Pennsylvania has no stop-and-identify law, but a false name is a crime

18 Pa.C.S. § 4914 has three elements, and all three must be present before an answer becomes a chargeable offense. The information furnished must be false and must concern the person’s identity, so a wrong answer about where someone is going or what is in a bag does not reach the section. The officer must be in uniform or must have identified himself as a law enforcement officer. And the officer must already have informed the person that he or she is the subject of an official investigation of a violation of law, which means an officer who has said nothing about an investigation has not triggered the section at all. Nothing in it requires anyone to speak. Pennsylvania punishes the false answer, not the withheld one.

The grading matters because § 4914(b) sets it at a misdemeanor of the third degree rather than a summary offense. Under 18 Pa.C.S. § 1104(3) a third-degree misdemeanor carries imprisonment of not more than one year, and under 18 Pa.C.S. § 1101(6) a fine of up to $2,500. That is a criminal record, not a traffic ticket, and it is charged before a magisterial district judge and tried in the court of common pleas.

Drivers face a real statutory identification duty that pedestrians do not. 75 Pa.C.S. § 6308(a) provides that the operator of any vehicle or any pedestrian reasonably believed to have violated any provision of Title 75 shall stop upon request or signal of a police officer and shall, upon request, exhibit a registration card, driver’s license and information relating to financial responsibility, or other means of identification if a pedestrian or driver of a pedalcycle, and shall write their name in the presence of the officer if so required for the purpose of establishing identity. 75 Pa.C.S. § 1511(a) repeats the point from the licensing side: every licensee must possess the license at all times when driving and exhibit it on demand, and must write the licensee’s name in the officer’s presence when asked. Note the trigger in both places. It is a reasonable belief of a Vehicle Code violation, not a hunch about something else, and 75 Pa.C.S. § 6308(b) confines the stop to checking the registration, proof of financial responsibility, the vehicle identification or engine number, or the driver’s license.

Forgetting the plastic card is not the same as refusing to identify. 75 Pa.C.S. § 6308(d.1) and § 1511(b) both provide that no person may be convicted of failing to have a license in possession if the person produces a license that was valid in Pennsylvania at the time of the demand, either at the headquarters of the officer who demanded it within 15 days of the demand, or, once a citation has been filed, at the office of the issuing authority within 15 days of the filing. That 15-day cure is one of the most useful and least advertised provisions in the Vehicle Code.

The penalty for a bare refusal under § 6308(a) is small, and finding it takes a second step. Section 6308(e) grades only violations of subsection (d), the vehicle-records duty imposed on salvors, dealers, garages and repair shops, as a third-degree misdemeanor. A violation of subsection (a) therefore falls through to the Vehicle Code’s residual penalty, 75 Pa.C.S. § 6502(a), which makes any Title 75 violation a summary offense and sets a fine of $25 where no other penalty is provided, plus costs.

Pennsylvania also lacks the loitering-and-account statute that supplies the identification duty in several other states. 18 Pa.C.S. § 5506 punishes only whoever at night time maliciously loiters or maliciously prowls around a dwelling house or any other place used wholly or in part for living or dwelling purposes, belonging to or occupied by another, and grades that a misdemeanor of the third degree. It contains no requirement to explain yourself and no requirement to give a name.

One diversion route is worth knowing. 42 Pa.C.S. § 6328 lists 18 Pa.C.S. § 4914 among the eligible offenses that must be referred to the county children and youth agency as a dependency matter under 23 Pa.C.S. §§ 6362 and 6375, rather than charged as delinquency, when the offense was committed by a child as a direct result of being a sexually exploited child or was directly related to having been subject to human trafficking as those terms are defined in 18 Pa.C.S. § 3001. Disorderly conduct under 18 Pa.C.S. § 5503 and loitering under § 5506 are on the same referral list.

§ 1101(6). The case starts before the magisterial district judge for the district where the encounter happened and moves to the court of common pleas for trial. § 6502(a) plus costs, cited by the officer and disposed of in magisterial district court. 1) or § 1511(b). § 5101 reaches obstruction only through force, violence, physical interference or an obstacle, breach of official duty or another unlawful act, and it expressly excludes any other means of avoiding compliance with law without affirmative interference with governmental functions.