The crimes of vagrancy and begging, as defined in the England Poor Laws, are not punished like your typical crimes. Instead, society attempted to help the poor. However, you are a vagrant, and under the Act of Settlement not entitled to any aid outside you local parish (2). The magistrate shows you no mercy and orders you to be sent back to the town you have just left. This is a depressing prospect after having finally arrived in a place that showed promise for employment. With no other option, you reluctantly begin the trek home.

Once back in the town of your birth, you are brought before the local magistrate to decide what is to be your fate. Because you have left the parish and become a vagrant, the magistrate decides that you will not receive direct aid from the parish's fund for the poor. Instead, you are ordered to partake in "indoor" or institutional relief. (3)You are sent to a place known as the "union," which is simply a workhouse built by the local parish where the poor were sent as punitive means for the "undeserving." In the union you are given work to do that helps the community, all the while under the direct supervision of an "overseer" who monitors your work and becomes your disciplinarian.

The workhouse supplies you with food and shelter, as well as discipline. You are ordered to stay in the poor conditions the union offers until such time as conditions have improved in the community and jobs are more prevalent. For the time being, however, you must stay in the decaying conditions in the parish's union.