Legal Issues in Canada and The United States
Local areas vary on the degree to which police are empowered to arrest loiterers; limitations on their power are sometimes made over concerns regarding racial profiling.
In Canada, the Supreme Court dismissed an appeal regarding a case of loitering near a playground by a man convicted of child abuse. (see R. v. Heywood).
In many places loitering is a crime in and of itself. In other places loitering on public property is not necessarily illegal (unless loiterers are violating another law such as loitering to solicit for prostitution, begging, consuming alcoholic beverages in public, etc.). Loitering for the purpose of prostitution is illegal in all United States states.
In 1992, the City of Chicago adopted an anti-loitering law (Chicago Municipal Code 8-4-015 (1992)) aimed at restricting gang related activity, especially violent crime and drug trafficking. The law, which defined loitering as "remain(ing) in any one place with no apparent purpose," gave police officers a right to disperse such persons and in case of disobedience, provided for a punishment by fine, imprisonment and/or community service. It was ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court of the United States (Chicago v. Morales, 527 U.S. 41 (1999)) as unacceptably vague and not giving citizens clear guidelines on what the acceptable conduct was. In 2000, the city adopted a revised version of the ordinance, in an attempt to eliminate the unconstitutional elements. Loitering was then defined as "remaining in any one place under circumstances that would warrant a reasonable person to believe that the purpose or effect of that behavior is to enable a criminal street gang to establish control over identifiable areas, to intimidate others from entering those areas, or to conceal illegal activities."
In Portland, Oregon, a wide range of measures have been enacted to tackle loitering and related issues.
Read more about this topic: Loitering
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