Street Offences Act 1959
| Jurisdiction | UK Non-devolved |
| Citation | 1959 c. 57 |
| Year | 1959 |
Street Offences Act, 1959.
(7 & 8 Eliz. 2) CHAPTER 57
An Act to make, as respects England and Wales, further provision against loitering or soliciting in public places for the purpose of prostitution, and for the punishment of those guilty of certain offences in connection with refreshment houses and those who live on the earnings of or control prostitutes.
Be it enacted by the Queen's most Excellent Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Lords Spiritual and Temporal, and Commons, in this present Parliament assembled, and by the authority of the same, as follows:—
1 Loitering or soliciting for purposes of prostitution.
(1) It shall be an offence for a common prostitute to loiter or solicit in a street or public place for the purpose of prostitution.
(2) A person guilty of an offence under this section shall be liable, on summary conviction, to a fine not exceeding ten pounds or, for an offence committed after a previous conviction, to a fine not exceeding twenty-five pounds or, for an offence committed after more than one previous conviction, to a fine not exceeding twenty-five pounds or imprisonment for a period not exceeding three months or both.
(3) A constable may arrest without warrant anyone he finds in a street or public place and suspects, with reasonable cause, to be committing an offence under this section.
(4) For the purposes of this section ‘street’ includes any bridge, road, lane, footway, subway, square, court, alley or passage, whether a thoroughfare or not, which is for the time being open to the public; and the doorways and entrances of premises abutting on a street (as hereinbefore defined), and any ground adjoining and open to a street, shall be treated as forming part of the street.
(5) The following enactments shall cease to have effect, that is to say—
(a ) paragraph 11 of section fifty-four of the Metropolitan Police Act, 1839; and
(b ) the paragraph beginning ‘Every common prostitute’ in section twenty-eight of the Town Police Clauses Act, 1847, and any later Act in so far as it incorporates that paragraph; and
(c ) paragraph 11 of section thirty-five of the City of London Police Act, 1839, and the paragraph beginning ‘Every common prostitute’ in section one hundred and two of the Manchester Police Regulation Act, 1844;
but for the purposes of subsection (2) of this section a conviction of the offence mentioned in any of those paragraphs shall be taken into account as a previous conviction in the same way as a conviction of an offence under this section.
2 Application to court by woman cautioned for loitering or soliciting.
(1) Where a woman is cautioned by a constable, in respect of her conduct in a street or public place, that if she persists in such conduct it may result in her being charged with an offence under section one of this Act, she may not later than fourteen clear days afterwards apply to a magistrates' court for an order directing that there is to be no entry made in respect of that caution in any record maintained by the police of those so cautioned and that any such entry already made is to be expunged; and the court shall make the order unless satisfied that on the occasion when she was cautioned she was loitering or soliciting in a street or public place for the purpose of prostitution.
(2) An application under this section shall be by way of complaint against the chief officer of police for the area in which the woman is cautioned or against such officer of police as he may designate for the purpose in relation to that area or any part of it; and, subject to any provision to the contrary in rules made under section fifteen of the Justices of the Peace Act, 1949, on the hearing of any such complaint the procedure shall be the same as if it were a complaint by the police officer against the woman, except that this shall not affect the operation of sections forty-seven to forty-nine of the Magistrates' Courts Act, 1952 (which relate to the non-attendance of the parties to a complaint).
(3) Unless the woman desires that the proceedings shall be conducted in public, an application under this section shall be heard and determined in camera.
(4) In this section references to a street shall be construed in accordance with subsection (4) of section one of this Act.
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