[ryandrake]

Good point about the proliferation of the absurd “crime” of loitering, which apparently just means “existing somewhere without spending money.” I remember being a teen in the 80s and what we did every day would be considered “loitering” today. There’s not much else for kids to do outside the home besides loiter.

[elevation]

> existing somewhere without spending money

Existing without spending money works a lot better when you perceive and comply with social norms. At a mall, you're unlikely to meet loitering enforcement for reading a book in the food court all afternoon while sipping a drink you brought from home. You can meeting your local walking club there too and walk for miles chatting without purchasing anything -- if you're not bowling over the shoppers.

But if you camp out in the entrance of the mall and roughhouse with your highschool buddies, your antisocial behavior will drive away customers. Perhaps you can't perceive this, or perhaps you do perceive it but don't care -- either way, once you're making shoppers uncomfortable, you're a strict liability.

This doesn't mean you can't be kicked out for other reasons. But you get a lot farther if you play to your audience.

[mattmiller]

"Antisocial behavior" You are describing teens being social. You dont get to define what antisocial means.

[abalashov]

Well, you do to some extent, and having people define what antisocial is for them is how teens learn to be prosocial (inshallah).

Not a Karen -- it's about striking a balance.

[yesfitz]

"Anti-social" has multiple definitions.

The other poster was using it to mean the opposite of pro-social, i.e. behavior that is bad for society (like roughhousing in a shared space meant for shopping). This definition is frequently used in the UK and Ireland thanks to Anti-social Behavior Orders.

You are using it to mean being averse to socializing.

[BurningFrog]

So why were loitering laws introduced? I doubt it was purely a sadistic effort to ruin the lives of kids.

My guess is that combatting gang crime was a major reason.

[probably_wrong]

My understanding is that loitering laws are much older than that - the first versions of these laws seems to date to 1342 [1].

IMO what all these laws have in common is that they're designed to allow the police to legally ask questions to people (or straight up remove them) who look suspicious but haven't committed any crime. Why would anyone want to remove people who haven't done anything wrong is a more nuanced question that I'm not qualified to properly answer.

[1] https://eji.org/news/visual-history-loitering-laws/

[bombcar]

Have an unmarked "free candy" type van park across your street from your house day in and day out, moving with just enough regularity to avoid parking too long, and you might begin to understand why "look suspicious but haven't committed any crime" starts to weird people out.

[strken]

There's an inherent tension between protecting public spaces and protecting vulnerable but disruptive people.

Your link refers to an article which is very American and very 2018. Lots of large font size headings about race and sexuality and gender. I don't think it's a productive take on how to manage the tension. Racially homogenous societies still need to decide how to handle people who try to sleep at train stations and yell at the commuters.

[wizzwizz4]

Sleeping at train stations is fine (as is sleeping on trains), and yelling at commuters is disruptive / antisocial behaviour. (I don't like the word "antisocial" in laws, because it's too open to interpretation, and then you have a load of case law defining what precisely "antisocial" means, known only to legal experts, leaving everyone else ignorant of the law.) It seems to me that additional rules against loitering are not useful for the situation you described.

[strken]

Why is sleeping at a train station fine? (Unless you're talking about infrequent long distance trains).

Trains are transportation infrastructure. Drivers don't have to put up with people setting up a queen bed in the middle of their lane on the highway. If a country doesn't protect its public transport infrastructure, then the rich and the middle class stop taking the train, the poor have to put up with things, and the mentally ill get an overpriced and noisy mobile homeless shelter. One that costs more and helps less than crisis accommodation.

[Defletter]

Sorry, different person here, why does "sleeping at a train station" imply "setting up a queen bed in the middle of their lane on the highway" or anything of the sort?

[mapt]

Modern loitering laws in small-town America, post-Civil-War, were typically originally intended to enslave the entire population of black men remaining in town, or otherwise drive them out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j4kI2h3iotA It took most of a century for the economy to really convert everything over to an hourly-pay model. This is not the only reason, but it is the dominant, proximate one that enshrined the practice.

Places with less black-white racial animus were comfortable adopting animus for other minorities, or for the poor in general. Post-Civil-Rights, loitering laws (and a panoply of other practices ranging from swimming pools to mortgage approvals to cul-de-sacs) were exploited not to enslave, but principally to simply eject categories of people.

For a take on the origins of the Anglo cultural tradition of persecuting the poor in general, this goes a lot further back - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ec9Al5ezYs

[archonis]

Loitering laws have existed since english commonlaw, but in the modern era were adapted to penalize homelessness, unemployment, etc...

[cbondurant]

A reason I suspect (though, truly it is only a guess) is as a way to force people to spend money. Something akin to "either buy something or leave" to try and capture just that tiny bit of additional revenue.

[ryandrake]

"Buy something or leave" has become a kind of sinister, unwritten, yet overarching principle organizing and governing everyone's lives. Participation in the work-earn-spend economy has become less and less optional with each passing day.

[ghaff]

I'm not sure that's actually true in a typical park. It may very well be true for a bunch of noisy kids in a shopping mall which exists and is paid for for the purpose of people, well, shopping.

[smcg]

have you looked at satellite maps of the US? there are plenty of places that are concrete jungles with little green space.

[gentleman11]

Its to drive homeless people away, shamefully enough

[skinfaxi]

I would be surprised if loitering laws are even enforceable today. I can see trespassing if you're asked to leave and don't, but getting arrested for being in one place too long? Especially a public place like a park? I'd donate to that gofundme. Kids could learn something from first amendment auditors and just start filming themselves in public.

[dfxm12]

Parks have operating hours. Cities have noise ordinances, etc., to give Cops options for booking who they want for whatever they want. Cops don't necessarily care what the laws are, anyway. I've taken a ride in paddy wagons to a station before for hanging out in a playground because a neighbor said we were causing trouble. We were just talking. No, we weren't processed, but we were left to figure out our own way back home. This was in the 90s. The same stuff happens today though.

[hylaride]

The small rural Canadian town I grew up in (~2000 people) during the 1990s had a real estate agent that would call the cops if he saw any teenagers out after 9pm. He would literally lie to them, saying we were causing trouble if we were just walking to the convenience store. He was trying to keep the town "desirable" or something. This man fought anything that would keep teenagers occupied. Skate parks, benches, etc. My group would lay in the park during the dog days of summer just chatting and passing around a jug of orange juice, which he would tell the cops was spiked with vodka (which we did do, but never in the park).

Of course, we (as in the teens in general) probably fed into his paranoia - let's just say harassing the neighbourhood teenagers rarely ends well...

[greenavocado]

Compare how things were back then to now and this RE agent probably stroked out from the mannerisms of the recent newcomers

[t-3]

Very few children know enough and have the disposition to productively stand up to a cop (or any other seemingly legitimate authority) and try to defend their rights. Legally, whether they have the same rights as adults is also questionable.