NORTH CAROLINA GENERAL ASSEMBLY

1979 SESSION

 

 

CHAPTER 873

HOUSE BILL 1104

 

 

AN ACT TO PROHIBIT LOITERING FOR THE PURPOSE OF PROSTITUTION OR AIDING AND ABETTING PROSTITUTION.

 

The General Assembly of North Carolina enacts:

 

Section 1.  The General Assembly finds and declares that loitering for the purpose of prostitution or aiding and abetting prostitution is disruptive of the public peace in that certain persons engaged in such conduct in public places harass and interfere with the use and enjoyment by other persons of such public places, thereby constituting a danger to the public health and safety.

The General Assembly further finds that in recent years the incidence of such conduct in public places has increased significantly in that persons aggressively engaging in promoting, patronizing or soliciting for the purposes of prostitution have, by their course of conduct in public places, caused citizens who venture into such public places to be the unwilling victims of repeated harassment, interference and assault upon their individual privacy, at a result of which such public places have become unsafe and the ordinary community and commercial life of certain neighborhoods has been disrupted and has deteriorated.

Sec. 2.  A new section is added to Chapter 14 of the General Statutes to read:

"§ 14-204.1.  Loitering for the purpose of engaging in prostitution offense. — (a) For the purposes of this section, 'public place' means any street, sidewalk, bridge, alley or alleyway, plaza, park, driveway, parking lot or transportation facility, or the doorways and entrance ways to any building which fronts on any of those places, or a motor vehicle in or on any of those places.

(b)        If a person remains or wanders about in a public place and

(1)        repeatedly beckons to, stops, or attempts to stop passers-by, or repeatedly attempts to engage passers-by in conversation; or

(2)        repeatedly stops or attempts to stop motor vehicles; or

(3)        repeatedly interferes with the free passage of other persons

for the purpose of violating any subdivision of G.S. 14-204 or G.S. 14-177, that person is guilty of a misdemeanor and, upon conviction, shall be punished as for a violation of G.S. 14‑204."

Sec. 3.  This act shall become effective on October 1, 1979.

In the General Assembly read three times and ratified, this the 8th day of June, 1979.