It’s time to repeal Mintoff’s law that makes begging a crime. Malta has been a free country for 28 years.
And people should be free to beg if they want to, just as they can in most of the rest of Europe, while the rest of us are free to give them money if we want to.
That’s the liberal, commonsense position: whether people beg and other people give them money is nobody else’s business and certainly not the business of the police or the state.
Begging was made a recordable offence in the United Kingdom around 11 years ago as part of the British government’s attempts at cracking down on street crime. But the move was met with anger and protests by the Liberal Democrats, civil rights group and charities which work with the homeless.
Exactly what is the difference between begging while playing the violin (ah yes, it’s called busking) and begging while not playing the violin?
The law which makes makes begging a crime came into force when Malta was not a democracy, and when the violation of human rights was the norm.
It was Dom Mintoff’s government which made begging a crime. He didn’t want beggars on the streets disproving his notion of a socialist Utopia where the workers are provided for by Dom and Muammar, so instead of sending out hit squads to pick them off with pistols, like his totalitarian mates, he made begging a crime and deployed the police.
But I remember beggars before that when I was a child, and they bothered nobody. Some of them were real characters, familiar to us all – like Guzeppi with the peg-leg and the flat cap, whose permanent station was outside the former Naval Clinic at Ghar id-Dud in Sliema, where I grew up. I saw him every day. People looked out for him. I think he even featured in some kind of film.
These news stories are ridiculous: ‘Another beggar caught’. It’s not the report itself which is farcical, or the reporter, or the newspaper. It’s the law.
We let people shoot birds during the mating season, when the rest of Europe has outlawed it, and then we prosecute people who stand on a street corner and ask for a few cents for a cup of tea, which the rest of Europe is perfectly fine with.
The law that makes vagrancy a crime is much the same. It’s not there for the sake of the vagrants, but for the sake of Malta’s self-image, so we can go to London, Rome, Amsterdam, Paris and pat ourselves on the back, saying ‘Malta ma tarax hekk.’
But how many of you know that one of the main reasons we don’t see people sleeping in doorways or in subways at night is because it’s a criminal act?
Yes, that’s right: being homeless and with no means of subsistence is a crime in Malta. Bed down in a shop doorway after 8pm and the police will pick you up, lock you in a cell overnight, and charge you in the morning.
Remember that Maltese tramp in Dublin we were all talking about summer before last? How the Irish authorities took the correct view, ironically shared by the Maltese embassy there, that if he didn’t want to be bothered then he should be left alone?
In Malta, he would have been picked up and prosecuted immediately.
Because we don’t understand, do we, what a truly liberal attitude is towards the rights, independence and freedoms of others. We think it’s giving Cyrus the opportunity to marry Randolph. No: real liberalism is if somebody wants to sleep on the streets and you don’t prevent them doing it after you have made sure there is an alternative which is safer and more comfortable and found out whether you can help in other ways.
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http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20150129/local/another-beggar-caught.553914
I agree that begging should be a crime. If it had to be decriminalised more and more of them will flourish.
It doesn’t give any country a good image least not Malta which aside from being tiny also depends almost solely on tourism.
Some of these beggers are rude, pestering and annoying people for money and when given say 50c or a euro having the audacity to complain about it.
If they flourish it’s because the economy isn’t doing as well as they keep telling us.
And that’s taboo to government and opposition alike.
National consensus: kemm ninsabu tajjeb.
Its not beggars that give a bad image , look around you and you will see.
Are you worried about beggars giving a bad image to Malta when this country’s main political leaders are supporting the bird exterminators who have tarnished our reputation for years? Kafkaesque.
Begging is illegal in some (or most) cities of Germany too.
I’d prefer it to be that way, as some “beggars” (again some, not all) have been associated with the mafia. Just go to touristy towns like Rome and there is a big issue with some (of the large number of) beggars/gypsies who pickpocket passersby etc.
http://www.timesofmalta.com/articles/view/20110323/local/guzeppi-down-the-gut.356138
Are you implying that begging is a choice made for the fun of it? Whilst it is correct that begging is a contravention (not a crime) under Maltese law, it is the act of importuning someone whilst doing so that defines the commission of such a contravention. Besides, from my experience the local authorities refer homeless people to the several shelters available. Beats having to sleep in a doorway any day in my opinion.
[Daphne – Yes, many people choose, for one reason or another, to live by begging and to live on the streets (not here in Malta). They refuse places in shelters and disappear from shelters when attempts are made to house them. Begging is a crime in Malta, not a contravention. ]
Chap.9, 338. Every person is guilty of a contravention against public
order, who –
(x) in any public place importunes any person to beg alms;
Begging is a contravention in Malta, as is vagrancy.
In many large cities in North America mental hospitals and care homes for the mentally challenged have been shut down and their charges thrown on the streets. Not everyone of these unfortunate people want to live on their own or even can live on their own.
They pester people going to work by begging or acting irrationality and scaring the bejesus out of the pedestrians. Some perish from cold or trying to avoid freezing temperatures or from food poisoning from dumpster diving and trash-can scrounging to stave off hunger.
http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/body-found-in-burnt-out-shed-in-scarborough-1.2900130
Let’s not romanticise begging. There is a currently a wave of Eastern European organised crime groups who are deploying women, children and disabled people round European cities to beg. They also exploit children for pickpocketing simply because the law cannot arraign them.
Kwartizimal is correct as to the legal definition, in that begging is a contravention Art 338(x) of the Criminal Code. Any of your lawyer friends can lecture you endlessly as to the distinction between crimes and contraventions, albeit in this case they are both breaches of the criminal code. As to the material nature of the offence, he is also correct, it is the importuning act not the begging per se which is the contravening issue, so most probably the police were wrong to prosecute for begging. As to the subject matter, this offence should be decriminalized putting us on par with most European countries, where it is ok to beg but not to importune others. And whilst at it we might add the shop/business touts into the same boat as was done with time share touts which has had the beneficial effect of people learning to say no graciously and be equally accepted graciously.
The majority do it of their own free will and volition (overseas) although I am against poverty or being in need of that that is essential, I cannot see any harm if a couple of people decide to live in the streets.
Though sometimes police close an eye begging isn’t allowed in the UK too.
[Daphne – The cities of Britain are full of beggars, Barabbas.]
Not in the area I live, but some places are full of them even within my city. Doesn’t mean that it’s legal though. It’s illegal under the Vagrancy Act of 1824.
Not really. You get the odd one, but that’s it.
Was that tramp Maltese?
[Daphne – His accent is indisputably Maltese.]
I actually think it’s a good thing that begging is illegal. It’s annoying. There should be no reason to go out on the streets and beg/pester others for money in this nanny state. The government provides a host (too many!) of benefits to people who are struggling financially. There’s way more than enough welfare in this country.
[Daphne – I find short, fat, boxy women in tight lycra and visible thongs annoying. But I am not about to propose making that a crime. They are free to look gross and I am free to look away. Pestering? There’s a cosmetics shop on Republic Street which has touts outside importuning every woman who walks past. Shall we have that made a crime, too?]
They importune men too. Hello, can I ask you something? Hello? Hello!
Indeed that shop is a pain and such touts should be made illegal.
I still don’t understand why are people in Malta so narrow minded; Out of sight out of mind aye ?
Prosperity is not enjoyed by all and beggars on any streets are an unpleasant reminder of this cruel economic fact yet to even think that the current policy on begging would somehow evaporate the poor and downtrodden, quite frankly, is not only illusory but a totally incoherent idea.
I know of one whose mother died when he was still a young boy and whose father had already shunned and who ended up living on his own because his paternal relative had always considered him as being a mistake. As a young man and at every dawn save Sunday, he would await in the shadows of the wooden louvres of a window, in order to pilfer bread that was delivered before the break of dawn to his local store. He didn’t have a happy childhood but he luckily managed to get a job and made an honest living. He didn’t beg but he stole which translates to he didn’t ask but he took without permission.
I also know of another boy who ended up at St. Patrick’s because his parents had been in and out of prison on drug related offences. Today, I don’t know if he is still alive but he has lived in the addiction cycle for more than fifteen years with unsuccessful attempts at ‘rehab’. He stole, borrowed and begged but we don’t talk about him as an unfortunate chap but rather as the sole locus of the criminal activity he was involved in.
I also know of a little Maltese woman in Sliema who would ask passers buy for ‘small change for a coffee’ as she gestured her thumb towards her face. I don’t think she ever bothered anyone and sometimes I did give her money.
But a foreigner does it in Malta and “Oh dear we can’t have these foreign bums begging on our streets they don’t have a permit or a visa and we should send them back to where they came from because they take our money that we have worked so hard because otherwise if we didn’t give it to them we would have more for ourselves ‘u haqqhom barmil ilma kiesah u biered ha jitghallmu ja qatta bhala”
The point is that these people were not the sole independent cause of their actions. They didn’t make themselves but were shaped by the circumstances they were born into that they did not choose to be in. So saying that it is annoying is nothing other than a whine that has no purpose other to highlight an insular upbringing.
The cosmetics shop people pester men too. To say nothing of the mobile phone operator people. I just say “no thank you” and move on.
Begging is ILLEGAL in the UK.
And really that’s the way it should be.
Beggars in cities earn more money than someone with a middling income. It is a business, the way certain people earn a (very very good) livelihood while pestering people and generally having a deleterious effect on the environs.
Romanians are the acknowledged pros but other Eastern Europeans are very much into this business as well.
Busking is legal and highly controlled in London, before it was illegal yet the buskers had no issue risking a very hefty fine each time they were caught, because they too were raking it in, making around £200 a day.
First of all, it’s not Romanians but gypsies. I don’t care if it’s the politically incorrect term, because it’s the right one. A lot of them aren’t Romanians but Bulgarians, Moldovans, Hungarians, Albanians, Macedonians and other.
Secondly, it’s not the income from begging which is deletrious, but some of the peripheral activities like drunkennes, squatting and petty theft. And you’ll find that those are prosecuted in any European city.
One of my favourite Conan Doyle stories involves a successful professional beggar in London.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nqDB0tdCx8A
And let us not forget one of the best films ever made, with Rutger Hauer in his best role ever.
It should remain a crime. The Maltese have other means of seeking financial or other help, when needed. I don’t want to see Malta like other cities around the world.
Apart from that, many beggars are organised in groups, many using children and cripples to collect money for the gang who organizes them. They are literally criminal gangs.
I thank God for my quick wits when one of those nasty piece of work, a Roma, almost managed to have a go at my wallet outside Stazione Termini in Rome.
Should we decriminalize begging, more will come. Hasn’t it occurred to you that these people originate from the same region?
[Daphne – They don’t. You need to widen your horizons beyond Stazione Termini.]
Combating begging in London:
http://content.met.police.uk/News/The-MPS-and-six-London-boroughs-combat-begging-and-rough-sleeping/1400022279369/125724674575East
[Daphne – I think you need to re-read that. The police are being asked to speak to beggars to offer support services and not to arrest them. Arrests are to be made only where crimes are committed, like intimidating people. ‘Intimidating people’ does not mean asking them for some change; it means a meths-drinker threatening you with a bottle.]
50k a year begging, and this is just one man, not an entire Romanian family:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jun/06/beggar-50k-year-london
So if begging were to become ‘legal’, beggars would (legally) have to declare their income. Reminds me of the ‘car park attendants’ somehow, isn’t that another form of begging – using public land?
[Daphne – That’s not how it works. Liability to taxation does not depend on whether what you do is legal or not. Drug traffickers are still obliged to pay tax on their income even if that income is derived from criminal activity. Alms do not constitute income. They are the equivalent of a hundred euro note somebody might give you for your birthday. The taxman does not get involved in the ‘cash gifts’ that have become all the rage for weddings nowadays. Begging is neither a job nor a career. It’s something people do when they have neither.]
I think begging is extremely degrading for the person who does it, degrading for the country who is not capable of having a good enough social net to help such people get out of poverty and a nuisance in general.
I think that Malta offers a whole range of social benefits and charitable institutions which help people have shelter and food and a chance to get gainfully employed.
I don’t think that liberal means that you let everyone do what he wants. Even in the most liberal of states there are limitations to what one can and cannot do.
[Daphne – Not really, no. You can do whatever you want as long as you don’t infringe the rights of others and your behaviour is not anti-social, like defecating in public.]
I cannot just set up a stall somewhere and start selling a product and even buskers need to have a permit and rightly so.
[Daphne – Buskers do not need a permit. The reason you cannot set up a stall anywhere you please is because then everyone else would do the same and you’d have a market in an inconvenient place, but there are designated areas where the setting up of stalls does not obstruct anyone or anything, and yes, there you can just go and set one up. The Birgu flea market is the perfect example. There are similar markets everywhere in the world.]
Without that sort of organisation and control it would be a jungle out there and usually that would make it fertile ground for abuse, corruption and extortion.
[Daphne – Next you’ll be calling for a licence or permit for beggars to ‘control the situation’. You don’t have to control everything you know. Those days are gone.]
In a way the spring hunting issue is a case in point. Even when there were a lot of restrictions on spring hunting, the fact that people could shoot at turtledoves in spring meant that there was considerable abuse with many shooting whatever they saw during the spring migration.
The No vote will make it much more difficult to hunt illegally in spring because anyone with a drawn gun is breaking the law in spring if you know what I mean.
If we allow beggars to do so freely, next you will have beggars who start stealing and pickpocketing and then attract all sorts of malavita.
[Daphne – Pickpockets and beggars are NOT the same thing. You will generally find that when people beg, it’s because they can’t bring themselves to steal. Professional beggar/pickpockets are a different type altogether and you shouldn’t confuse them with genuine cases.]
On the other hand it is truly shameful that massive economies like France, Italy and the UK have large numbers of people sleeping on the streets and begging for a living. Whilst they manage to spend money on all sorts of rubbish they allow human dignity to stoop so low.
Even if there are a few who might not want proper shelter (probably because of some mental condition) you can see that most of them have been reduced to this life because of their addictions to drugs and alcohol and apparently since the economic breakdown there has been in the last few years the number of homeless has exploded in cities like Paris.
I’m not proud to say that I live in a country which sees beggars as criminals at law but I’m very proud to live in a country in which there are many, many people who care about each other, that the fabric of our society is tightly knit and that it is very rare that someone ends up on the street.
[Daphne – The fabric of Maltese society is most definitely NOT tightly knit. In anthropological terms, it is your typical southern Mediterranean situation in which it’s The Family versus Everybody And Everything Else. There is no concept of society and hence, absolutely no civic sense – hence the number of people rooting for the Yes vote in this referendum. Maltese people do not care about each other. They care about themselves first and foremost and their immediate family a close second, and nobody else.]
“It’s not the report itself which is farcical, or the reporter, or the newspaper. It’s the law.”
Not so sure about that. The news report is farcical (and the reporter the proponent of the farce) in that it just reports the facts without any sense of the farcical nature of the situation.
The reporter reports it as a court case with the bare facts. “Lady broke law, lady is arrested, brought to court and found guilty. Sentence is handed down”.
If said lady (and, oh, if she is Bulgarian that adds some more fascination to the otherwise boring story) had been caught stealing a mobile phone, the report would have been exactly the same. “Lady caught stealing phone, lady arrested, brought to court. Sentence handed down.”
At the very least investigate if there is maybe an issue with Roma people begging aggressively on the streets and how they came to be in Malta.
Typical. The National Beggar making begging a crime.
What a farce of a party. Beggars and meritocracy the lot.
I am happy that begging is illegal. Why should people from Romania etc. come here and start begging?
We have social services for people in need. Besides as many pointed out to you some criminal organizations are involved.
Sometimes Daphne I get the impression that just to become really European (where there are cities as big if not bigger then Malta) you would like us to accept everything whether it is good or not.
[Daphne – For something to be against the law, there has to be a valid reason, and one that does not impinge on freedoms. Give me a single, solid reason why somebody should be prevented from begging if he wants to beg. Go on. That it annoys people? How does it annoy people more than the touts with tickets, the touts with beauty products to push, the people selling lottery tickets, and those stopping you in the street to ask you questions and fill in questionnaires? I am totally against arbitrary restrictions on people’s freedoms.]
One reason: several people are making a career of begging, a career that ends up giving them a considerable amount of money on which they don’t pay tax.
[Daphne – Not logical, sorry. You don’t make an activity a crime because those involved in that activity don’t pay tax. The activity must by its very nature be criminal (drug-trafficking, pimping women); taxation is a completely separate issue. Using your argument, prostitution should be made a criminal act because prostitutes don’t pay tax.]
In terms of Art 248A the trafficking of people for “activities associated with begging” is a crime. This follows EU and UN legal provisions, and that is where the illegality of begging lies, in the abuse of the rights of others to do and accept an act freely and not be induced, one way or another. Begging is not an offence, it is the way that it may be carried out that may be offensive to an extent that it may require the force of law to remove.
Macho men with a gun running around in our countryside annoy me more than a poor person sitting on a corner in a prominent location begging for enough money to buy the next meal.
The Labour Party, the Nationalist Party and our head of state for her Community Chest Fund all beg bigtime on national television, and they annoy me more than a woman with her hands out begging for some coins.
The thing is that beggars are at the lowest end of the food chain. No one protects them and they are not marketable for our government. Maybe our head of state could use their plight for her next begging marathon.
I do not agree with you this time Daphne, we should not encourage people to come begging on our streets. Busking is a totally different thing,the person here is simply showing his talent and that’s not begging.
[Daphne – Very few buskers have talent. But that is irrelevant anyway. How do beggars bother you in ways that buskers do not? If you think about that, you will find that it’s because you don’t want to be reminded of poverty and misery when walking down the street. But that’s not sufficient reason to arrest and prosecute them.]
Just curious – is begging on TV a crime?
Very good point. Isn’t that what both the main political parties do, come Christmas time?
You do have the option to switch off your TV or change the station. When you go into a bookstore, there is a vast array of magazines and reading material to choose from and it is the same when having the Internet as ultimately you choose what websites to visit based on what you are looking for.
Lots of beggars abroad have young children with them – surely this is not recommended.
Others pester you while you sitting in a cafe or bar. I once saw a man in an expensive car stopping and a really old and crippled woman got out. He helped her sit down and put a plate with coins in it on the ground.
A friend gave a young man who had a large dog with him a bag of dog food. He swore at her.
[Daphne – There are proper laws governing the care of children. They are not laws on begging. The ill-treatment of children is a crime whatever the context. The rest of your argument is also illogical. If you don’t want to give money to beggars, don’t. If you do, then do. The gist of your argument, I fear, is the one used by oppressive governments to ‘clean up’ the streets: shoot them or bundle them away because others find it inconvenient to be reminded that they exist.]
The Police should investigate the current and former heads of state for begging on a national scale.
Read the comments beneath the news item and despair. I curse the day I was born in this shithole of idiots.
Busking is not begging but I fully agree that begging should be illegal for this reason:
In India Mafia gangs deliberately cripple chilldren to beg for their profit.
Read the article in the Daily Mail of the 24th January 2009.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1127056/The-real-Slumdog-Millionaires-Behind-cinema-fantasy-mafia-gangs-deliberately-crippling-children-profit.html
(Sorry I’m not sure how to add a direct link).
[Daphne – That’s an irrational basis for the law against begging. Trafficking women is a crime under international and national law. But prostitution remains legal for the same reason that begging should be – people should be free to have sex for money or beg for money. In the case of prostitution, it is prostituting others to live off their earnings that is the crime, and that is how it should be with begging. The crime in the situation you describe would lie with those forcing others to beg so as to live off them, and not the begging itself. Of course, with prostitution there is the distinction that soliciting in public is an offence, whereas begging by its very nature has to be public. ]
Can’t argue with that logic, but in the absence of any other solution I would go along with outlawing it as being the lesser of two evils.
Risky I know … but there you are.
I agree with having people asking for money if they were so unfortunate in life that they arrived to this last remedy.
The problem is that if you go to the UK for example there are a lot of bums who can work but choose to annoy people to give them there money.
If these are allowed then main cities like Valletta etc. will be turned into a circus.
I think before judging a law because it came from Mintoff’s time, you better think about consequences.
Whenever I see a beggar, I say to myself “There but for the grace of God go I.”
When the average Maltese person sees a beggar, s/he gloats and thinks that in Malta we don’t have any of those because the social net is so strong.
Well, it isn’t, and if you think like that you are living a lie. The reason why there are no beggars on the streets is not because the social net is strong but because it is illegal to beg.
Social nets are, by their very own nature, weak and prone to wear and tear. It is inevitable that people will fall through the net. Those people need somewhere to go and if there’s nowhere else to go, then they naturally go to the streets. There’s no reason why it should be illegal to do so.
You’re probably thinking that the homeless should seek help from the government or non-governmental organisations. They often do but there’s a limit to how much a person can withstand being shoved from one government agency to another and being told that there’s only room for a couple of nights.
As for government schemes for the poor, when all your possessions fit into a bundle, the biggest discounts are not enough to help you pay the rent or the utility bills. Sometimes, there’s just no way out.
The kind of places and organisations which look after beggars and mendicants are fraught with bureaucracy and politics. A shelter never really feels like a home, especially if it lacks resources, can’t cope and is overflowing with people. The sad truth is that people are sometimes better off sleeping rough and begging than they are living in some Dickensian monstrosity with 50 other short-tempered, mentally ill people fighting over soup and who gets to use the bathroom first.
Most tramps are mentally ill and many mentally ill people are precisely one serious bout of depression away from ending up on the streets. Depression and personality disorders can render someone incapable of working. Not mad enough to be locked up in an asylum but not healthy enough to lead a productive life, they find themselves always living on the brink of abject poverty.
Imagine then, if you will, being so ill, confused and penniless that you end up on the streets but instead of being offered some help from the police, you are thrown in jail or fined. How vile.
When the state does that, it is not looking out for the homeless individual but it is simply shoring up its image by removing undesirables from the street. Beijing did this in 2008 to shore up its image for the Olympics. It cleansed society from beggars, prostitutes and the mentally ill, missing the irony that they were about to host the Paralympics.
There is more poverty than one might think in Malta but we keep it hidden and pretend it doesn’t exist. How can we honestly tackle the problem if we don’t even acknowledge it? At least, cities with lots of tramps are honest with themselves. We aren’t.
Poverty can happen to anyone. Recently in Malta, we had two interesting cases: one was the person who stole some items from a charity shop and then wrote a very articulate letter of apology which he posted together with a €50 note; the other, the story of a manager who got paid so little (€1000 a month) that he felt he had to steal money from his employer to make ends meet. Well mannered and capable they might be, but poverty drives people to do the unimaginable (in Moll Flanders’s immortal words: ‘Give me not poverty, lest I steal’).
We don’t need to make it even harder for the poor, helpless and destitute by outlawing what is probably their very last resort: begging in the streets.