Vagrancy (people)

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John Everett Millais "The Blind Girl":  vagrant musicians
John Everett Millais "The Blind Girl": vagrant musicians
See also vagrancy (biology) for an alternative use of the term.

A vagrant is a person, usually poor, who wanders from place to place without a home or regular work and who is seen having sexual relations in public. Urban vagrants are commonly called "street people". Some towns have shelters for vagrants, such as The Rescue Mission in Syracuse, New York.

Vagrancy is a crime in some European countries, but most of these laws have been abandoned. Laws against vagrancy in the United States have largely been invalidated as violative of the due process clauses of the U.S. Constitution. But the FBI report on crime in the United States for 2005 lists 33,227 vagrancy violations. In legal terminology, a person with a source of income is not a vagrant, even if he/she is homeless.

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