Rapides Parish, LA Public Conduct: Aggressive Panhandling (2026)

Sec. 19-11 of the parish code declares vagrancy a misdemeanor and lists who counts as a vagrant: persons without visible means of support who live without employment; persons who wander and lodge in groceries, taverns, beer houses, bar rooms, market houses, sheds, barns, outhouses, uninhabited buildings, railroad cars or streetcars, steamboats or other watercraft, public buildings, or the open air; persons who wander or beg, go door to door, or place themselves in streets, highways, passages or alleys to beg or receive alms; tramps; female street walkers; habitual drunkards; able-bodied persons who do not work but live on a wife's or minor child's wages; and anyone who lives by begging, gambling, stealing, or trading in stolen goods.

The ordinance, adopted November 8, 2016, does not create a separate offense for aggressive or threatening solicitation; it is written as a single, broad vagrancy statute, and its begging and street-solicitation clauses are the only local rule reaching that conduct in the unincorporated parish. S. S. 14:107, the state's own vagrancy definition. Anyone found guilty faces a fine of not less than five dollars nor more than twenty-five dollars, and if the fine goes unpaid, imprisonment of not less than ten nor more than thirty days, at the court's discretion. Unlike the peddler and solicitation sections that follow it, Sec. 19-11 carries no express carve-out for the incorporated municipalities within the parish.