Reflections on Caleb Foote on Vagrancy-Type Laws

Abstract

Caleb Foote's classic 1956 article Vagrancy-Type Law and Its Administration, 1 which appeared in the University of Pennsylvania Law Review and reported on vagrancy-type laws and their administration in Philadelphia, foreshadowed a lifetime of commitment to understanding how the practices of police, prosecutors and the courts affected ordinary people, especially those who were poor, homeless, mentally impaired, or otherwise disadvantaged by race, ethnicity or poverty. Despite noteworthy changes in American vagrancy law and procedure, the policing of persons stigmatized with "spoiled identity" a concept introduced into sociology by Erving Goffman2 remains a significant, and possibly the most contentious, issue in policing and contemporary criminal justice today. It resonates especially in the term "broken windows" policing: the theory that crime flourishes in places where the appearance of disorder is permitted to dominate neighborhoods. 3 1 plan to say little about the pros and cons of "broken windows" policing. I want instead to discuss how the law of vagrancy mirrored social norms, how the social norms that infused vagrancy law likely remain with us, and how that may undermine constitutional policing. I am going to do this by focusing on and celebrating Caleb Foote's classic 1956 article. 4 One part of Caleb's article is a brilliantly told history. We learn that whether called vagrants, tramps, bums, hobos, beggars or, more recently, the