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30 Ark. L. Rev. 186 (1976-1977)
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.