Nine people have now been convicted under Denmark’s new anti-begging legislation.
A 63-year-old Romanian woman was on Tuesday sentenced to 20 days in jail followed by deportation for asking passersby for spare change in the Copenhagen district of Nørrebro.
Her sentence marks the first deportation under newly-tightened anti-begging legislation that was implemented last month by Justice Minister Søren Pape Poulsen.
It is not, however, the first time Denmark has sent someone out of the country for begging. In November, a Danish court sentenced a Slovakian woman to 40 days in prison and ordered her to be deported for begging on the street in what was the country’s first ruling of its kind.
But Poulsen has declared war on begging in Danish streets and the ordered deportation of the Romanian woman is the first since his new tougher rules came into effect.
