Also known as: prostitution · related prostitution offenses · prostitution offenses · solicitation
Written by attorneys · grounded in primary & secondary sources — see below
A statutory offense that makes it a petty misdemeanor for a person to engage in sexual activity as a business or to be an inmate of a house of prostitution. The offense also covers promoting prostitution of another through specified acts such as procuring or operating a house of prostitution.
Phoebe Park solicited Pierre Poulin to engage in a paid sexual encounter at a motel. When the encounter occurred, the preliminary solicitation merged into the completed prostitution offense under the merger doctrine, so only the petty-misdemeanor prostitution charge remained.
Patricia Patel was charged with prostitution after a construction accident. She told Prism Analytics counsel she did not wish to be contacted about legal services. The firm nevertheless sent a targeted letter offering representation in the pending prostitution case, violating the no-contact rule.
Select any source to read its text and confirm it supports the definition.
Paul Peterson, an insurance agent, solicited and issued a policy to a forum resident covering risks from a prostitution-related business venture. When a coverage dispute arose from that policy, the single deliberate contact supported specific personal jurisdiction in the forum.
Philip Powell urged Pavel Petrov to start a fight inside a known house of prostitution so that police would raid the premises. The request to commit an assault, a breach of the peace, constituted common-law solicitation even though Petrov never acted.
After a client declined services in a prostitution regulatory matter, Patriot Insurance counsel sent a second letter threatening adverse publicity if the client did not retain the firm. The coercive tone violated the prohibition on harassment in solicitation.
Phoenix Technologies, a nonprofit advocacy group, mailed letters to known victims of trafficking offering free legal help to challenge prostitution convictions as part of a civil-rights campaign. The letters received heightened First Amendment protection as ideological speech rather than commercial solicitation.
The actus reus is met when a person engages in sexual activity as a business or is an inmate of a house of prostitution. The offense is complete upon the business engagement itself. No additional overt act or response by another party is required.
No. The solicitor's culpability is measured by the circumstances as the solicitor believed them to be. Even if the solicited person could not have completed the act, the offense remains complete upon the solicitation with specific intent.
Once the solicitation has been made, subsequent withdrawal or renunciation ordinarily does not constitute a defense. The offense is complete at the moment of the solicitation regardless of later attempts to retract it.
At common law, solicitation, attempt, and conspiracy merge into the completed felony when the principal offense occurs. The inchoate conduct is treated as a misdemeanor only if the principal crime is never completed.
…in 1957 repeal of laws punishing homosexual conduct. The Wolfenden Report: Report of the Committee on Homosexual Offenses and Prostitution (1963). Parliament enacted the substance of those recommendations 10 years later. Sexual Offences Act 1967, § 1. Of even more importance, almost five years before Bowers was decided the…