Disorderly Conduct and Loitering - A Modern Approach to Traditional Legislation
![handle is hein.journals/arklr30 and id is 218 raw text is: LEGISLATIVE NOTES
Disorderly Conduct and Loitering-A Modern
Approach to Traditional Legislation*
The legal community has often ignored criminal statutes
which punish conduct disruptive of the public peace, order and
decency. As the composers of the Model Penal Code stated:
(this is] a vast area of the law which has received little system-
atic consideration by legislatures, judges, and scholars. The
reason for this is that the penalties involved are generally minor,
and defendants are usually from the lowest economic and social
levels. Appeals are infrequent and pressures for legislative
reform are minimal. Yet, this is a most important area of
criminal administration ... .1
Disorderly conduct and loitering laws affect a large number of
defendants, involve intensive police activity and influence the
view of justice held by many people.
The drafters of the new Arkansas Criminal Code were cog-
nizant of the importance of these laws. The disorderly conduct
section2 consolidates into one comprehensive provision a plethora
of former measures which dealt with unlawful breaches of the
public peace and order. The loitering provision3 replaces the tra-
ditional crime of vagrancy with a more modern form of prohibi-
tion against lingering in public places for undesirable purposes.
It is beneficial to study these two enactments together, as both
concentrate on offenses perpetrated against the general public
and present similar problems of constitutionality, interpretation
and construction.
COMPARISON WITH PRIOR ARKANSAS LAW AND THAT
OF OTHER JURISDICTIONS
1. Disorderly Conduct
The rationale of disorderly conduct legislation has been
briefly summarized by the authors of the Model Penal Code:
The common law, perpetuated and extended in many cur-
rent statutes and ordinances penalizes 'breach of the peace,'
broadly defined as any behavior which disturbs or tends to dis-
* I would like to express my appreciation to Professor Ray Guz-
man for his help with this paper, especially for material gathered from
his course on the Administration of Criminal Justice.
1. MODEL PENAL CODE, art. 250, Comment at 2 (Tent. Draft No. 13,
1961). [hereinafter cited M. P. C.].
2. ARK. STAT. ANN. § 41-2908 (Crim. Code 1976).
3. Id. § 41-2914.](ViewImageLocal?handle=hein.journals/arklr30&div=25&collection=&method=preview&ext=.png&size=3)
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Disorderly Conduct and Loitering - A Modern Approach to Traditional Legislation
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