THE TREATMENT OF VAGRANCY IN SWITZERLAND.
It is a noteworthy fact that the treatment of the vagrant and the loafer on disciplinary principles has been carried out most systematically in countries so fundamentally different in political government as Germany and Switzerland. In the Swiss Republic this question is regulated by Cantonal laws. The Federal Legislation on the subject, dating from 1850, merely orders that vagrants and mendicants shall be dealt with in the cantons in which they may be arrested in accordance with the laws of those cantons, yet adding that, if of foreign nationality, they shall be expelled from the country.
While, therefore, each canton makes its own vagrancy laws, the spirit of these laws is entirely free from the weak sentimentality which, in some respects, characterises our own. The law in force in the canton of Berne, for example, states that:
"Vagrancy, namely, the wandering from place to place of persons without means and without the object of obtaining honest employment, is punishable with imprisonment and hard labour not exceeding sixty days, or with committal to a labour institution for a term between six months and two years; on the repetition of the offence the vagrant is always to be committed to a labour institution."
Persons who apply for help from a Relief Station and refuse to accept suitable work when offered to them may be treated as "shirkers" (work-shy), and as such they are liable to detention in a labour institution for any period between several months and several years. The police are empowered to arrest beggars without special warrant, and the husbands and fathers who evade their domestic responsibilities, and even the town loafer who hangs about at street corners, may be apprehended and committed to a Forced Labour House by very summary process. These institutions are cantonal, and one of the best is that at Witzwil, established in 1895 by the Canton of Berne, and conducted by the Cantonal Police Authority.
The offenders detained at Witzwil are of five classes:—
(1) First offenders convicted of criminal offences or sentenced to a house of correction in the Canton of Berne, where the sentence does not exceed three years. Those likely to abscond, or belonging to other Cantons, are not accepted.
(2) Offenders sentenced to simple detention.
(3) Bernese offenders sentenced by Military Courts to a gaol or convict prison for not more than three years.