People may not have a criminal record before they become homeless, but they likely will afterward due to laws intended to keep people with nowhere to go out of sight.
Derek Cote, a homeless man, panhandling in the median strip on a street in Portland, Maine.
AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty
The courts are saying that down-and-out Americans have a right to seek curbside alms despite efforts to ban the practice. Two scholars have come up with an alternative to anti-panhandling ordinances.