PROVIDENCE, R.I. — State lawmakers on Tuesday will consider a bill to make indoor prostitution a crime, but empower judges to erase any record of charges for convicted prostitutes after one year.

The bill would treat prostitution differently from other nonviolent misdemeanor crimes, which can be “expunged” only for a first offender –– and then, generally only five years after a sentence is completed. Prostitutes with multiple convictions, by contrast, would still be eligible to have the charges erased, according to a rough draft of the bill provided to The Providence Journal

The bill has been described as a compromise between House and Senate leaders, who tried and failed last May to reach agreement on legislation to close a nearly 30-year-old loophole in the state’s prostitution law.

Rhode Island is the only place, other than certain counties in Nevada, where prostitution is illegal unless it occurs indoors.

The compromise bill treats prostitutes who work in brothels or out of their homes the same as prostitutes who ply their trade on the streets: both would face criminal misdemeanor fines or imprisonment, or both. First offenders would face fines of $250 to $1,000 and up to six months in prison, or both; multiple offenders would face up to a year in prison.

The bill is scheduled for a hearing in the House Judiciary Committee Tuesday at 4 p.m. If approved, it would go before the full House. An identical bill is expected to be heard in the Senate Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, presumably followed by debate on the Senate floor.

Rep. Joanne M. Giannini, D-Providence, the House bill’s sponsor, said she is pleased that criminal penalties in the compromise bill are “exactly the same” as the bill that passed the House last May. However, she said, the allowance for prostitution convictions to be expunged by the court was a concession to the Senate.

“I really don’t know how the House members will react to that,” she said. “We hope it’s not a deal breaker.”

Sen. Paul V. Jabour, D-Providence, the Senate bill’s sponsor, said that the provision to allow prostitution convictions to be expunged “might have to be tweaked” to limit it to first offenders, as in domestic-violence convictions, where convictions can be expunged after three years. “Generally if you’re a multiple offender,” he said, expunging the charges is not an option.

Despite the details that remain to be worked out, Jabour said, he is confident that the House and Senate will pass the bill.

“If the House is happy and the Senate is happy, I’m happy,” Jabour said. “I’m willing to compromise…”

The bill would punish customers or “johns” with criminal misdemeanor charges that carry penalties of $500 to $1,000 and up to a year in prison, or both. (Unlike prostitutes, the bill offers no provision to allow a judge to expunge the record of the johns.)

Landlords who “knowingly” profit from prostitution on their property also would, for first offenses, face fines of $2,000 to $5,000, and one to five years in prison. The penalties, adopted from the Senate bill, would punish multiple offenders with fines of $5,000 to $10,000 and from 3 to 10 years in prison.

Lawmakers also will consider a separate bill, introduced by Sen. Rhoda E. Perry, D-Providence, to strengthen laws against human trafficking, in part by expanding them to cover trafficking for forced labor, according to a draft copy provided by the House. The Senate trafficking bill includes a provision to create a task force, which includes representatives from various law enforcement agencies, among others, to “examine and report upon” whether human trafficking for commercial sex exists in Rhode Island and, if so, to what extent.

larditi@projo.com