All social policies, national or local, discuss about measures to "increase opportunities" for families on the edge of survival. Local public authorities also talk about "overcoming the condition", about "temporary" support measures until people affected by poverty no longer need the support of public institutions. But counter-intuitively, in some cases, local police are deepening vulnerability even further by fining the poorest of the poor. In common language, this practice is likened to sanctioning acts that disrupt the community. In the language of the profession, however, the practice is defined as a form of criminalisation of poverty.
The criminalisation of poverty describes the institutional mechanisms by which certain behaviours justified precisely by vulnerability become associated with criminality and are punished as such. Cynically, poverty is dealt with by the police, which end up replacing the social services to which these people are entitled. Paradoxically, it is the same public institutions that claim the long-term dependence of vulnerable people on the protection system that are pulling the plug on behalf of the civilised city.
The acts of which vulnerable persons are guilty are often covered by Law 61/1991 on public order and peace. It seems that national legislation has concluded that the city is "disturbed" by activities that sometimes make the difference between life and death for these people. Calling for public charity is the explicit offence that includes the most vulnerable people in the community. But not explicit.
Over the years we have met vulnerable people fined for drinking alcohol in public places (difficult to drink in other places when one doesn’t have a home), disturbing the peace or even collecting rubbish from the city's bins (being accused of stealing from city property). Sometimes the mere fact of occupying a physical space becomes amendable. People who live in unfit conditions are fined for doing so without legal forms, although obviously, as long as we live, we have no choice but to live somewhere.
Public authorities often say populist and superficial that these fines don't matter because they don't pay them anyway, ignoring the fact that they deepen inequality and vulnerability of these people. The effects of these fines are many and complicated, and have been analysed at length by academics, but in Bucharest this discussion has not yet taken place, as we remain captive to the revanchist discourse against vulnerability.
Firstly, fines are a strong disincentive to accept legal forms of work. In most cases, the jobs to which vulnerable people have access are those at minimum wage, i.e. low pay in relation to the needs of their families. The contract would automatically lead to garnishments for unpaid fines, substantially reducing an already low payment. The rational behaviour is to optimise income and therefore avoid this garnishment. This is all the more so because, for the most part, these people feel wronged by these fines - they feel harassed and deprived of any defence (contesting these fines is never an option because they don't know and can't navigate the legal system). And working without legal forms means vulnerability in the relationship with the employer and income insecurity.
Another way in which fines directly contribute to keeping these families in poverty is because they restrict access to some social services and benefits. Not just for them, the fined adults, but even for the children in their families. For example, support to prevent school drop-out is conditional on no debt to the local budget. Paradoxically, it is precisely children from the most vulnerable families in Bucharest who cannot receive this support, because their parents have fines and therefore debts to the local budget.
It is very difficult to measure the violence of the system against vulnerable people. The extent of fines imposed by virtue of a life lived in precarious conditions is only one possible angle.
We asked all the city halls in Bucharest about the number of fines issued by the Local Police under Law no. 61/1991 for the sanctioning of offences against the rules of social coexistence, public order and peace during 2021. This is not the only law that can be used against vulnerable groups, but it is the most "generous" for local police officers. Among the contraventions mentioned there are appeals to public charity. Clearly it is only vulnerable people who are appealing for this form of public support.
We are convinced that vulnerable people have also been fined under the other sections of the law. It is just that it is impossible to find out how many people in poverty were in this situation, as statistically the police only have information on the framing of the facts. So the picture below is incomplete. But relevant.
To make this statistic, we started from the report made by the Local Police of Bucharest Municipality (PLMB) in the summer of 2021 - Public Order and Safety Plan of Bucharest Municipality, available here. We have selected from the list of contraventions of Law no. 61/1991 those contraventions with a significant weight in PLMB statistics. Below you have the weight of fines given on the basis of the Article 2 of the law, in relation to other contraventions (the most frequent). From the published data, people who appeal to public mercy are, in the opinion of PLMB, the biggest threats to the order and safety of the inhabitants of this city.
In 2021, more than three quarters of all fines issued by the Bucharest Municipal Police are fines on the article providing for the appeal to public charity - almost 5,000 fines in a single year (the second highest amount is the fines for drinking alcoholic beverages in public - by a huge distance - almost 800). All the fines given under the other sections of the law do not even reach half of the fines given for appeals to public charity. The Sector 1 police gave more than 50% of the fines given under Law 61/1991 to persons appealing to public charity - 1557 fines. As in the case of the Bucharest City Hall, the gap between the number of fines given for appeals to public charity and the next most frequent contravention is very large - the second most frequent contravention is all alcohol consumption, with 285 fines given. In Sector 4, this article of the law also generated the most fines, although in terms of proportion, the phenomenon is smaller than in the cases mentioned above.
Below, data received from local public authorities in Bucharest (based on requests for information of public interest):
These figures tell only part of the story of the stigmatisation of vulnerable people in Bucharest, as the phenomenon, as documented by NGOs working directly with these groups, is much broader. These are figures that are not to be found in national and local poverty reduction strategies, but only in the reports of institutions whose employees need a job at any cost. Sometimes the prospect of having to turn to public charity motivates the "men in uniform" to thirstily fine even the poorest of the poor. Because, after all, they see what poverty looks like every day. And they fine it until they learn!