The Pennsylvania criminal code is Title 18 of the Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes, and it defines every offense the Commonwealth prosecutes, sets the maximum prison term and fine for each one, and lays out the defenses a person can raise.1Justia. 18 Pennsylvania Consolidated Statutes A few important criminal subjects live elsewhere in the statutes — drug offenses are in Title 35, and the time limits for filing charges are in Title 42 — but they apply with the same force to anyone facing a case in Pennsylvania.
How Pennsylvania Classifies Crimes
Every offense in the code is a felony, a misdemeanor, or a summary offense. Felonies and misdemeanors are each divided into three degrees, and the degree controls the ceiling on both prison time and fines.
Felonies
A first-degree felony carries up to 20 years in state prison. A second-degree felony allows up to 10 years, and a third-degree felony up to seven.2Pennsylvania General Assembly. Pennsylvania Code Title 18 – 1103 – Sentence of Imprisonment for Felony Fines top out at $25,000 for first- and second-degree felonies and $15,000 for third-degree. Murder and attempted murder have a separate fine ceiling of $50,000. A court can also impose a fine equal to double what the offender gained from the crime, if that amount exceeds the standard cap.3Pennsylvania General Assembly. Pennsylvania Code Title 18 – 1101 – Fines
Misdemeanors
A first-degree misdemeanor allows up to five years of incarceration, a second-degree up to two years, and a third-degree up to one year.4Pennsylvania General Assembly. Pennsylvania Code Title 18 – 1104 – Sentence of Imprisonment for Misdemeanors Fine ceilings run $10,000, $5,000, and $2,500 respectively.3Pennsylvania General Assembly. Pennsylvania Code Title 18 – 1101 – Fines Even the lowest misdemeanor creates a permanent criminal record unless it is later sealed or expunged.
Summary Offenses
Summary offenses are the lowest tier and are usually handled in magisterial district courts. The maximum jail term is 90 days.5Pennsylvania General Assembly. Pennsylvania Code Title 18 – 1105 – Sentence of Imprisonment for Summary Offenses The default fine cap is $300, though individual statutes can set a higher amount.3Pennsylvania General Assembly. Pennsylvania Code Title 18 – 1101 – Fines Disorderly conduct and many low-level traffic infractions sit here.
Crimes Against People
The code’s most serious penalties live in the chapters on violence and personal liberty. The exact grading often turns on the defendant’s state of mind and the severity of the harm.
Homicide
Chapter 25 splits criminal homicide into murder and manslaughter. First-degree murder is an intentional killing committed with willful, deliberate, and premeditated action. Second-degree murder is a killing during the commission of certain violent felonies — robbery, rape, arson, burglary, or kidnapping — even if the defendant did not personally intend the death. All other murders fall under third-degree, graded as a first-degree felony.6Pennsylvania General Assembly. Pennsylvania Code Title 18 – 2502 – Murder Involuntary manslaughter covers deaths caused by reckless or grossly negligent conduct rather than intent.
Assault
Simple assault covers attempting to cause bodily injury, recklessly causing it, or putting someone in fear of immediate serious harm. It is generally a second-degree misdemeanor, but rises to a first-degree misdemeanor in fights between adults and children under 12.7Pennsylvania General Assembly. Pennsylvania Code Title 18 Chapter 27 – Assault
Aggravated assault is a different charge entirely. It involves attempting to cause serious bodily injury or doing so recklessly under circumstances showing extreme indifference to human life. “Serious bodily injury” means harm that creates a substantial risk of death or causes permanent disfigurement. Using a deadly weapon to cause bodily injury also elevates the charge. Most aggravated assault cases are first- or second-degree felonies, with the grade depending on the victim’s status and the severity of the conduct.7Pennsylvania General Assembly. Pennsylvania Code Title 18 Chapter 27 – Assault
Kidnapping and Unlawful Restraint
Chapter 29 criminalizes restricting another person’s movement through force, threats, or deception. Kidnapping requires removing or confining someone for a specific purpose — demanding ransom, using the victim as a shield, or facilitating another felony — and is a first-degree felony.8Pennsylvania General Assembly. Pennsylvania Code Title 18 Chapter 29 – Kidnapping Unlawful restraint, a lesser charge, applies when a person is held under conditions that risk serious bodily injury or forced into involuntary servitude. That one is a first-degree misdemeanor.
Sexual Offenses
Chapter 31 covers rape, statutory sexual assault, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, indecent assault, and related crimes. These offenses turn on force, the threat of force, or the victim’s inability to consent due to age, mental disability, or incapacitation. The statute explicitly states that the victim does not need to have physically resisted.9Pennsylvania General Assembly. Pennsylvania Code Title 18 Chapter 31 – Sexual Offenses
Crimes Against Property
The property chapters grade offenses by dollar amount, the kind of property, and whether people were in danger.
Arson
Arson under Chapter 33 covers intentionally starting a fire or causing an explosion to damage a building or structure. Targeting an inhabited building or occupied structure is a first-degree felony. Targeting an unoccupied structure that belongs to someone else is a second-degree felony.10Pennsylvania General Assembly. Pennsylvania Code Title 18 – 3301 – Arson and Related Offenses The felony degree drops further for fires set to one’s own property or to collect insurance, depending on the circumstances.
Burglary and Trespass
Burglary requires entering a building or occupied structure with the intent to commit a crime inside. The grading turns on two things: whether the building is adapted for overnight use, and whether anyone was present. The most serious form, a first-degree felony, involves entering an overnight-adapted building while someone is inside and committing or threatening bodily injury. Even the least serious form — entering a non-overnight structure with nobody present — is a second-degree felony.11Pennsylvania General Assembly. Pennsylvania Code Title 18 – 3502 – Burglary
Criminal trespass focuses on the unlawful entry itself. Breaking into a building or staying after being told to leave can support a trespass charge even without any further criminal plan.
Robbery
Robbery combines theft with direct confrontation. A person commits robbery by inflicting or threatening bodily injury during a theft, or by physically taking property from someone using any amount of force. Demanding money from a bank employee also qualifies.12Pennsylvania General Assembly. Pennsylvania Code Title 18 – 3701 – Robbery Grading runs from a first-degree felony when serious bodily injury results down to a third-degree felony for the least violent forms.
Theft
Chapter 39 consolidates all forms of theft — stealth, deception, extortion, keeping lost property — into a single offense category graded primarily by dollar value:
- First-degree felony: $500,000 or more
- Second-degree felony: $100,000 or more but less than $500,000
- Third-degree felony: more than $2,000, or the stolen item is a motor vehicle, airplane, or motorboat
- First-degree misdemeanor: amounts below the felony thresholds when the property was taken from a person, by threat, or in breach of a fiduciary duty
- Second-degree misdemeanor: $50 to less than $200
- Third-degree misdemeanor: less than $50
Receiving stolen property follows the same structure, and anyone in the business of buying or selling stolen goods faces a third-degree felony regardless of value.13Pennsylvania General Assembly. Pennsylvania Code Title 18 Chapter 39 – Theft and Related Offenses Retail theft escalates with prior convictions. A first shoplifting offense for low-value merchandise is a summary offense, but a person with prior retail theft convictions can face a felony for a relatively small amount.
Attempt, Solicitation, and Conspiracy
You can be prosecuted for a crime that never actually happened. Chapter 9 covers inchoate offenses: criminal attempt (taking a substantial step toward committing a crime with intent to follow through), solicitation (asking or encouraging another to commit a crime, whether they agree or not), and conspiracy (an agreement between two or more people plus at least one overt act in furtherance).
All three are graded at the same level as the most serious crime the defendant intended or conspired to commit.14Pennsylvania General Assembly. Pennsylvania Code Title 18 – 905 – Grading of Criminal Attempt, Solicitation and Conspiracy A conspiracy to commit a first-degree felony is itself a first-degree felony. The one safety valve: if the conduct was so unlikely to produce an actual crime that neither the act nor the person posed any real public danger, a court can dismiss the prosecution.
Drug Offenses Are Outside Title 18
Drug crimes are not part of the criminal code proper. They live in the Controlled Substance, Drug, Device and Cosmetic Act at 35 P.S. § 780-101 and following. That matters because drug charges are among the most common in the system and carry their own penalty structure.
Simple possession of a controlled substance without a valid prescription is a misdemeanor punishable by up to one year in prison and a $5,000 fine for a first offense. A second or later possession conviction increases the maximum to three years and $25,000.15Pennsylvania General Assembly. The Controlled Substance, Drug, Device and Cosmetic Act
Manufacturing or delivering a controlled substance is treated far more harshly. For Schedule I or II narcotics, delivery is a felony carrying up to 15 years and a $250,000 fine. Methamphetamine, cocaine, PCP, and marijuana over 1,000 pounds carry up to 10 years and a $100,000 fine.15Pennsylvania General Assembly. The Controlled Substance, Drug, Device and Cosmetic Act Lower-schedule delivery charges carry smaller ceilings but can still produce multi-year prison terms.
Public Order, Firearms, and Minors
Chapter 51 covers interference with government operations. Obstructing the administration of law through force, physical interference, or other unlawful acts is a second-degree misdemeanor.16Pennsylvania General Assembly. Pennsylvania Code Title 18 – 5101 – Obstructing Administration of Law or Other Governmental Function Resisting arrest, tampering with evidence, and impersonating a public servant sit in the same chapter.
Chapter 55 addresses riot and disorderly conduct. Riot is a third-degree felony and requires participating with two or more others in disorderly conduct aimed at committing a crime, coercing official action, or involving a firearm. Disorderly conduct — fighting in public, making unreasonable noise, creating a hazardous condition — is generally a summary offense.17Pennsylvania General Assembly. Pennsylvania Code Title 18 – 5503 – Disorderly Conduct
Chapter 61 is the Pennsylvania Uniform Firearms Act of 1995. Carrying a concealed firearm without a license is a third-degree felony for anyone otherwise prohibited from possessing firearms, and a first-degree misdemeanor for other unlicensed carriers.18Pennsylvania General Assembly. Pennsylvania Code Title 18 Chapter 61 – Firearms and Other Dangerous Articles Convicted felons, fugitives, and people subject to an active protection-from-abuse order are barred from possessing firearms entirely.
Chapter 63 covers the corruption of minors. An adult who encourages a child to commit a crime or corrupts a child’s morals commits a first-degree misdemeanor. If the corrupting conduct involves a sexual offense under Chapter 31, the charge becomes a third-degree felony.19Pennsylvania General Assembly. Pennsylvania Code Title 18 Chapter 63 – Minors
When Force Is Legally Justified
Chapter 5 lays out when the use of force is justified. Justification is a complete defense: a person found to have acted justifiably cannot be convicted of the underlying offense.20Pennsylvania General Assembly. Pennsylvania Code Title 18 – 502 – Justification a Defense
Under § 505, you can use force when you reasonably believe it is immediately necessary to protect yourself against unlawful force. Deadly force has a higher bar. You must believe it is necessary to protect against death, serious bodily injury, kidnapping, or sexual assault by force. Deadly force is never justified if you provoked the encounter intending to cause death or serious injury, or if you know you can retreat with complete safety.21Pennsylvania General Assembly. Pennsylvania Code Title 18 – 505 – Use of Force in Self-Protection
The retreat requirement has two exceptions that matter in daily life. You are never required to retreat from your own home or workplace, unless you started the fight or your attacker also works there. And Pennsylvania’s castle doctrine creates a presumption that deadly force is justified when someone unlawfully and forcefully enters your home, residence, or occupied vehicle, or tries to forcefully remove another person from one of those places. That presumption flips the burden: the prosecution has to disprove your reasonable belief rather than you having to prove it.21Pennsylvania General Assembly. Pennsylvania Code Title 18 – 505 – Use of Force in Self-Protection
Time Limits for Filing Charges
Pennsylvania’s statutes of limitations sit in Title 42 rather than Title 18, but they control whether a prosecution can go forward at all.
The default rule: most offenses must be charged within two years. That covers the bulk of misdemeanors and any felony not placed in a longer-deadline category.22Pennsylvania General Assembly. Pennsylvania Code Title 42 – 5552 – Other Offenses
A five-year window applies to a long list of serious offenses, including aggravated assault, kidnapping, arson, burglary, robbery, all theft offenses, forgery, insurance fraud, bribery, perjury, and drug delivery felonies.22Pennsylvania General Assembly. Pennsylvania Code Title 42 – 5552 – Other Offenses
Some crimes have no time limit. Murder and voluntary manslaughter can be prosecuted at any point. The same is true for conspiracy or solicitation to commit murder when a death actually results, hit-and-run accidents resulting in death, aggravated assault on a law enforcement officer the defendant knew was on duty, and a range of sexual offenses against children, including rape, statutory sexual assault, involuntary deviate sexual intercourse, and aggravated indecent assault.23Pennsylvania General Assembly. Pennsylvania Code Title 42 Chapter 55 – Limitation of Time
The clock can pause. If the defendant leaves Pennsylvania after committing an offense, that absence typically does not count toward the limitations period.
Clearing a Record Under Clean Slate
Pennsylvania was the first state to pass a Clean Slate law, in 2018, creating an automatic sealing process for certain criminal records. Eligible records are cleared without the person filing a petition, but waiting periods and conviction-free intervals apply.
Under automatic sealing, summary offense convictions become eligible five years after all sentence terms are satisfied, provided no new convictions during that period. Second- and third-degree misdemeanor convictions become eligible after seven years. Certain felony drug convictions qualify after ten years. First-degree misdemeanors and non-drug felonies are not eligible for automatic sealing. Charges that ended in acquittal, dismissal, or withdrawal are processed much faster, typically within a few months.
Petition-based expungement is available in narrower circumstances, including cases where the person is over 70 and has been conviction-free for at least 10 years, or where the offense was a summary conviction and the person has been arrest-free for five years. Juvenile records follow their own rules under 18 Pa.C.S. § 9123, with shorter waiting periods tied to the type of disposition.
Sealing is not erasure. Sealed records remain visible to law enforcement, prosecutors, and certain licensing agencies. For most employers and landlords running standard background checks, though, a sealed record will not appear.