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Article: Vagrancy and Disorderly Conduct
- Article from:
- Encyclopedia of Crime and Justice
- Author:
CopyrightCOPYRIGHT 2002 The Gale Group Inc. This material is published under license from the publisher through the Gale Group, Farmington Hills, Michigan. All inquiries regarding rights should be directed to the Gale Group. (Hide copyright information)
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VAGRANCY AND DISORDERLY CONDUCT
Vagrancy and disorderly conduct are examples of a category of legal prohibitions commonly referred to as
public order offenses
. Such offenses share a number of general characteristics. They usually prohibit relatively trivial types of public misconduct such as, for example, aggressive panhandling, public drinking, or loitering in the vicinity of an automated teller machine. In the main, they provide for comparatively low-level punishments. In addition, police commonly exercise a considerable degree of discretion in the enforcement of public order laws. This is partly because such laws are often not formally enforced even when they are clearly violated. ...