Downtown Atlanta is an excellent location for a conference. The hotels are built on a grand scale, the meeting rooms are spacious and well appointed, and sky bridges connect many of the buildings. In fact, visitors needn't go outside, at all: they move effortlessly among hotels, conference rooms, shops, and restaurants, protected from the weather and the traffic.

And apparently from the city itself. A serious young woman on the hotel TV admonishes the visitor to be vigilant about his personal security, a message she repeats in a 24/7 continuous loop. Don't leave valuables in your room, she says, or in your vehicle. Use the security locks on your hotel room door at all times. Don't allow strangers into your room. If someone knocks on your door, check with the front desk before letting him in. If you return to the hotel after dark, avoid unlighted areas. Nothing to do? Consider staying in your hotel room and watching a movie.

Now, I don't accept that Atlanta is really as dangerous as this earnest young woman would have us believe. The foreboding atmosphere she generates complements nicely the other public service announcement that also plays 24/7 on the hotel TV: Don't, under any circumstances, give money to panhandlers.

In fact, panhandling is illegal in downtown Atlanta at all times and in the surrounding areas after dark. Visitors are strongly urged not to slip spare change into outstretched hands on the street. Doing so only encourages bad behavior and feeds the addictions of the weak-willed. Visitors who can't overcome the impulse to give are encouraged to support organized programs designed to assist the homeless. Some areas have "parking meters" into which givers can deposit spare change, a part of which will later reach the homeless in more wholesome ways.

Atlanta's anti-panhandling efforts are part of a national trend of several years to crack down on begging in public places.

And maybe this is a good thing. No one enjoys being approached by a shabby character on a public street and asked for money. Sometimes the experience can be threatening. At best, for people of conscience, saying no to the destitute can be mildly guilt provoking.

On the other hand, few behaviors are more human and more ancient than begging, in all of its forms. Begging is firmly embedded in the Bible, for example, which assumes that there's no solution for poverty and that part of what righteous people do is to give directly to the poor. In fact, no injunction in the Bible is more regularly rationalized and ignored by the modern American Christian than Christ's directive to the self-righteous rich man to sell all of his possessions and to give the money to the poor. (Matthew 19:21)

Proponents of anti-begging laws argue that giving money directly to the poor encourages their shiftless behavior and addictions. Perhaps. But I wonder if this isn't merely a rationalization intended to assuage some of the guilt that we might feel for tolerating poverty in a land of plenty.

John M. Crisp teaches in the English Department at Del Mar College in Corpus Christi, Texas. E-mail him at jcrisp@delmar.edu.