## Facts

- A juvenile-delinquency petition alleged that P., a 14-year-old girl, offered to engage in a deviate sexual act in exchange for money, conduct that would constitute prostitution if committed by an adult.
- The alleged incident involved P. approaching an adult male on the street, proposing sexual acts for a fee, and accompanying him to a hotel room.
- The adult male participant was not charged with patronizing a prostitute or any other offense arising from the same facts.
- New York’s statutory scheme criminalized prostitution (offer/agreement to engage in sexual conduct for a fee) and separately criminalized patronizing a prostitute (the customer’s conduct); consensual deviate sexual intercourse between adults was also criminalized at the time.
- P. moved to dismiss, arguing that prostitution laws were enforced in a sex-discriminatory manner because prostitutes were routinely prosecuted while patrons were rarely prosecuted.
- Evidence before the court included arrest/charge statistics indicating a substantial disparity between prostitution arrests and patronizing prosecutions, with enforcement falling overwhelmingly on females.

## Issues

1. Whether the alleged conduct satisfied the Family Court Act’s jurisdictional requirement that the respondent committed an act which, if done by an adult, would constitute a crime.
2. Whether a prosecution based on prostitution could proceed where enforcement of prostitution-related statutes was shown to be systematically skewed by sex, with patrons rarely charged.
3. Whether, given the nonprosecution of the adult participant under patronizing or other potentially applicable statutes, proceeding only against the juvenile violated state equal-protection principles as applied.

## Decision

- The Family Court granted P.’s motion to dismiss the petition.
- The court held that the proceeding could not satisfy the jurisdictional adult-crime predicate in a constitutionally permissible way on the facts presented.
- The court concluded that the sex-skewed, selective enforcement pattern—combined with the failure to charge the adult participant—barred using this prosecution as the basis for a juvenile-delinquency adjudication.

## Legal Principles

- A juvenile-delinquency adjudication requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the respondent committed an act that would be a crime if committed by an adult; this adult-crime finding is jurisdictional.
- State equal-protection principles can be violated by discriminatory enforcement of facially neutral statutes when enforcement systematically burdens one sex while similarly situated members of the other sex are largely not prosecuted.
- Where the state targets only the alleged prostitute while declining to charge the patron (despite an applicable patronizing statute and other potentially applicable offenses), the resulting as-applied enforcement may be constitutionally defective and insufficient to support delinquency jurisdiction.

## Conclusion

The Family Court dismissed the juvenile-delinquency petition, reasoning that selective, sex-disparate enforcement of prostitution-related laws and the decision not to charge the adult participant prevented a constitutionally valid showing that P.’s alleged conduct would constitute an adult crime for delinquency purposes.


In re P., 400 N.Y.S.2d 455 (Fam. Ct. N.Y. Cnty. 1977)