Pimp

“Pimp” is a non-legal term used to refer to a person who procures a prostitute for a customer and receives earnings from the prostitute’s services. Pimps are also commonly referred to as “panderers” and “procurers.” 

Pimps commit the crimes of pandering and pimping. For example:

• Section 266h of the California Penal Code states, “any person who, knowing another person is a prostitute, lives or derives support or maintenance in whole or in part from the earnings or proceeds of the person’s prostitution, or from money loaned or advanced to or charged against that person by any keeper or manager or inmate of a house or other place where prostitution is practiced or allowed, or who solicits or receives compensation for soliciting for the person, is guilty of pimping, a felony.”

• Section 266i of the California Penal Code states that any person who does any of the following is guilty of pandering, a felony, and shall be punishable by imprisonment in the state prison for three, four, or six years:

  1. Procures another person for the purpose of prostitution.
  2. By promises, threats, violence, or by any device or scheme, causes, induces, persuades, or encourages another person to become a prostitute.
  3. Procures for another person a place as an inmate in a house of prostitution or as an inmate of any place in which prostitution is encouraged or allowed within this state.
  4. By promises, threats, violence, or by any device or scheme, causes, induces, persuades, or encourages an inmate of a house of prostitution, or any other place in which prostitution is encouraged or allowed, to remain therein as an inmate.
  5. By fraud or artifice, or by duress of person or goods, or by abuse of any position of confidence or authority, procures another person for the purpose of prostitution, or to enter any place in which prostitution is encouraged or allowed within this state, or to come into this state or leave this state for the purpose of prostitution.
  6. Receives or gives, or agrees to receive or give, any money or thing of value for procuring, or attempting to procure, another person for the purpose of prostitution, or to come into this state or leave this state for the purpose of prostitution.