
Arts, Culture and Society
‘No home to go to, and no means of living’: how colonial vagrancy laws punished the poor
by Catharine Coleborne
Vagrancy – being found in the street without any visible means of support – was a crime in many parts of Australia right up to the final decades of the 20th century. In some jurisdictions, vagrancy laws were only repealed in the early 2000s.