A peace officer may detain any person abroad whom he or she has reason to suspect is committing, has committed, or is about to commit a crime, and may demand of the person his or her name, address, business abroad, and destination; and any person who fails to identify himself or herself and explain his or her actions to the satisfaction of the peace officer may be further detained and further questioned and investigated by any peace officer; provided, in no case shall the total period of the detention exceed two (2) hours, and the detention shall not be recorded as an arrest in any official record. At the end of the detention period the person so detained shall be released unless arrested and charged with a crime.
R.I. Gen. Laws § 12-7-1
Temporary detention of suspects
Applied in 9 court decisions — leading case Hiibel v. Sixth Judicial District Court of Nevada Humboldt County et al. (2004)
Most recently applied in Deaton v. Town of Barrington (May 2024)
G.L. 1938, ch. 625, § 68; P.L. 1941, ch. 982, § 1; G.L. 1956, § 12-7-1.
How often courts cite this section
Court decisions citing this, by year. The dip in the last several years is a data-coverage gap, not a real trend — our corpus holds fewer opinions from the most recent years, so recent citations are undercounted.
Official source: Rhode Island General Assembly. Reproduced from public-domain Rhode Island statutes; confirm against the official source for the current text. Not legal advice.