Pen. Code, § 142 · Chapter 7. Other Offenses Against Public Justice
Pen. Code, § 142
Text — As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
(a) Any peace officer who has the authority to receive or arrest a person charged with a criminal offense and willfully refuses to receive or arrest that person shall be punished by a fine not exceeding ten thousand dollars ($10,000), or by imprisonment in a county jail not exceeding one year, or pursuant to subdivision (h) of Section 1170, or by both that fine and imprisonment.
(b) Notwithstanding subdivision (a), the sheriff may determine whether any jail, institution, or facility under his or her direction shall be designated as a reception, holding, or confinement facility, or shall be used for several of those purposes, and may designate the class of prisoners for which any facility shall be used.
(c) This section shall not apply to arrests made pursuant to Section 837.
Notes and commentary — not statutory text
History
Amended by Stats. 2011, Ch. 15, Sec. 255. (AB 109) Effective April 4, 2011. Operative October 1, 2011, by Sec. 636 of Ch. 15, as amended by Stats. 2011, Ch. 39, Sec. 68.
Source of truth
- Edition
- As published in the Legislative Counsel's database, tables dated October 18, 2026 (pubinfo_2025.zip)
- Official file
- https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/codes_displaySection.xhtml?lawCode=PEN§ionNum=142.
- Text hash
- sha256 963e91c7e145a76a99fa551848da7da71c38b89e9cd06e4817565468fd245e7f
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- compose_ca.py 2026-10-22: the Legislative Counsel's CAML content files read by a tokenizer (caml_readers.reader_a); an independent xml.etree reading (caml_readers.reader_b) agrees on every section
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