That same year during the 1877 Great Railroad Strike, and in response to white anxiety about Black residents coming to the city during Great Migration, Chicago's policing institutions exponentially expand surveillance and pioneer "intelligence card" registers for tracking labor union organizing and Black movement, as Chicago's experiments become adopted by US military and expanded nationwide, later used by US forces monitoring dissent in colonial Philippines and Cuba. Japan based its 1880 Penal Code anti-vagrancy statutes on French models, and introduced "koseki" register to track poor/vagrant domestic citizens as Tokyo's Governor Matsuda segregates classes, and the nation introduces "modern police forces". In 1882, the United States passes the Chinese Exclusion Act. In 1884, the Ottoman government enacts major "Passport Nizamnamesi" legislation requiring passports. In 1885, the racist expulsion of the "Tacoma riot".

Punished for being Algerian in France. Punished for being Chinese in San Francisco. Punished for being Korean in Japan. Punished for crossing Ottoman borders without correct paperwork. Arrested for whatever, then sent to do convict labor. A poor person in the Punjab, starving during a catastrophic famine, might be coerced into a work contract by British authorities. They will have to travel, shipped off to build a railroad. But now they have to work. Now they are bound. They will be punished for being Punjabi and trying to walk away from Britain's tea plantations in Assam or Britain's rubber plantations in Malaya.

Mobility and confinement, the empire manipulates each.

---

"Vagrancy" amidst all of this, people also criminalized for being outside while "unsightly" and merely even superficially appearing to be poor. San Francisco introduced the notorious "ugly law" in 1867, making it illegal for "any person, who is diseased, maimed, mutilated or deformed in any way, so as to be an unsightly or disgusting object, to expose himself or herself to public view". Today, if you walk into a building looking a little "weird" (poor, Black, ill, disabled, etc.), you are given seething spiteful glares and asked to leave. De facto criminalized for simply going for a stroll without downloading the coffee shop's exclusive menu app.

Too ill, too poor, too exhausted, too indebted to move, you are trapped. Physical barriers (borders), legal barriers (identity documents), financial barriers (debt). "Vagrancy" everywhere in the United States, a combination of all of the above. "Vagrancy" since at least early nineteenth century Europe. About the control of movement through and access to space/place. Concretizing and weaponizing caste, corralling people, anchoring them in place, extracting their wealth and labor.

You are permitted to exist only as a paying customer or an employee.

[rambosgirl]

The Sheriff's Daughter - Chapter 3

Guys this took way too long. I'm so sorry about that but it's here now! Enjoy!

Masterlist here with the other chapters

Your mind raced as you saw your dad and John walking up toward you at the police station. Your dad saw you through the glass door, but you weren't sure if John knew you were there yet, his head hung low.

'Why is he here? What could John have possibly done?' You didn't have long to think until your dad pushed the doors open and you were met with your dad's steel blue gaze and John's soft brown eyes.

John looked at you with a quiet sadness, while your dad looked at you proudly, as if to say 'Look what I arrested today'. You knew your dad took a lot of pride in his job, especially as sheriff, but this was different. His lips were turning upward into a smirk as he walked to the front desk. He seemed to be enjoying this.

"Hey, buzz us in will ya?" Your dad quipped to a nearby officer.

"Hey, talk about your sorry-lookin' humanity," the officer responded. You grimaced at the rude comment.

Once he was past the front desk, you followed him close, not sure what to say.

"Good morning Arthur," your dad chipped, as if nothing was the matter.

"Mornin' Will," he replied, taking his headphones off.

"I want you to book this gentleman for vagrancy, resisting arrest, and carrying a concealed weapon," your dad commanded Arthur, unsheathing a large knife.

"Dad, what's going on? Do you know him?" You questioned him, but your dad ignored you in response.

"He says he uses it for hunting"

"What are you huntin'? Elephants?" Arthur chuckled.

"Dad, please." You were confused, and you didn't think your dad was going to help you anytime soon. Desperately, you turned to Mitch, your eyes pleading for help from him as your dad kept talking to the other deputies. He looked back at you helplessly. While the older officers were here, there was really nothing he could do to help.

"See if you can clean him up a bit. He smells like an animal."

Arthur began testing John's knife, slicing a paper from his desk. "Hey Mitch," he called to the young redhead.

"Yo?"

"Escort this young man downstairs"

"Yes sir" Mitch responded, making his way toward John. "Right this way partner," he said softly. John gave you one last look before being led away by the young deputy.

You couldn't believe what was happening around you. You squeezed your eyes shut, trying to hear yourself think in all the chaos - both in your head and reality. You were in shock, and all you wanted were answers. You saw your dad had gone to his office, so you made your way to him.

You walked into his office, shutting the door behind you, then took a deep breath before facing him.

"You wanted something sweetie?" Your dad asked. You calmed your racing mind for a moment before responding. "Yes, I want to know what John was arrested for."

"Who?"

"The man you just brought in?" You questioned. Your dad's eyes turned colder, more stern. You knew that look. "And how do you know his name?" your dad asked, eyes narrowing. You knew he wouldn't like the answer you gave.

"I met him this morning on my run to the Danforth's," you studied his face, looking for any changes in demeanor before continuing, "He's quite nice actually, I can't imagine he'd do anything to get himself arrested."

"Are you accusing your own father of wrongfully arresting a man?"

"No, no Dad, that's not what I meant," you tried to troubleshoot the conversation, which seemed to be falling apart right in front of you. You huffed a breath of frustration, looking up at the ceiling. "I just want to know why," you spoke softly, looking back at your dad.

He thought for a moment, eyes softening. His body language shifted, taking in the words and emotions expressed to him by his daughter. He opened his mouth, then promptly closed it. It seemed like something clicked in his mind, his demeanor returning to its former coldness.

"What is it to you, do you have a schoolgirl crush on that violent criminal or somethin'?" he talked fast, in his usual style. His tone was joking, but you knew him. He was genuinely wondering. No response came to your mind, but your dad took your silence as an answer, his mood seeming to shift again into something gravely serious.

"You can't be serious sweetheart. Do you know how deranged that is to like a man like that? How deranged he is?"

"He's not deranged," you asserted.

"Obviously you didn't see what I saw. How animalistic and crazed he is," he quipped back. "Now, be a good girl, head home, and let's put this all behind us. Just forget you even met him," he said, waving his hand dismissively.

With that, he decided the conversation was over, returning to his work. You took the hint and walked out of his office, feeling dejected. You considered taking Bullet and going home but shoved the thought out of your mind. You wanted to stay for John and see if you could help him. With your dad's insistence over the matter, it felt impossible, but you determined it was worth a shot.

You noticed your dad heading down where they were processing John. You thought about following him while the door was unlocked but quickly decided against it. Your dad would kill you.

You resigned to sitting on a chair in the waiting area, not knowing what to do with yourself. You thought about finding John, but the challenge would be avoiding your dad in the process. Just as you were about to get up, you heard a commotion somewhere in the building. It sounded like it was coming from downstairs.

As you approached the door to investigate, it burst open, revealing John, his wild eyes landing on you. He quickly sprung back into action, running past you toward the front doors. Officers moved to stop him anywhere they could, but he dodged them with practiced movements and ran out the door.

You hesitated for a moment, your heart pounding in your ears. You had an idea. A stupid, impulsive idea.

You sprinted out of the building and turned towards Bullet, tied at a post a few feet away. He looked at you, ears perked, and sensing your urgency, he raised his head with wide eyes and shuffled anxiously, letting out a snort.

As you unclipped Bullet's lead rope, you saw John in the street, taking a guy off his motorbike and mounting it, riding into traffic and towards the mountainous forest surrounding the town.

You climbed into your saddle and began to ride after him when police officers burst through the door, your dad leading the charge.

As Bullet started moving into a frantic trot, your dad shouted your name, his voice carrying across the street. "Are you out of your mind? Get off that horse!"

You refused to look back and acknowledge him, urging Bullet forward after John.

You rode for a few seconds before a shot rang out, the loud, piercing sound startling Bullet as he jumped to the side and kicked out, his nose flaring from the stress. You re-balanced in your saddle and spared a dirty glance back at the officers before pushing Bullet into a gallop.

You caught sight of John, riding the motorbike on the sidewalk but transferring to the road after a few seconds. You directed Bullet toward him, keeping him in your sights.

You could feel Bullet's surge of energy beneath you, matching your own adrenaline rush. The pounding of his hooves on the pavement paired with his rhythmic breaths and the wind rushing past your ears were the only things you could hear.

And just like that, you were all in.

[californiastatelibrary]

Nearly 70 years ago, civil rights leader Bayard Rustin was arrested, served 50 days in Los Angeles County jail, and had to register as a sex offender with the state due to a charge of “vagrancy” after he was seen being intimate with two men in a parked car. In 2020, Rustin was posthumously pardoned by Governor Gavin Newsom.

Rustin was close to Martin Luther King Jr., was an organizer of the 1963 march on Washington, and assisted with other nonviolent protests and boycotts for civil rights.

From the official pardon: “California, like much of the nation, has a disgraceful legacy of systematically discriminating against the LGBTQ community. This discrimination has taken many forms including social isolation and shaming, surveillance, intimidation, physical violence, and unjust arrest and prosecution. Mr. Rustin was sentenced pursuant to a charge commonly used to punish gay men for engaging in consensual adult sexual conduct. His conviction is part of a long and reprehensible history of criminal prohibitions on the very existence of LGBTQ people and their intimate associations and relationships. … Mr. Rustin was criminalized because of stigma, bias, and ignorance. With this act of executive clemency, I acknowledge the inherent injustice of this conviction, an injustice that was compounded by his political opponents' use of the record of this case to try to undermine him, his associates, and the civil rights movement.”

[scotianostra]

On 2nd January 1793: Thomas Muir of Huntershill, the Glasgow-born Advocate, was arrested for sedition.

He was released after a few days and went to France. On his return to Scotland, Muir was tried and sentenced to 14 years transportation. Muir was the founder of the Scottish Friends of the People, he and the other leaders of this group transported to Australia, are known as the Scottish Martyrs

Thomas Muir and his companions in misfortune, who later became famous as the Scottish Martyrs, were among the prominent figures of the vast movement for reform that emerged in Britain at the end of the eighteenth century. What makes their case particularly interesting is that these men were sentenced to transportation, a form of exile that needs to be included in any consideration of the themes of exile and return. Drawing on the example of Thomas Muir, this article will investigate the specific nature of political exile. Does the “time” (in the sense of temporality) of political exile differentiate itself from the “time” of other forms of exile? Is political exile characterized by a state of “fundamental discontinuity”?1 Does the political, intellectual or ideological dimension of political exiles enable them overcome, maybe more than other exiles, the essential sadness of exile? These are some of the questions I propose to address in this paper.

In the seventeenth century the English and Scottish governments viewed the colonies, for example America, as perfectly appropriate places to send miscreants of all kinds, criminals, vagrants, prostitutes or political prisoners. Transportation constituted an instrument of social control whose function was to deter people from resorting to criminal acts. Andrew Fletcher of Saltoun, who was one of the most determined opponents of the Union of 1707, thought, like many of his contemporaries, that the system of transportation was the panacea for solving the endemic problem of vagrancy:

There are at this day in Scotland two hundred thousand people in Scotland begging from door to door. These are not only no way advantageous, but a very grievous burden to so poor a country in all times there have been about one hundred thousand of those vagabonds who have lived without any regard or subjection either to the laws of the land or even those of God or nature in years of plenty many thousands of them meet together in the mountains, where they feast and riot for many days; and at country weddings, markets, burials, and other the like publick occasions they are to be seen both men and women perpetually drunk, cursing, blaspheming and fighting together. These are such outrageous disorders, that it were better for the nation they were sold to the gallies or West Indies, than that they should continue to be a burden and like upon us

In recent years there have come to light an increasing number of writings by Thomas Muir of Huntershill. Among these is Muir’s legal thesis on the topic of slavery that criticized the institution and condemned it as morally unjustifiable it was written for admittance to the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh in 1787 and can be found in the holdings of the National Library of Scotland.

[goldfish-afterhours]

ROB THEM BLIND - WANTED POSTERS OF THE GUILI ASSEMBLY

— Home

Below is what is listed on wanted posters distributed around New Liyue for all known members of the Guili Assembly, in order of most to least wanted. 

The following information are all part of an open investigation, and as such may be subject to change

If you have any information regarding these individuals, please report to the Liyue Qixing for a monetary reward. If you see any of these individuals, DO NOT ENGAGE. CONTACT THE MILLELITH IMMEDIATELY. 

Morax

Wanted: Dead or Alive for robbery, criminal conspiracy 

Priority: Extremely high 

Adult Asian male in his mid to late 20s, around 6 feet tall and 160 pounds, dark brown hair. 

The mastermind behind the Guili Assembly. However, little is really known about him 

Frequently seen wearing a long white hooded coat with black sleeves that obscures his face.

Nothing is known about his real name, occupation, or past criminal record

During robbery, he can usually be seen standing near the front entrance, giving orders to the others and acting as a lookout 

Has not been spotted with a gun, but the Millelith still strongly advise against approaching him 

Tartaglia

Wanted: Dead for armed robbery, criminal conspiracy, aggravated assault, first-degree murder 

Priority: Extremely High 

Real name Ajax. Adult Russian male, 22 years old, 6 feet tall and 185 pounds, short ginger hair. Wears a red mask during robberies. 

The vanguard of the Guili Assembly. Usually one of the first ones to enter the bank at the beginning of the robbery. 

The most successful graduate of the former Childe Program run by the Millelith Brigade. Highly trained and proficient in all areas of martial arts, weaponry, and espionage. 

Extremely dangerous. Civilians are not to approach him under any circumstance.

Note to bounty hunters: It is highly advised to shoot on sight, as capturing him alive has been deemed impossible. 

Alatus 

Wanted: Dead or Alive for armed robbery, criminal conspiracy, aggravated assault, burglary, second-degree murder

Priority: High 

Asian male in his late teens or early 20s, around 5 feet 2 inches and 110 pounds, chin-length teal hair. Wears a deep-green nuo mask during robberies. Has a green tattoo of a bird on his right arm. 

Nothing is known about his real name or occupation.

Former burglar with partner Barbatos. Alatus was originally arrested for the second-degree murder of a man whose house he was robbing, however he escaped from custody before his trial and has been on the run ever since. Barbatos was not found at the scene and is still missing. 

Note to bounty hunters: Alatus is extremely nimble. It is advised to immobilize him first before capturing him. 

Arataki Itto

Wanted: Alive for armed robbery, criminal conspiracy, aggravated assault, vagrancy, theft 

Priority: High

Adult Japanese male, 24 years old, 6 feet 4 inches and 220 pounds, waist-length white hair, red eyes. Wears a red oni mask during robberies. 

Has been arrested in the past for minor crimes but was bailed out each time by his sister

Witnesses report he has a tendency to say his full name during robberies

Has robbed banks alone before joining the Guili Assembly 

Note to bounty hunters: When caught, please inquire about the Pokemon cards Arataki Itto stole, as they will be returned to the boy he stole them from 

Skirmisher

Wanted: Alive for armed robbery, criminal conspiracy, aggravated assault, theft 

Priority: Medium 

Asian male in his late teens or early 20s, around 5 feet 4 inches and 120 pounds, short indigo hair, blue eyes, handsome in appearance. Wears a red mushi no tareginu with a black cloth that obscures his face. 

His face has been caught on security cameras multiple times. He usually appears alone or with Fixer a few hours before the Guili Assembly robs the bank, so it is assumed he is a scout. 

There are multiple files of a boy wanted for theft and aggravated assault who matches his description. 

Fixer 

Wanted: Alive for armed robbery, criminal conspiracy, aggravated assault 

Priority: Medium 

Adult male of mixed-Asian descent in his early to mid 20s, around 6 feet tall and 160 pounds, blond hair tied in a ponytail. Wears a black metal mask with horns during robberies. 

Nothing is known about his real name, occupation, or past criminal record. 

Usually appears alone or with Skirmisher a few hours before the Guili Assembly robs the bank, so it is assumed he is a scout. He does not wear his usual black metal mask while scouting, but wears a regular black face mask instead. 

Nicknamed ‘Fixer’ by a security guard who witnessed him covering for his crewmates’ mistakes. 

According to a witness, he was very polite, using ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ when asking him to get on the floor. 

[beardedmrbean]

Before this column ends, we’ll get to the unmissable fact that anti-Israel, often antisemitic, protests are proliferating at what we amusingly choose to call our most “selective” universities—Columbia, Yale, New York University, Stanford, Berkeley. For the moment, add these North Face tent protests on $75,000-a-year campus quads to the sense among the American public that their country is running off the rails.

A list of the phenomena laying us low includes: wokeness, DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), defund the police (a depressing subset of wokeness), conspiracy theories, head-in-the-sand isolationism and a self-centered political polarization typified—from left to right—by Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ilhan Omar, Cori Bush, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Matt Gaetz and Lauren Boebert.

Ironically this time of year is associated with hope, amid spring and college graduations—except at the University of Southern California, which, fearing trouble, canceled its commencement speakers and told honorary-degree recipients not to show up.

Setting silenced USC aside, a hopeful note one hears at college commencements is that the American system is self-correcting, that despite recurrent stress, it always rights itself. Opinion polls suggest few believe this anymore but—happy spring—it looks as if we may be on the brink of a real counter-revolt against the craziness.

Last week in the hopelessly gridlocked House, Republican Speaker Mike Johnson, facing threats to his job from the chaos caucus, cast his lot with the enough-is-enough caucus. The House passed bills to sustain allies in Ukraine, Israel and Taiwan. Congress isn’t dead—yet.

Blue states and cities that looked willing to collapse rather than defend their citizens have begun to push back against progressives’ pro-criminal and antipolice movements.

At the urging of Gov. Kathy Hochul, New York’s just-passed state budget includes measures to crack down on shoplifting. Assaulting a retail worker will be a felony. Larceny charges can be based on the total goods stolen from different stores. Progressives in the state’s Legislature opposed the measures. Philadelphia Mayor Cherelle Parker, elected in January on restoring law and order (yes, it can be a Democratic issue), last week announced a plan to support policing in the most crime- and drug-plagued neighborhoods.

March seemed to be a tipping point. The hyperprogressive Council of the District of Columbia, in a city that had become an embarrassing carjacking hellhole, passed an array of anticrime measures. Oregon’s Legislature voted to reverse the state’s catastrophic three-year experiment with drug decriminalization. San Francisco voters approved two measures proposed by, of all people, Mayor London Breed, to ease restrictions on policing and require drug screening for welfare recipients. The results in Los Angeles County’s primary for district attorney strongly suggest progressive George Gascón will be voted out in November.

In all these places, the reversals by elected officials are driven by the prospect of voters’ turning them out of office. That is the U.S. political system trying to right itself.

In California, a safety coalition has collected about 900,000 signatures to reverse parts of Proposition 47, the state’s now-notorious 2014 decision to reduce some theft felonies to misdemeanors. This week, the U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority appeared sympathetic to overturning a Ninth Circuit decision that bars cities and towns from enforcing vagrancy laws. Though the case emerged from Grants Pass, Ore., which is trying to ban homeless encampments, about three dozen elected officials and organizations in California filed briefs arguing that the Ninth Circuit’s ruling made cleaning up the streets almost impossible.

News stories since the start of the year have noted that many private companies are rethinking policies on DEI, partly under legal pressure, such as the Supreme Court’s decision last year to strike down the use of race in college admissions.

Some in the corporate DEI movement thought they were immune to restraints. No longer. Companies are rediscovering that the constituency most needing inclusion is their customers. The loudest shot across the bow came last week, when Google fired 28 employees after some staged sit-in protests at its New York and California offices over a contract with Israel’s government. Google’s firing statement describes “completely unacceptable behavior.” No one saw that coming.

All this adds up to a nascent counter-revolt against America’s lurch toward self-destruction. The exception is elite U.S. universities. Their leadership has seen itself as answerable to no one and politically immune.

Robert Kraft, a Columbia grad and owner of the New England Patriots, said this week he will no longer give the school money “until corrective action is taken.”

If big donors ever regain control of these so-called selective schools, a suggestion: Firing the president won’t close the barn door. Instead, fire the admissions office. What a tragedy to think how many serious high-school students were rejected by Columbia, Yale and NYU, edged out by nonuseful idiots whose chosen major is the political structure of re-education camps.

Someone has to be a lagging indicator, and these schools are it.

Non-paywall link

[cliozaur]

- Time for socio-cultural linguistics! The argot or slang digression! Hugo returns to his favourite topics of equating idleness with crime and poverty. This time, idleness presented as the mother of theft (son) and hunger (daughter). And he also revisits his favourite connected topic of education (with its necessary metaphor of light) as a panacea.

- Hugo applauds attempts to rehabilitate the use of slang in literature by none other than Balzac and himself, Hugo, in The Last Day of a Condemned Man. He then explains the basics: every professional and social group may have its own slang, not just criminals. And I really like the examples he provides. However, he later delves into dialects and disappearing dialects… but I believe, it’s something completely different from argot.

- Speaking about slang, Hugo, reintroduces the theatre metaphor and expands upon it: “Behold it ready to step upon the stage and to retort upon crime, and prepared for all the employments of the repertory of evil. It no longer walks, it hobbles; it limps on the crutch of the Court of Miracles, a crutch metamorphosable into a club; it is called vagrancy; every sort of spectre, its dressers, have painted its face, it crawls and rears, the double gait of the reptile.”

- It’s curious to see how Hugo attempts to sympathize with argot while simultaneously dehumanizes it. These words are both beautiful and terrifying: “One perceives, without understanding it, a hideous murmur, sounding almost like human accents, but more nearly resembling a howl than an articulate word. It is slang. The words are misshapen and stamped with an indescribable and fantastic bestiality. One thinks one hears hydras talking… Terrible, toad-like tongue which goes and comes, leaps, crawls, slobbers, and stirs about in monstrous wise in that immense grey fog composed of rain and night, of hunger, of vice, of falsehood, of injustice, of nudity, of suffocation, and of winter, the high noonday of the miserable.”

[odinsblog]

Transcript:

“Interesting how, when a Black person is murdered by a white man, so begins a national debate about crime that somehow never centers on the white man who committed the crime, or the crime he committed. Only the hypothetical crime the Black person committed in the eyes of the white people who decided to kill them, and white America, who can only see them as a defendant and never the victim.

I have represented hundreds and hundreds of people, all impoverished, many homeless, many of whom were arrested and criminally charged for just entering the subway station when they couldn't afford the $2.75 fare in that same city, on those same subways.

Daniel Penny could kill someone for everyone to see, and go home. Something Jordan Neely didn't even have. Which is why he was on the subway in the first place, screaming out for food and water and doing so in vain.

Because the people his desperate pleas would fall on would sit front row to his murder, and not a soul would lift a finger to help him.

And much has been said and asserted as fact regarding Jordan's mental health. How he was having a mental health crisis, how he was dangerous, how he was acting erratic, crazy and aggressive.

And there's been a significant effort made on the part of people hoping to humanize him by saying things like, the passenger's fears were valid, but he shouldn't have been killed, or we shouldn't react to mental health episodes this way.

But I would like to seriously ask this: Why are you defending against a premise you need not accept?

Is it mentally ill to be fed up?

To be angry?

To be desperate?

That you do not have a bed, food to eat?

Water to drink?

And that life has shown you, time and time again, that you're more likely to get it from a prison than from someone who sees you as human as they see themselves?

Is it legitimate to be afraid of someone for that?

Not nervous, anxious, agitated, concerned, worried, sympathetic, or to feel pity - but afraid? So afraid that you think you're in danger?

That this man who has not touched you, has not presented a weapon, or made any advancement towards you, needs to be put down?

Is it “self defense” for a trained Marine to choke an unarmed homeless man who had not threatened him, from behind?

Is a person who you must creep up and attack from behind, posing a threat to you?

Too often, even the well intentioned public embraces legitimizes and concedes to characterizations and narratives they feel they must then defend against.

I encourage you to reject that practice and instead embrace reality. The reality being that there is absolutely nothing new about what happened to Jordan Neely, or how America is trying to justify it.”

—Olayemi Olurin

[dailyanarchistposts]

Chapter 5. Crime

Prison is the institution that most concretely symbolizes domination. Anarchists wish to create a society that can protect itself and resolve internal problems without police, judges, or prisons; a society that does not view its problems in terms of good and evil, permitted and prohibited, law-abiders and criminals.

Who will protect us without police?

In our society, police benefit from a tremendous amount of hype, whether it’s biased and fear-mongering media coverage of crime or the flood of movies and television shows featuring cops as heroes and protectors. Yet many people’s experiences with police contrast starkly with this heavy-handed propaganda.

In a hierarchical society, whom do police protect? Who has more to fear from crime, and who has more to fear from police? In some communities, the police are like an occupying force; police and crime form the interlocking jaws of a trap that prevents people from escaping oppressive situations or rescuing their communities from violence, poverty, and fragmentation.

Historically, police did not develop out of a social necessity to protect people from rising crime. In the United States, modern police forces arose at a time when crime was already diminishing. Rather, the institution of police emerged as a means to give the ruling class greater control over the population and expand the state’s monopoly on the resolution of social conflict. This was not a response to crime or an attempt to solve it; on the contrary, it coincided with the creation of new forms of crime. At the same time police forces were being expanded and modernized, the ruling class began to criminalize predominantly lower class behaviors that had previously been acceptable such as vagrancy, gambling, and public drunkenness.[70] Those in authority define “criminal activity” according to their own needs, then present their definitions as neutral and timeless. For example, many more people may be killed by pollution and work-related accidents than by drugs, but drug dealers are branded a threat to society, not factory owners. And even when factory owners break the law in a way that kills people, they are not sent to prison.[71]

Today, over two-thirds of prisoners in the US are locked up for nonviolent offenses. It is no surprise that the majority of prisoners are poor people and people of color, given the criminalization of drugs and immigration, the disproportionately harsh penalties for the drugs typically used by poor people, and the greater chance people of color have of being convicted or sentenced more harshly for the same crimes.[72] Likewise, the intense presence of militarized police in ghettos and poor neighborhoods is connected to the fact that crime stays high in those neighborhoods while rates of incarceration increase. The police and prisons are systems of control that preserve social inequalities, spread fear and resentment, exclude and alienate whole communities, and exercise extreme violence against the most oppressed sectors of society.

Those who can organize their own lives within their communities are better equipped to protect themselves. Some societies and communities that have won autonomy from the state organize volunteer patrols to help people in need and discourage aggressions. Unlike the police, these groups generally do not have coercive authority or a closed, bureaucratic structure, and are more likely to be made up of volunteers from within the neighborhood. They focus on protecting people rather than property or privilege, and in the absence of a legal code they respond to people’s needs rather than inflexible protocol. Other societies organize against social harm without setting up specific institutions. Instead they utilize diffuse sanctions — responses and attitudes spread throughout the society and propagated in the culture — to promote a safe environment.

Anarchists take an entirely different view of the problems that authoritarian societies place within the framework of crime and punishment. A crime is the violation of a written law, and laws are imposed by elite bodies. In the final instance, the question is not whether someone is hurting others but whether she is disobeying the orders of the elite. As a response to crime, punishment creates hierarchies of morality and power between the criminal and the dispensers of justice. It denies the criminal the resources he may need to reintegrate into the community and to stop hurting others.

In an empowered society, people do not need written laws; they have the power to determine whether someone is preventing them from fulfilling their needs, and can call on their peers for help resolving conflicts. In this view, the problem is not crime, but social harm — actions such as assault and drunk driving that actually hurt other people. This paradigm does away with the category of victimless crime, and reveals the absurdity of protecting the property rights of privileged people over the survival needs of others. The outrages typical of capitalist justice, such as arresting the hungry for stealing from the wealthy, would not be possible in a needs-based paradigm.

During the February 1919 general strike in Seattle, workers took over the city. Commercially, Seattle was shut down, but the workers did not allow it to fall into disarray. On the contrary, they kept all vital services running, but organized by the workers without the management of the bosses. The workers were the ones running the city every other day of the year, anyway, and during the strike they proved that they knew how to conduct their work without managerial interference. They coordinated citywide organization through the General Strike Committee, made up of rank and file workers from every local union; the structure was similar to, and perhaps inspired by, the Paris Commune. Union locals and specific groups of workers retained autonomy over their jobs without management or interference from the Committee or any other body. Workers were free to take initiative at the local level. Milk wagon drivers, for example, set up a neighborhood milk distribution system the bosses, restricted by profit motives, would never have allowed.

The striking workers collected the garbage, set up public cafeterias, distributed free food, and maintained fire department services. They also provided protection against anti-social behavior — robberies, assaults, murders, rapes: the crime wave authoritarians always forecast. A city guard comprised of unarmed military veterans walked the streets to keep watch and respond to calls for help, though they were authorized to use warnings and persuasion only. Aided by the feelings of solidarity that created a stronger social fabric during the strike, the volunteer guard were able to maintain a peaceful environment, accomplishing what the state itself could not.

This context of solidarity, free food, and empowerment of the common person played a role in drying up crime at its source. Marginalized people gained opportunities for community involvement, decision-making, and social inclusion that were denied to them by the capitalist regime. The absence of the police, whose presence emphasizes class tensions and creates a hostile environment, may have actually decreased lower-class crime. Even the authorities remarked on how organized the city was: Major General John F. Morrison, stationed in Seattle, claimed that he had never seen “a city so quiet and so orderly.” The strike was ultimately shut down by the invasion of thousands of troops and police deputies, coupled with pressure from the union leadership.[73]

In Oaxaca City in 2006, during the five months of autonomy at the height of the revolt, the APPO, the popular assembly organized by the striking teachers and other activists to coordinate their resistance and organize life in Oaxaca City, established a volunteer watch that helped keep things peaceful in especially violent and divisive circumstances. For their part, the police and paramilitaries killed over ten people — this was the only bloodbath in the absence of state power.

The popular movement in Oaxaca was able to maintain relative peace despite all the violence imposed by the state. They accomplished this by modifying an indigenous custom for the new situation: they used topiles, rotating watches that maintain security in indigenous communities. The teacher’s union already used topiles as security volunteers during the encampment, before the APPO was formed, and the APPO quickly extended the practice as part of a security commission to protect the city against police and paramilitaries. A large part of the topiles’ duty included occupying government buildings and defending barricades and occupations. This meant they often had to fight armed police and paramilitaries with nothing but rocks and firecrackers.

Some of the worst attacks happened in front of the occupied buildings. We were guarding the Secretary of the Economy building, when we realized that somewhere inside the building there was a group of people preparing to attack us. We knocked on the door and no one responded. Five minutes later, an armed group drove out from behind the building and started shooting at us. We tried to find cover, but we knew if we backed away, all the people at the barricade in front of the building — there must have been around forty people — would be in serious danger. So we decided to hold our position, and defended ourselves with rocks. They kept firing at us until their bullets ran out and drove away, because they saw that we weren’t going anywhere. Several of us were wounded. One guy took a bullet in his leg and the other got shot in the back. Later, some reinforcements arrived, but the hit men had already retreated. We didn’t have any guns. At the Office of the Economy, we defended ourselves with stones. As time went on and we found ourselves under attack by gunfire more and more frequently, so we started making things to defend ourselves with: firecrackers, homemade bottle-rocket launchers, molotov cocktails; all of us had something. And if we didn’t have any of those things, we defended people with our bodies or bare hands.[74]

After such attacks, the topiles would help take the wounded to first aid centers.

The security volunteers also responded to common crime. If someone was being robbed or assaulted, the neighbors would raise the alarm and the neighborhood topiles would come; if the assailant was on drugs he would be tied up in the central plaza for the night, and the next day made to pick up garbage or perform another type of community service. Different people had different ideas on what long-term solutions to institute, and as the rebellion in Oaxaca was politically very diverse, not all these ideas were revolutionary; some people wanted to hand robbers or assaulters over to the courts, though it was widely believed that the government released all law-breakers and encouraged them to go back and commit more anti-social crimes.

The history of Exarchia, a neighborhood in central Athens, shows throughout the years that the police do not protect us, they endanger us. For years, Exarchia has been the stronghold of the anarchist movement and the counterculture. The neighborhood has protected itself from gentrification and policing through a variety of means. Luxury cars are regularly burned if they are parked there overnight. After being targeted with property destruction and social pressure, shop and restaurant owners no longer try to remove political posters from their walls, kick out vagrants, or otherwise create a commercial atmosphere in the streets; they have conceded that the streets belong to the people. Undercover cops who enter Exarchia have been brutally beaten on a number of occasions. During the run-up to the Olympics the city tried to renovate Exarchia Square to turn it into a tourist spot rather than a local hangout. The new plan, for example, included a large fountain and no benches. Neighbors began meeting, came up with their own renovation plan, and informed the construction company that they would use the local plan rather than the city government’s plan. Repeated destruction of the construction equipment finally convinced the company who was boss. The renovated park today has more green space, no touristy fountain, and nice, new benches.

Attacks against police in Exarchia are frequent, and armed riot police are always stationed nearby. Over the past years, police have gone back and forth between trying to occupy Exarchia by force, or maintaining a guard around the borders of the neighborhood with armed groups of riot cops constantly ready for an attack. At no point have the police been able to carry out normal policing activities. Police do not patrol the neighborhood on foot, and rarely drive through. When they enter, they come prepared to fight and defend themselves. People spray graffiti and put up posters in broad daylight. It is to a large extent a lawless zone, and people commit crimes with an astonishing frequency and openness. However, it is not a dangerous neighborhood. The crimes of choice are political or at least victimless, like smoking weed. It is safe to walk there alone at night, unless you are a cop, people in the streets are relaxed and friendly, and personal property faces no great threat, with the exception of luxury cars and the like. The police are not welcome here, and they are not needed here.

And it is exactly in this situation that they demonstrate their true character. They are not an institution that responds to crime or social need, they are an institution that asserts social control. In past years, police tried to flood the area, and the anarchist movement in particular, with addictive drugs like heroin, and they have directly encouraged junkies to hang out in Exarchia Square. It was up to anarchists and other neighbors to defend themselves from these forms of police violence and stop the spread of addictive drugs. Unable to break the rebellious spirit of the neighborhood, police have resorted to more aggressive tactics, taking on the characteristics of a military occupation. On December 6, 2008, this approach produced its inevitable conclusion when two cops shot 15-year-old anarchist Alexis Grigoropoulos to death in the middle of Exarchia. Within a few hours, the counterattacks began, and for days the police throughout Greece were pummeled with clubs, rocks, molotov cocktails, and in a couple of incidents, gunfire. The liberated zones of Athens and other Greek cities are expanding, and the police are afraid to evict these new occupations because the people have proven themselves to be stronger. Currently, the media is waging a campaign of fear, increasing coverage of antisocial crime and trying to conflate these crimes with the presence of autonomous areas. Crime is a tool of the state, used to scare people, isolate people, and make government seem necessary. But government is nothing but a protection racket. The state is a mafia that has won control over society, and the law is the codification of everything they have stolen from us.

The Rotuman are a traditionally stateless people who live on the island of Rotuma in the South Pacific, north of Fiji. According to anthropologist Alan Howard, members of this sedentary society are socialized not to be violent. Cultural norms promote respectful and gentle behavior towards children. Physical punishment is extremely rare, and almost never intended to actually hurt the misbehaving child. Instead, Rotuman adults use shame instead of punishment, a strategy that raises children with a high degree of social sensitivity. Adults will especially shame children who act like bullies, and in their own conflicts adults try very hard not to make others angry. From Howard’s perspective as an outsider from the more authoritarian West, children are given “an astonishing degree of autonomy” and the principle of personal autonomy extends throughout the society: “Not only do individuals exercise autonomy within their households and communities, but villages are also autonomous in relation to one another, and districts are essentially autonomous political units.”[75] The Rotuman themselves probably describe their situation with different words, though we could find no insider accounts. Perhaps they might emphasize the horizontal relationships that connect households and villages, but to observers raised in a Euro/American culture and trained in the belief that a society is only held together by authority, what stands out most is the autonomy of the different households and villages.

Though the Rotuman currently exist under an imposed government, they avoid contact with it and dependence on it. It is probably no coincidence that the Rotuman murder rate stands at the low level of 2.02 per 100,000 people per year, three times lower than in the US. Howard describe the Rotuman view of crime as being similar to that of many other stateless peoples: not as the violation of a code or statute, but as something causing harm or hurting social bonds. Accordingly, mediation is important to solving disputes peacefully. Chiefs and sub-chiefs act as mediators, though distinguished elders may intervene in that role as well. Chiefs are not judges, and if they do not appear impartial they will lose their followers, as households are free to switch between groups. The most important conflict resolution mechanism is the public apology. The public apology has great weight attached to it; depending on the seriousness of the offense, it may be accompanied by ritual peace offerings as well. Apologizing properly is honorable, while denying an apology is dishonorable. Members maintain their standing and status in the group by being accountable, being sensitive to group opinion, and resolving conflicts. If some people acted in a way that we might expect in a society based on police and punishment, they would isolate themselves and thus limit their harmful influence.

For two months in 1973, maximum-security prisoners in Massachusetts showed that supposed criminals may be less responsible for the violence in our society than their guards. After the prison massacre at Attica in 1971 focused national attention on the dramatic failure of the prison system to correct or rehabilitate people convicted of crimes, the governor of Massachusetts appointed a reformist commissioner to the Department of Corrections. Meanwhile, the inmates of Walpole state prison had formed a prisoners’ union. Their goals included protecting themselves from the guards, blocking the attempts of prison administrators to institute behavioral modification programs, and organizing prisoners’ programs for education, empowerment, and healing. They sought more visitation rights, work or volunteer assignments outside the prison, and the ability to earn money to send to their families. Ultimately, they hoped to end recidivism — ex-prisoners getting convicted again and returning to prison — and to abolish the prison system itself.

Black prisoners had formed a Black Power education and cultural group to create unity and counter the racism of the white majority, and this proved instrumental in the formation of the union in the face of repression from guards. First of all, they had to end the race war between the prisoners, a war that was encouraged by the guards. Leaders from all groups of prisoners brokered a general truce which they guaranteed with the promise to kill any inmate who broke it. The prison union was supported by an outside group of media-savvy civil rights and religious activists, though communication between the two groups was sometimes hampered by the latter’s service-provider mentality and orthodox commitment to nonviolence. It helped that the Corrections commissioner supported the idea of a prisoners’ union, rather than opposing it outright as most prison administrators would have.

Early on in the life of the Walpole prisoners’ union, the prison superintendent attempted to divide the prisoners by putting the prison under an arbitrary lockdown just as the black prisoners were preparing their Kwanzaa celebration. The white prisoners had already had their Christmas celebrations undisturbed, and the black prisoners had spent all day cooking, eagerly anticipating family visits. In an amazing display of solidarity, all the prisoners went on strike, refusing to work or leave their cells. For three months, they suffered beatings, solitary confinement, starvation, denial of medical care, addiction to tranquilizers handed out by the guards, and disgusting conditions as excrement and refuse piled up in and around their cells. But the prisoners refused to be broken or divided. Eventually the state had to negotiate; they were running out of the license plates Walpole prisoners normally produced and they were getting bad press over the crisis.

The prisoners won their first demand: the prison superintendent was forced to resign. Quickly they won additional demands for expanded visiting rights, furlough, self-organized programs, review and release of those in segregation, and civilian observers inside the prison. In exchange, they cleaned up the prison, and brought what the guards never had: peace.

In protest of their loss of control, the guards walked off the job. They thought this act would prove how necessary they were, but embarrassingly for them, it had the exact opposite effect. For two months, the prisoners ran the prison themselves. For much of that time, the guards were not present within the cell blocks, though state police controlled the prison perimeter to prevent escapes. Civilian observers were inside the prison twenty-four hours a day, but they were trained not to intervene; their role was to document the situation, talk with prisoners, and prevent violence from guards who sometimes entered the prison. One observer recounted:

The atmosphere was so relaxed — not at all what I expected. I find that my own thinking has been so conditioned by society and the media. These men are not animals, they are not dangerous maniacs. I found my own fears were really groundless.

Another observer insisted “It is imperative that none of the personnel formerly in Block 9 [a segregation block] ever return. It’s worth paying them to retire. The guards are the security problem.”[76]

Walpole had been one of the most violent prisons in the country, but while the prisoners were in control, recidivism dropped dramatically and murders and rapes fell to zero. The prisoners had disproved two fundamental myths of the criminal justice system: that people who commit crimes should be isolated, and that they should be recipients of enforced rehabilitation rather than the ones who control their own healing.

The guards were eager to end this embarrassing experiment in prison abolition. The guards’ union was powerful enough to provoke a political crisis, and the Corrections commissioner could not fire any of them, even those who engaged in torture or made racist statements to the press. To keep his job, the commissioner had to bring the guards back into the prison, and he eventually sold out the prisoners. Major elements of the power structure including the police, guards, prosecutors, politicians, and media opposed the prison reforms and made them impossible to achieve within democratic channels. The civilian observers unanimously agreed that the guards brought chaos and violence back to the prison, and that they intentionally disrupted the peaceful results of prisoner self-organization. In the end, to crush the prisoners’ union, the guards staged a riot and the state police were called in, shooting several prisoners and torturing key organizers. The most recognizable leader of the black prisoners only saved his life through armed self-defense.

Many of the civilian observers and the Corrections commissioner, who was soon forced out of his job, ultimately came to favor prison abolition. The prisoners who took over Walpole continued to fight for their freedom and dignity, but the guards’ union ended up with greater power than before, the media ceased talking about prison reform, and as of this writing Walpole prison, now MCI Cedar Junction, still warehouses, tortures, and kills people who deserve to be in their communities, working towards a safer society.

[fatehbaz]

[A]nti-homeless laws [...] rooted in European anti-vagrancy laws were adapted across parts of the Japanese empire [...] at the turn of the 20th century. [...] [C]riminalising ideas transferred from anti-vagrancy statutes into [contemporary] welfare systems. [...] [W]elfare and border control systems - substantively shaped by imperial aversions to racialised ideas of uncivilised vagrants - mutually served as a transnational legal architecture [...] [leading to] [t]oday's modern divides between homeless persons, migrants, and refugees [...].

---

By the Boer Wars (1880–1902), Euro-American powers and settler-colonial governments professed anxieties about White degeneration and the so-called “Yellow Peril” alongside other existential threats to White supremacy [...]. Japan [...] validated the creation of transnational racial hierarchies as it sought to elevate its own global standing [...]. [O]ne key legal instrument for achieving such racialised orders was the vagrancy concept, rooted in vagrancy laws that originated in Europe and proliferated globally through imperial-colonial conquest [...].

[A]nti-vagrancy regulation [...] shaped public thinking around homelessness [...]. Such laws were applied as a “criminal making device” (Kimber 2013:544) and "catch-all detention rationale" (Agee 2018:1659) targeting persons deemed threats for their supposedly transgressive or "wayward interiority" (Nicolazzo 2014:339) measured against raced, gendered, ableist, and classed norms [...]. Through the mid-20th century, vagrancy laws were aggressively used to control migration [and] encourage labour [...]. As vagrancy laws fell out of favour, [...] a "vagrancy concept" nonetheless thrived in welfare systems that similarly meted out punishment for ostensible vagrant-like qualities [...], [which] helps explain why particular discourses about the mobile poor have persisted to date [...].

---

During high imperialism (1870–1914), European, American, and Japanese empires expanded rapidly, aided by technologies like steam and electricity. The Boer Wars and Japan's ascent to Great Power status each profoundly influenced trans-imperial dynamics, hardening Euro-American concerns regarding a perceived deterioration of the White race. [...] Through the 1870s [...] the [Japanese] government introduced modern police forces and a centralised koseki register to monitor spatial movement. The koseki register, which recorded geographic origins, also served as a tool for marking racialised groups including Ainu, Burakumin, Chinese, [...] and Korean subjects across Japan's empire [...]. The 1880 Penal Code contained Japan's first anti-vagrancy statute, based on French models [...]. Tokyo's Governor Matsuda, known for introducing geographic segregation of the rich and poor, expressed concern around 1882 for kichinyado (daily lodgings), which he identified as “den[s] for people without fixed employment or [koseki] registration” [...].

Attention to “vagrant foreigners” (furō-gaikokujin) emerged in Japanese media and politics in the mid-1890s. It stemmed directly from contemporary British debates over immigration restrictions targeting predominantly Jewish “destitute aliens” [...].

The 1896 Landing Regulation for Qing Nationals barred entry of “people without fixed employment” and “Chinese labourers” [...], justified as essential "for maintaining public peace and morals" in legal documents [...]. Notably, prohibitions against Chinese labourers were repeatedly modified at the British consulate's behest through 1899 to ensure more workers for [the British-affiliated plantation] tea industry. [...]

---

Simultaneously, new welfaristic measures emerged alongside such punitive anti-vagrancy statutes. [...] Such border control regulations were eventually standardised in Japan's first immigration law, the 1918 Foreigners’ Entry Order. [...] This turn towards instituting racialised territorial boundaries should be understood in light of empire's concurrent welfarist turn [...]. Japanese administration established a quasi-carceral workhouse system in 1906 [in colonized territory of East Asia] [...] which sentenced [...] vagrants to years in workhouses. This law still treated vagrancy as illegal, but touted its remedy of compulsory labour as welfaristic. [...] This welfarist tum led to a proliferation of state-run programmes [...] connecting [lower classes] to employment. Therein, the vagrancy concept became operative in sorting between subjects deemed deserving, or undeserving, of aid. Effectively, surveillance practices in welfare systems mobilised the vagrancy concept to, firstly, justify supportive assistance and labour protections centring able-bodied, and especially married, Japanese men deemed “willing to work” and, secondly, withhold protections from racialised persons for their perceived waywardness [...] as contemporaneous Burakumin, Korean, and Ainu movements frequently protested [...]. [D]uring the American occupation (1945–1952), not only were anti-vagrancy statutes reinstituted in Japan's 1948 Minor Offences Act, but [...] the 1946 Livelihood Protection Act (Article 2) excluded “people unwilling to work or lazy” from social insurance coverage [...].

---

Imperial expansion relied on not only claiming new markets and territories, but also using borders as places for negotiating legal powers and personhood [...]. Japan [...] integrated Euro-American ideas and practices attached to extraterritorial governance, like exceptionalism and legal immunity, into its legal systems. [...] (Importantly, because supportive systems [welfare], like punitive ones, were racialised to differentially regulate mobilities according to racial-ethic hierarchies, they were not universally beneficial to all eligible subjects.) [...]

At the turn of the century, imperialism and industrial capitalism had co-produced new transnational mobilities [which induced mass movements of poor and newly displaced people seeking income] [...]. These mobilities - unlike those celebrated in imperial travel writing - conflicted with racist imaginaries of who should possess freedom of movement, thereby triggering racialised concerns over vagrancy [...]. In both Euro-American and Japanese contexts, [...] racialised “lawless” Others (readily associated with vagrancy) were treated as threats to “public order” and “public peace and morals”. [...] Early 20th century discourse about vagrants, undesirable aliens, and “vagrant foreigners” [...] produced [...] "new categories of [illegal] people" [...] that cast particular people outside of systems of state aid and protection. [...] [P]ractices of illegalisation impress upon people, “the constant threat of removal, of being coercively forced out and physically removed [...] … an expulsion from life and living itself”.

---

All text above by: Rayna Rusenko. "The Vagrancy Concept, Border Control, and Legal Architectures of Human In/Security". Antipode [A Radical Journal of Geography] Volume 56, Issue 2, pages 628-650. First published 24 October 2023. [Bold emphasis and some paragraph breaks/contractions added by me. Text within brackets added by me for clarity. Presented here for criticism, teaching, commentary purposes.]

[terrence-silver]

Hey hey! Been thinking of McCain lately... do you possibly have any headcons for Terry McCain x criminal!beloved? Would love to hear your thoughts on this!

---

― Yes, he will judge you. Of course he will judge you. He doesn't have an understanding or too much empathy for your particular lifestyle or your particular kind. He thinks it is wrong. That you're wrong. That the way you live is wrong. That you're endangering innocent civilians and people in law enforcement alike, one way or another, or at least that the people you associate with do, and that by extension, you bear part of the moral blame. That you should be apprehended, corrected and penalized, plain and simple. You're one of the many reasons this city is the way it is and the reason why his job is the way it is and if we're honest, yes, Terry McCain will be very much antagonistic and a full-on hard ass in the beginning. Just part of his overall personality, belief system and professional deformation. At best, he thinks you need rehabilitation within the system itself, behind bars, perhaps doing some sort of community work --- pretty much whatever the judge decides, and that's him being extremely kind. At worst? Well, at worst, he thinks that if the justice of said system fails (which, in his experience, it often does, unfortunately) and doesn't punish you the way he feels is due, that good old vigilantism can easily take its place and that he should just do it himself. As usually. Wouldn't be the first time for him.

― Now, it doesn't even matter what sort of criminal activity the subject of his fixation indulges in. Could be smaller thievery and pickpocketing around supermarkets to survive, vandalism, vagrancy, peddling narcotics, using said narcotics, sex work (and he does see this as a criminal offense), entanglement with the local mobs or flat out something larger, more serious that gets his attention much easier, but still, Terry will behave borderline paternalistic in a 'You live like this?' sort of way where he tries, at least tries to correct you and yes, it could come off passive aggressive to aggressive initially. He will not be a nice person to run into, let us be real for a second. He doesn't intend to be nice to you. He intends to set you straight and scare you into behaving properly. Be it by getting in your face, snarking you, threatening arrests, actually arresting, getting physical, taking you into custody overnight, writing you tickets, hitting you with fees; it really doesn't matter. This particular detective? He's doing too much. He's doing the job of an ordinary, day-to-day, commonplace streetcorner cop. Something that doesn't even pertain to his high function. So, why does he do it? Why is he on your case? Shouldn't he be after bigger crooks out there?

― Not even McCain himself knows why he does what he does, truth to tell. He thinks he's doing right by the streets of Chicago, the overall public peace and justice itself, with no task 'too small' for him due to him being humble about doing his work and doing it well (often by any means necessary), but truth of the matter, these are the beginnings of his obsession rearing their head, without him realizing or even wanting to admit to it. Whatever you're doing is a problem for the smalltime police, not a full blown detective, but he tells himself the police is overworked and overburdened and not always capable of doing the job it is meant to do so he has to step in. He has no choice, see. You've given him no choice. As such, he's always where you are. Always in your shadow. Always close by. Always seeping venom into your face. Always measuring your behavior. Warning you. Always there. If someone didn't know this man has a badge it would be easy to imagine him as a stalker, which is exactly what he is anyway. An possessive stalker at that. If the smalltime police he branded as 'overworked' actually steps in on your case he might actually step in himself, telling his own colleagues off, because you're his project. He'll deal with you himself. Nobody else will.

― Of course it is safe to say you've crawled inside of his brain and that even in his downtime he's thinking of you. Collecting files on you. Using and abusing his powers to amass intel. Making notes on you. Your associates. Pondering you even if he's otherwise engaged in a relationship with someone else. Pacing around his apartment in the dead of night just letting his intrusive thoughts run back to you, what you're doing right now. Right this very instant. Might just hit the streets to find you and track you down, feeling that this very moment, you could be up to no good, as always. Might just get into an altercation and save you if you're in trouble, justifying that he's still a good guy at the end of the day and that it is your own fault for living the life you do. If you lived correctly, this wouldn't be happening, or at least not as frequently. Now, what if he wasn't here to protect you? What do you think could've happened to you!? He's behaving less like a guy in law enforcement tackling a criminal and more like a concerned, albeit abjectly judgmental and difficult friend sharing some tough love to someone who has strayed. A worried parent, a worried, dare I say, loved one? His delivery isn't always mellow, but he feels his heart is in the right place.

― Of course his colleagues notice McCain has a fixation that just goes way beyond the professional and straight into the personal, and whether they call him out on it or not, he might just very much deny it or deny he's having the type of fixation they claim he's having all while still running amok whenever you're in question. At this point, he wants to rehabilitate you himself because he feels this is his cross to bear and nobody can bear it for him. He won't allow anyone else to bear it. Tries to have well meaning talks with you, one on one. Finds you address and breaks in to check on your dwelling situation. Tries to downright irritate and wear you down into listening to him for once because he knows better. Should he just cuff you, drive off with you and get you to listen like that, by force? Tries to fix your life for you because...he cares, damnit. Ensures you can't shake him off. The streets, lowlife dens, these lairs, hangouts and shady places are not fit for you. The company you keep isn't fit you, notwithstanding that his concern is peppered with jealousy because his company, he feels, is infinitely worthier. A good life is possible. Or a better life, for starters.

― Might start arresting all your ehm, compatriots out on the streets, one by one, if his beloved has any, to the point you'll be the only one left, totally isolated and cut off from the rest of them, with him, ironically, as your only support system and the only one you could possibly turn to. He's totally not envious, no. See? He's serious. Don't mess with him. He's not to be trifled with. Only reason he hasn't done it to you (yet) is because he thinks, no, he knows in fact, that you've potential. That you're better than them. There's a good heart somewhere in there. You don't need yet another police dossier besmirching your future, do you? What you need is an intervention. He'll offer you an intervention, sure, all while not being fully aware he needs an intervention too because he's fallen and he's fallen hard. Terry McCain has fallen for you to the point of bias, blindness and even starting to justify you in ways he wouldn't dream of doing before. Well, maybe you strayed down the path you did because of a bad childhood. Maybe the infrastructure is broken. You're disenfranchised. Urban poverty is rampant and offers little opportunities. The influence of corrupt people has corrupted you too.

― Fact is, yes, Terry McCain is in love to the point of complete and utter desperation, a moral crisis, an identity crisis and even righteous fury at your general circumstances, precisely because he cares for you so much and he's affected to the point of overemotional, unhinged rage at how you've been living before he's met you and after he has as well. What you must've gone through. What you allowed yourself to happen. What others around you allowed to happen to you. It is an extremely slowburn realization, but it is a realization nonetheless. He wants to scoop you up. Take you. Protect you. Look after you. Ensure you never go down a bad, dangerous or negative path again, not while he's alive and even if he's not. He wants to apprehend, put away and wreak havoc on every pimp, kingpin, trafficker, drug dealer, gang leader, gangster, mobster or handler who's ever used you for nefarious purposes out on the legal margins of society. Convinced you to do bad. Profited off of it. If Terry was your natural enemy before, he's not just a friend now, he's an advocate for your general well-being. Your saintly guardian. The thought of you not being safe or living a life that is dangerous sends to a dark, decrepit place where he could downright start killing just to ensure you're alright.

― He becomes gentle, yes. You're no longer a criminal or some common thug he can manhandle or push around in his eyes. Rather, you become someone who was seduced down a bad road. Someone groomed. Taken advantage of. Someone blackmailed. Someone whose situation offered them no way out. Someone in need of rescue. A victim. A victim he must avenge. He deals in absolutes. You're either the villain or you're the angel. His angel. No in-betweens. Just about adores you to the point he refuses to acknowledge any fault of yours and if he does, he finds ways to justify those as well. Delusional, much? Maybe. His vocabulary becomes infinitely more considerate and so do his actions towards you, at least. He ensures you're sheltered. Rehabilitated. Away from bad influences and in fact, away from all influences that isn't his own. He uses all the powers within his position to make sure you're taken care of and that he's right there taking care of you too, and in fact, that he's the main and only person taking care of you. Yes, his intentions are amorous. And yes, once this trial period is over, you're coming with him because he'll make you the honest person he knows you're capable of being. What choice is there? Do you want to go jail and do time? Hit the streets again? Terry McCain would never allow that.

― Ideally, whether beloved's criminal (or ex-criminal) or not, Terry imagines a very conventionally and traditionally idyllic life no matter how you slice it. Perhaps even more so if you had what would be deemed 'a worrying past'. To counter that, the future should be kinder, warmer, all the more normal to balance things out and redeem everything and yeah, he thinks that's a goal worth fighting for. Yes, he wants a Christmas Tree, he wants sappy, ugly sweaters and opening presents with you next to a roaring fireplace, he wants a home with you, he wants weekends at some cozy, crowded bar where he can sing and play for you, he wants to keep a pet or two with you, he wants you to never be in a dangerous position again, he wants to protect you, look after you, he wants your warm hands in his, sharing a coat out on a freezing pier mid-December somewhere, he wants autumnal, rain soaked walks and he wants you well and happy. Of course, forming a stable relationship with someone who has a police dossier might not go down that smoothly with his own colleagues and work associates but when he has Terry McCain, hotheaded and stubborn that he is, ever cared about what anyone thought?

[notchainedtotrauma]

Goldie Williams, Arrested For Vagrancy & Refused to Unfold Her Arms and Stop Making This Face For Her 1898 Mugshot. (Omaha, Nebraska)  

I would rather devote my time doing anything else but the notes keep bursting out and I have had completely lost the ability to bear it anymore. I use what I put on my Tumblr in very specific ways, and a lot of it has to do with how to curate and archive and transform and actually highlight what makes seemingly mundane things as important to preserve or think about as typical works of arts. Also jokes, random venting, reblogging people calls for financial help, indignation at shit, jokes.

When I posted this mugshot, I was thinking about Goldie Williams performing an act of resistance in a moment of extreme duress, because a Black woman arrested in 1898 was mishandled, dragged, very possibly hit, the whole time the arrest was actually happening. So for her to still do that was an act of bravery like no other and I wanted to honor that and again, like many photographs on my Tumblr, I wasn’t interested in telling that story to the audience. I found this mugshot in Saidiya Hartman’s Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments, with no caption whatsoever (she did cite the source at the end) and I basically was doing the same thing. I didn’t care about the audience.

I expected this to stay in Black Tumblr and to have 60 notes maximum. And then it blew up. Which okay, and I’m grateful to the person who gave it more context by going into Nebraska archives, but the tags. Was her face that cute that it completely obliterated the date below the caption and what that date must have meant ? Also to clarify, the vagrancy laws we are speaking of  in around the 1900s are laws who were used  to regulate the movement of Black people, and people were arrested in hallways, at the door of their appartment, having fun while walking the streets. The ultimate concept of the vagrancy laws (at the time), which were sourced from British vagrancy laws, was to predict fucture criminals and then get them out of the public and even private space.

And Goldie Williams/Meg Murphy, certainly would have been tried before a sorry excuse of a “court” and sentenced to three years being worked like a mule, badly fed, and tortured (and considerind that she said herself she was a prostitute, that wouldn’l have helped neither her case nor her treatment within the jail). And even if she had been back in Chicago, having a “lighter sentence” in the House of Corrections until she could pay the fines, it was still jail. But because I didn’t expect the post to blow up, I didn’t feel like providing all this information because my goal in posting her mugshot was not to educate people. Like she is making herself a world of pain and her defiant self doesn’t care because if she’s going to suffer, she’s going to suffer with style. And I applaud that.

And I feel like most of the tags don’t actually reflect the reality of the danger she’s putting herself in. And that’s it. 

[cmweller]

Challenge #04121-K103: What You Give...

A cruel lord tries to make the temple of helping hands illegal. They come to regret it and repent. -- Anon Guest

"Encouraging vagrancy and generating an atmosphere of listlessness," Pastor Tolerance read the highlights of the notice in her hands. "Sheltering the criminal element... if the building remains, I'll be arrested for masquerading as a woman of the cloth?" She passed it to Bathild, the Priest of Freja.

They had to don their reading glasses to examine the myopic script. "Charity is the bane of honest labor and a poison on the soul of my good citizens? What levels of horseshit...?"

"Ocean deep ones," said Tolerance. "I think ze hates the Church of Kind Hands because of all the otherwise Unwelcome who come to the doors."

[Check the source for the rest of the story]