As the cost-of-living crisis continues to worsen across the country, Green Member of the London Assembly Housing Committee has uncovered the Metropolitan Police Service’s (Met) disproportionate use of the Vagrancy Act to criminalise unhoused Londoners.
A relic from 1824, the Vagrancy Act criminalised rough sleeping in England and Wales. [1] From Garbett’s new data, Londoners can now see exactly how disproportionally the Met has deployed the Act across the city.
Since April 2022, when the Government said it would repeal the Vagrancy Act, the Met has arrested 148 men and 27 women under the law. [2] This means 84 per cent of all arrests made under the Act were male.
In that same period, Black Londoners were arrested 51 times, constituting nearly 30 per cent of all arrests, despite Black Londoners only making up 13.5 per cent of the London population. [3]
Green Party London Assembly Member Zoë Garbett said:
“Homelessness should not be a crime.
“The overwhelmingly disproportionate use of this old law to criminalise people sleeping rough on our streets is a policy failure, a policing failure, and most definitely a housing failure.
“If we are serious about getting our unhoused neighbours off the street and into safe, stable housing, we must acknowledge these failures and invest more into solutions at the root of the problem. I will continue to push the Mayor to direct more funding for buying existing houses and putting them in the council housing supply.”