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.

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.

Risky I know … but there you are.

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.

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. ]

Very good point. Isn’t that what both the main political parties do, come Christmas time?

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.

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 cosmetics shop people pester men too. To say nothing of the mobile phone operator people. I just say “no thank you” and move on.