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happyslug

(14,779 posts)
5. Yes they do, Police have more flexibility if they are regulating something that is illegal
Tue Dec 11, 2012, 12:28 PM
Dec 2012

First you have to accept the fact that just because something is illegal, does not mean it does not occur. The old joke in the Military was the only truly voluntary acts of enlistees was when they did something illegal or against regulations.

The problem is the people who tend to end up in Prostitution tend to be people with few other options, including little money. Such people have to work against people who tend to have money and other means to enforce what they want. The pimps can then rely on they legal rights, including property rights, Contract rights, privacy rights, and other rights kick in that hamper regulation AND due to the difference in bargaining position (to use a contract concept) hard to determine is the sex worker is truly voluntary or otherwise being forced into the profession.

When in comes to Prostitution, what is being a "Voluntary" sex worker? Over time it was found the best way was the same way the Military handle it, make it illegal and thus when someone does it and gets arrested for it and returns to the profession you know it was voluntary.

Even in Nevada, where Prostitution is legal, the larger cities have found that the only way to regulate prostitution was to make it illegal. They tried to regulate it otherwise and found it could NOT be done. These problems were seen in the late 1800s in the US and was the main reason for the push to make Prostitution illegal. Voluntary sex workers no one had any real problems with, they may dislike it but they accepted it. The problem was always involuntary sex workers, women captured by "white slavers" as the term was used. How do you protect them?

When prostitution was legal. the police could do little to protect a prostitute who claimed she was forced into prostitution when a pimp cames to the Station with a contract signed by the prostitute to work for the pimp. At that time period, 1900, a contract was absolute and the police would have to enforce the contract (We are talking about people who could NOT hire an attorney to tell them otherwise). The only way for the police NOT to enforce the contract was to rule such contract was illegal, but that could only be if the act of prostitution was illegal.

While, today, most people know a contract for personal services can not be enforced except in regards to that service as to other people (i.e. a actor can not get out of a contract to act, by going to another place to act, but if he or she decides NOT to act that is legal). On the other hand most victims of such forced prostitution are young run aways whose knowledge of the law and where to get help is limited. The only way to get that information to them is via the Police force via arrest for prostitution. True Voluntary sex workers accept such arrests as the cost of doing business, as to forced sex workers this may be they only way out (and if you study how women are forced into becoming sex workers you realize the first arrest is often not enough, even in abuse cases, where we have decent numbers, it averages about the third time the abuse person seeks help that the abuse person actually goes through the system and gets help and even then many fall back into the hands of their abusers).

Sorry, keeping sex workers illegal is the best way to regulate them. It is not perfect, but it is better then leaving it up to their pimps.

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