There is no "prostitution problem", other than meddling moralizers who want to tell people what they can do with their own bodies. Legalize prostitution, get the government out of the business of trying to control people's bodies, and the "problem" goes away.
On the addiction relief program "Intervention" they showed a woman who said that she had to inject heroin immediately before this type of work to make it tolerable, and she also said that she found most disgusting to her was that she had to pretend to enjoy what the clients did to her.
Brokers typically have social mobility, and a choice in their type of work. Their sacrifice to make ends meet is incomparable to that of someone selling their body. I'm confused how you can draw a likeness between the two. Perhaps there are moral threads to pull, but I don't think they end up going to the same place.
The way you imply that "selling their body" is worse than selling whatever part of themselves a stockbroker sells while doing drugs in order to work, really is kind of part of the problem. You put a moral judgement over which activity is more degrading than another. Consider this: what if people we're entitled to do whatever they want with their body, without having to abide to your standards and morals? How much of other peoples' morality do you want to be subjected to? Beware that others may have wildly different visions on what is degrading and what is not.
Jesus Christ... It's almost certainly worse subjectively (seriously, how many stockbrokers would describe their line of work as degrading, compared to prostitutes!?) and objectively in terms of massively increased risks in terms of mental and physical health, exposure to sexual violence as well as facing ostracism from family, friends and society as a whole.
Everybody has a choice in their type of work, nobody is forced to be a prostitute. Yes most prostitutes probably don't enjoy it, but they put up with it because the money is generally many multiples more than whatever they'd make at an office job and the hours are more flexible.
If someone feels like they don't have any other job opportunities, then making prostitution illegal certainly won't fix that problem (nor does it eliminate prostitution - prostitution exists everywhere, making it illegal just means a prostitute can't go to the police if a customer takes advantage of her).
Policing prostitution is a complete waste of taxpayer money.
People are forced into sex work all the time, everywhere on the planet including in rich western countries, by various means,debt, violence,death threats,the "boyfriend" who is a pimp, even "curse" threats, especially young kids, and most johns don't give a damn. Women who refuse to submit to their pimps or the mafia are killed to set an example.
Obviously forced child prostitution and trafficking happens, nobody is denying that or defending such a repulsive practice, just like nobody denies or defends slavery or forced labor. If you actually read the comment I was responding to you'd see that we were talking about sex work in general.
Why the hell can we not have a real conversation about sex work among consenting adults without somebody conflating it with slavery and child prostitution?
If you are really concerned about the horrors of prostitution, I recommend you work on the Glass Ceiling issue in non sex worker industries so women have more real options for well paid work.
The way I see it, the problem is that people think women need skills to qualify for jobs in the first place.
As a man, many of my first jobs I got simply because the boss thought I was a promising PFY and was convinced I'd learn everything I needed within the first few days. It's a double standard.
Women frequently turn to prostitution because it pays extremely well, too.
Unemployment is 3.7%. Anyone remotely employable can get a job today, but especially women.
Women made up ~47% of the workforce in 2017 and are on track to hold more jobs than men in a few years, even with a lower participation rate.
Female unemployment rate trended significantly lower than male unemployment rate during the last recession.
Women are the majority on college campuses, and earn a majority of bachelors, masters, and doctorate degrees.
Women are paid the same for the same work, when they choose to focus on their careers as much as men are expected to. And women hold special legal status to take leave to have children (there is no Federal paternity leave in the US, however some states offer it).
Career success has never been more achievable for women in particular. Inside and outside the specific field of prostitution.
Yep, the table listed there is wrong. The text before the table also makes it sound like it's referencing paid parental leave, which is still wrong becauase the US doesn't require paid maternal leave either.
Streetwalkers do this because they are poor and lack the skill to do something else. Some people simply don't have the skill to do things.
I don't know how to say this and not come as a jerk, but regarding the glass ceiling. By the time a women hit the glass ceiling sex work is not an option because they are old and the only sex work available would be streetwalking or low level escorting which dose not pay as much as under C-level manager or where the glass ceiling is.
I'm currently poor. I don't lack the skill to do something else. I've been offered money for sex. I've always turned it down.
Homeless men with no skills sometimes find day labor jobs. They are much less often offered money or a place to stay in exchange for sex.
I used Glass Ceiling as shorthand for removing barriers generally. Given the response here, I don't think it's worth the time and effort to try to "clarify." I don't think most people here actually want to understand the point. They are too busy shooting the idea down to wonder if there's any merit to the idea.
> Homeless men with no skills sometimes find day labor jobs. They are much less often offered money or a place to stay in exchange for sex.
This actually is not true. Some time ago I had opportune to speak with a homeless man about his situation, and his options. It turns out that he is offered money for sex quite often, perhaps daily. By his telling, he has never done it either.
I was on the street with my two adult sons. They each got such an offer once from a much older man. I had a lot more such offers.
There may be the occasional statistical outlier. But, on average, you are going to see homeless women offered money for sex a great deal more often than homeless men.
If you want to rebut that, please cite sources, not anecdata. I've had a class on homelessness and public policy. I spent nearly six years homeless. I still blog about the topic. Your sample of one doesn't remotely convince me that my assertion is inaccurate.
I didn't say it never happens. I said it is much less common.
Though I don't doubt your specific claim, demanding others cite sources to rebut your own anecdata in a thread which includes complaints about double standards is...interesting.
Their anecdata is "I know one guy..." My statement is that I have had a college class on the subject, I have years of personal firsthand experience as part of a mixed gender family and I still write about the topic, which means I still talk to homeless people and read up on the topic on a regular basis.
Your casual dismissal of my knowledge as mere anecdata on par with theirs isn't in the least bit "interesting".
> I don't know how to say this and not come as a jerk, but regarding the glass ceiling. By the time a women hit the glass ceiling sex work is not an option because they are old and the only sex work available would be streetwalking or low level escorting
The glass ceiling is something of a poor metaphor, because what it really refers to is a series of progressively more burdensome barriers to advancement, not a single level beyond which no women progress and below which advancement is egalitarian.
And it becomes very palpable at very low levels in many industries.
I have six years of college, including a Certificate in GIS. I worked at a Fortune 500 company for over 5 years. The only person at the company who knew what GIS was without me having to explain it was a senior programmer who asked me for a date, thereby making it vastly less likely that I could ever successfully get a job in his department.
I've been a member of HN for over 9 years. I spent nearly 6 of it homeless. I have been quite open about hoping to make professional connections here and thereby improve my finances. I've made damn little progress on that goal. HN has not proven to be a good means for me to network.
While homeless, there were a number of men who offered me money to sleep with them or asked if I needed a place to stay (the implication being I could stay with them in exchange for sex).
I've talked about this many times on HN. If I didn't have a serious medical condition making sex work a non starter for me, I likely would have long ago given up on finding another solution because I'm still dirt poor.
I was one of the top three students of my graduating class in high school and I won a National Merit Scholarship. I don't lack talent. But most men don't really want to talk to me in earnest unless they are looking for a sexual relationship. It has proven to be a tremendous barrier to resolving my financial problems and rejoining the middle class.
Also, don't let your scholastic success hold you back.
If you're smart & skilled & able to work, how about working on upworker.com even if it's only $20/hr? ( I mean - take steps to keep moving forward. Don't remain homeless for reasons. )
Overlooking the horrendous message that no one should have any sympathy for a (formerly) homeless American because there are people who have it worse, are you telling me you see zero connection between my difficulties and these women who are treated worse? Are you saying we shouldn't work on removing barriers to advancement for women as part of the solution to this problem?
I mean, other than just taking some kind of shot at me like I'm just a whiner who doesn't appreciate how good I have it, what exactly is the point you are trying to make?
Having visited the Bay Area, I found it a ruthless place to live in.
That’s why I never left Romania. The cost of life here is manageable enough that the possibility of me becoming homeless is practically zero. And it’s not SF, but we do have some startups and software companies here and I can work remotely too.
Given the trouble you’re facing, as an unsolicited advice, wouldn’t it be better for you if you moved someplace where the cost of life is lower?
Personally I find it incredible how highly skilled people in the US, especially in California, can become homeless.
I've known many more or less unemployable people who started contributing to significant open source projects, and based on that got hired to well paid positions.
Surely that ratio is much higher than 1:1. The amount of camgirls having "fun" and independently successful escorts has to be relatively small compared to the amount of average sex workers, many of whom didn't exactly choose that life and don't find it to be very "empowering".
Not sure if much higher. I do photography and spent time snapping (street photos!) some girls in the sex industry in Asia. For them it's mainly about money. They could get an office job but they - and I quote - "tried...don't like".
These are countries with low unemployment, but also low pay, so sex work appeals as a lucrative (and less boring) alternative.
Many of this women were single mothers and the money was sent home. Few, from what I could tell, used drugs. And all were very strong people - I think that line of work requires it.
So in some parts of the world prostitution is just another job.
Is this the same everywhere? Unfortunately not. And I'm sure the industry as a whole is filled with tales of sorrow.
Isn't that similar to all those people that wake up at 6 every morning to do the lowest of the lowest of jobs? The only difference is that their work is not related to sex.
Heaven forbid that someone actually enjoy the work they do with their bodies... or have we forgotten that all these activities are rooted in the giving and receiving of pleasure?
There are advocacy groups out there campaigning for sex workers' rights, staffed by sex workers and former sex workers, and I would think that if the profession were really so bad for independent providers then groups like this either wouldn't exist or would have a very different character.
That is an extreme case, and I hope that she gets another line of work more suited to her.
But lets not forget that most people aren't happy being cleaners, servers, etc and do it entirely for the money. Nothing wrong with that, but in this world only a very small group is happy enough to love their job (and most people love only a part of it).
Exactly...if it's legal, you won't see dark alley trolling or illegal turns. You would see professional websites, apps, and clean, regulated places of business.
Prostitutes have been on the Internet forever. Legal or not, streetwalkers will continue to exist. The problems, real or perceived, that streetwalkers cause in the neighborhoods they work will continue to exist.
Sure you will. Maybe not as much, but it will still be there. There are still illegal marijuana dealers in legalized states.
Women will continue to be 'streetwalkers', because they can't access the regulated place of business - maybe because of previous bad behavior such as stealing or assaulting clients - maybe because they have a STD and the regulated place won't let them work for health reasons - maybe because they are being forced to do 'overtime' after their regulated job by a pimp.
Men will likewise continue to use streetwalkers - maybe because they just like them better, maybe because they think their partners have less of a chance of finding out if they pick someone up in the street vs paying with a credit card on an app - maybe because they have been abusive in the past with regulated prostitutes and have been banned - maybe because they want to save 10% on the price.
On mobile so I'll having trouble finding a source, but studies have unfortunately found that countries with legalized prostitution generally have higher trafficking rates.
"Countries with legalized prostitution are associated with higher human trafficking inflows than countries where prostitution is prohibited. The scale effect of legalizing prostitution, i.e. expansion of the market, outweighs the substitution effect, where legal sex workers are favored over illegal workers. On average, countries with legalized prostitution report a greater incidence of human trafficking inflows."
I find this interesting.. I wonder why people would still go to an illegal worker over a legal one. Is it that the consumers don't know they're illegal or they have some other advantage like cheaper price or a different experience?
> Is it that the consumers don't know they're illegal
Apparently it's a hard problem to solve. Prostitution is legal in Germany, but still far from "accepted" as regular work.
There are attempts at having the workers register themselves plus regular check ups (which they're not too keen on, because when the political landscape changes, being part of some database isn't a good thing. Plus, being in a database might expose their line of work that they normally don't point a spotlight on in their regular life), at requiring their customers to report suspect cases (but not all customers are interested in having their pastime exposed like that, and also how are they supposed to detect these?).
Every attempt at a solution (without guarantee of success) creates new problems because it's a volatile environment all around.
Illegal workers being immigrants, they are unfamiliar with the law, at risk of deportation (so the protections legal workers theoretically have don't apply to them in whole), and they're also not very keen on their families learning how they made the money that was sent back every month (no, it wasn't by waiting tables). Also, with mafia-like structures trafficking them, blowing the whistle might reduce life expectation for them and their families back home. There's little room for them to help themselves once in the situation.
That study might be the best available, but it isn't very convincing - they are analysing a large number of countries and it doesn't look like they gathered the data first hand.
Are all the statistics using a consistent definition of human trafficking? I have no faith that data between different countries is comparable on this issue, especially when it was apparently gathered from other sources. That is the sort of approach that gets Sweden called a 'rape capital' [0].
It is an extreme claim that legalising something causes crime rates to increase. They advance a plausible idea for the mechanism, but it seems reasonable that they are picking up ghosts in the data rather than a real effect. Correlation and causation issues might also be at play somewhere, and the scope of the study is just too big to pick it up. If there is a secondary source on one country that talks about a before-and-after observed change that might be interesting.
Basically, I'm not dismissing it out of hand, but it seems pretty reasonable that legalising drugs/prostitution/whatever automatically reduces crime and this study doesn't meet a reasonable bar of evidence. Maybe if it were combined with a good single-country study that highlighted the mechanism a bit more - but the uncertainties in the case study are enormous. The numbers cited in the report for Germany, for example, could be optimistically (optimistic to the point I feel disingenuous, but I don't think I'm saying anything statistically outrageous) spun to say that it is human trafficking may have declined from 19,740 (1996) to 12,350 (2003) with the legalising of prostitution +.
+ Footnote 38 notes that Germany changed their definition of human trafficking victims between 1996 an 2003 to include more people, although they don't think this accounted for the majority of the increase.
> "Countries with legalized prostitution are associated with higher human trafficking inflows than countries where prostitution is prohibited."
But:
(1) Can inflows really be measured comparably between legalized and non-legalized regimes? and
(2) Are inflows actually the figure of merit or a proxy?
(3) If inflows are a proxy for the figure of merit, is the relationship between that proxy and the actual figure of merit consistent between legalized and non-legalized regimes?
Its worth noting that key utilitarian arguments made for legalization (there are also more direct deontological arguments) include that legalization makes it easier for people subjected to abuses within sex work (including, but not limited to, trafficking) to identify themselves and/or be identified, and for them to escape from those abusive situations. If that is true, one would expect:
(1) Any mechanism for detecting trafficking levels (including inflows) to return a result higher relative to the actual level, ceteris paribus, in a legalized regime than a criminalized one, and
(2) Actual inflow levels in a legalized regime to be higher in proportion to impact levels (number of people subjected to trafficking at any point in time, number of person/years per year spent subjected to trafficking, lifetime average number of days spent subjected to trafficking, etc.) because shorter time to escape would require higher inflow levels [0] for any given impact level (or, equivalent, produce lower impact levels for any given inflow level.)
And this doesn't even address that the research uses a source that relies on local reports of human trafficking rather than consistent collection on common standards, and that legalizing regimes (and particular democratic legalizing regimes, which saw the greatest likelihood of increases) might simply tend also to use broader definitions of human trafficking in the first place, or expend more effort to either detect it or to distinguish it from non-trafficking prostitution.
[0] Well, where "inflow" is imports + people newly subjected to trafficking locally; the paper seems to consider only imports, which would ceteris paribus have the same relation, but there could be compounding effects from differences in local trafficking (OTOH, if legalization made it harder to traffic locals--because those who would be at risk would be more able to turn to legal sex work themselves--then that would further increase the ratio between import inflows and domestic impact levels.
> I find this interesting.. I wonder why people would still go to an illegal worker over a legal one. Is it that the consumers don't know they're illegal or they have some other advantage like cheaper price or a different experience?
Slaves are cheaper and less likely to refuse to perform certain services.
I wonder why people would still go to an illegal worker over a legal one.
There is no reason to assume the client knows who is legal and who isn't. I can well imagine that it's less dangerous to traffic someone where prostitution is legal because the activity per se isn't going to get you arrested.
I saw some article about stolen high value tech being booming business because, unlike illegal drugs, simply possessing the tech per se was not illegal. They would have to prove it was obtained illegally to charge you with anything.
I don't want to trivialize a complicated subject, but...
Prostitution and street-walking are two different things, and it would be possible for prostitution to be legal whilst keeping street-walking illegal.
I suppose it could be argued then a single person could operate from their home, but groups would have to work from licensed premises. Seems like that would have an advantage.
You're assuming direct causality. Think of the practically limitless number of major confounding variables here that are practically impossible to control for in a reasonable way. At the most fundamental think of the distinction between nations that legalize prostitution versus those that do not. There tends to be a very different system of ethos between these nations and this is going to trickle down to every single aspect of society.
So for instance I think it's extremely likely that you can show that legalizing certain drugs (such as marijuana) can be shown to 'cause' increases in sex trafficking. Of course it almost certainly does not but I'm making the educated assumption that nations that have legalized prostitution are going to have legalized drugs of various sorts more liberally than nations that still have criminalized prostitution. And so, lo and behold, we can show a correlation between legalizing drugs and sex trafficking if we assume that paper is correct that a link exists between sex trafficking and legalized prostitution.
Though indeed even the link itself should be called into question. For instance could the cause not be that legalization enables greater scrutiny over workers and thus the legalization itself helps to increase the detection efficiency of unlawful trafficking? Differences in what you're measuring mean nothing unless you are measuring things in the exact same way, with the exact same 'resolution'. Again you can try to control for things like this, but the controls are subject to just as many problems.
---
Maybe the most important issue here is that this is an issue that is incredibly difficult to do right even when you are 100% impartial and objective analysis is your one and only purpose. In reality people are biased, and a negative result means you basically just wasted however many months researching this topic. And this is a topic where you could, even without malice or intent, show anything to be true if you wanted by just seeking out slightly different data, or controlling for confounding issues in slightly different ways.
Wasn't one of the suggested causes of this that legalizing prostitution made it possible for the trafficked women in question to report their trafficking without being arrested? (And to still have a living afterwards)
When your metric is "crimes discovered" or "crimes reported", you have to make sure improvements come from reduction in crime, not detection rates...
So the signs are there so that the police have probable cause to stop someone that they otherwise wouldn't have probable cause to stop.
Does anyone else see a problem with making otherwise perfectly legal and safe behavior(turning on to a side street) illegal just to legalize an otherwise unconstitutional traffic stop?
Seems like another slippery slope we ought not to be sliding down.
The government is required to respect privacy, not to be stupid. An area's status as a crime hotspot can reasonably cast suspicion on those visiting it late at night.
This proposed law does sound stupid to me and not just for reasons parent said. I also strongly disagree with "area is considered crimey, therefore we effectively void protections for citizens entering it".
I also think that laws designed to be broken so that you can throw false "should have follow law" excuses once cops selectively enforce it are lowering respect to law enforcement.
They can suspect all they want, but stopping an questioning someone simply due to their presence on a public street, in the absence of an exceptional situation or investigation, is not acceptable.
Not only are right turns safe, but they are safer than left turns, because the A column can more easily block pedestrians crossing a street parallel to the cars motion before the turn. And so a single right turn is safer than a single left turn, and this proposed law is going to make people perhaps do 3x as many left turns as they would have right turns.
The A column is the structure of the car between the windshield and the driver and passenger windows. The B Columns are subsequently the structure between the first and second row of seats (I think).
The A, B, C and D columns are counted front to back. No magic ;)
Notably the thick and angled A columns of modern cars create fairly large blind spots to the front left and right, while wide B columns are problematic for larger drivers, since the B column blocks visibility over the shoulder.
Think of it another way: the locals overwhelmingly agreed to change the rules because they probably understood that while they could adapt to the rule, outsiders probably would not be as well-informed.
Someone making a right turn after hours paints themselves as a potential outsider who doesn’t know the rules and, given the location’s history, is probably there to solicit sex.
I like that the community was empowered to make this change.
Mistreating outsiders because they are outsiders isn't justifiable just because it is popular. The idea that they are "probably there to solicit sex" is not relevant (nor is it defensible based on available evidence).
The city is empowered to make the change. The court are empowered to overturn it as an unconditional restrictions on our liberty. Specificially the fourth amendment
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things .
Not to mention that this law will surely induce racial and social biases.
I am sure no single old lady will ever be fined or otherwise harrassed by incurring in this violation. This clearly means that law enforcement is using this rule to expand its mandate.
I live about three miles west of Western between Hollywood and Sunset, a couple of blocks from where Hugh Grant was arrested in 1995. We still have these signs up here, I can’t turn onto my street after 11pm.
What I find interesting is that these signs are still up even though the problem they were trying to solve went away many years ago. It seems that there’s nobody that looks to undo changes like this—government rarely gives back the freedom it takes away—even if that’s simply the freedom to make a turn at night.
I suspect you can use the grid to enter the street straight or by a left turn. I know in Argentina I have seen weird interdictions like that where we had to loop around the block.
It's odd that johns are described as "predation" when prostitutes are the ones who benefit financially and the ones who least want prostitution punished.
I lived in that area of LA for 5 years and wouldn't say it had a prostitution problem. Sure there were some sex workers out, but it wasn't really causing issues. Then again this was before they banned backpage/craiglist
Is there a prostitution problem? And what is the prostitution problem?
Is it the problem that prostitution is sinful? Then they could perhaps finally come to the 21st century, and the problem is solved by itself.
Is the problem that prostitution is illegal? That's a self imposed problem, they can just change the law (like other countries and some states/counties have).
Is the problem that society has decided it shouldn't have prostitution? That's valid, I guess, but they should ask to verify whether this is true, before considering it a problem (and before making laws unilaterally. E.g. society apparently didn't consider marijuana to be as much of a problem as lawmakers made it).
Is the problem that prostitution is a dangerous and coercive environment? This stems from it being illegal, and thus unregulated.
It's far more complicated than that, there's a big division in feminists over whether women should have the choice, or whether it's inherently exploitative by men.
Isn't the point of feminism to change things so that historical trends concerning gendered outcomes change? If you assume that the past trends are set in stone and cannot change, then policy proposals sound either pointless or like they will reinforce the status quo rather than rewrite things.
Other than men generally having more money than women, what gender difference do you attribute this situation to? What innate quality is there that trumps financial inequality for purposes of explaining who purchases sexual services and who sells them?
The evolutionary trait that has a male mammal just ejaculate whenever they can with ease, whereas a female mammal has to wait for the appropriate period to conceive and then pass several months to give birth and carefully feed milk and raise the child. Which makes the former wanting to play around as much as possible, while the latter not so much so.
Man, for similar reasons (and the male of the species in most such species) is selected, where woman selects. It's easier for a man to be rejected by potential mates, than the opposite.
Most of our urges are not rationally defined by us (or even our species alone) -- they are millions of years old.
Prostitution is a harder issue because the worry is that by its nature it will still be exploitative and harmful even if it's legal. If prostitution would be safe and healthy for the women most feminists I know would be for it, the worry is that if you legalize it in the US legalizing it will sort of industrialized the harm that's currently endemic to the system. Feminists ultimately want what's best for the women and in this situation I think that would be legalizing it but it's not completely clear (also many feminists I've met are for legalizing it but are just less sure than on more obvious issues like abortion).
There is a "real-politic" feminism/feministic view where the goal is to increase the value of women in the sexual market.
The value of goods sold will always be at a higher value when you have a monopoly. Legal prostitution would get men sex for certain at a known cost, whereas taking somebody out on a date is not certain to lead to sex. Keeping prostitution illegal means the monopoly is strengthened.
BTW, here in Denmark, having sex for money is legal, but only the prostitute can make money of of it (directly, anyway), which means that prostitutes can outsource their protection to the police. In Sweden it is legal sell sex, but not to buy it, which means they technically could call the police anyway, but it will destroy their business -- and that the customers they do get are less likely to obey they law and so are more likely to be violent.
While prostitution shouldn't be a crime in the first place IMHO, having illegal street prostitution at the front of your door is something you definitely don't want and is worth fighting against. The same would go for drugs or even stolen bread if there was a black market for it.
It has less to do with the morality of it being legal/illegal and more with the people gathering in front of your door that don't seem to care for the official morality. They are not hippies, they are tourists taking a vacation from morality and treating your area accordingly. I.e. like a dump.
So in other words, legalizing and requiring that sex work occur in licensed brothels within designated areas (and thus not on your doorstep) would solve that problem?
Legalizing it reduces the side effects of illegal street prostitution, like turf wars, used condoms, drug dealers targeting prostitutes, rapists targeting prostitutes. Pimps get more civilized (or are out of the game altogether).
Those things mentioned don't go away completely and what definitely stays: the stigma of buying sex. Thus the customers will still treat the area like something to rush through.
But that is still better, than having illegal street prostitution. If you have open conduct of illegal things in an area, other illegal things pop up too.
For the record: Where I grew up, we had "mom and pop" brothels in between residential areas and large scale ones in commercial/industrial zones. No problems. The only thing weird about it were some of the customers from time to time.
I would assume the supply part of prostitution also correlates with cost of education, unemployment and low social security and drug problems. Ie if people have more choice in how they support themselves or their family, fewer people end up choosing to work as prostitutes?
America is doing everything it can to run a Prohibition War on Prostitution by driving it further underground and over-criminalizing poor and vulnerable people (with the other 8 million in prison, more per capita than any other country, save Seychelles, and possibly China with the Uygur concentration camps). The moral panic "war" is lost: regulate and let people live. It works in the UK and Europe. Oh yeah, American porn is somehow legal prostitution with a video camera because it's "art" and "professional." Consistency fail too. Maybe start making lots more "porn" that satisfies legal requirements and then the oldest profession becomes legal.
I'm from Germany. Maybe that is why I don't get it.
Does "banning right turns at night" mean that it is banned to take a right turn at night? As in not being allowed to enter a crossing street in the right direction?
That's correct. The intent of the law is to forbid making right turns from certain streets within a certain time frame. In this case, making a right turn off of this street in question from midnight to 7 AM is illegal and considered a traffic violation.
They're bringing in a weird traffic rule so the police can selectively pull over whoever they want who happens to make the mistake of falling in their cunning illegal left-turn trap, thus giving the illusion of probable cause for a traffic stop.
I see. I was theorizing it cut down on certain circular cruising behavior, perhaps, or the ability to pull off the road to drop off or pick someone up.
>the law gave police probable cause for a traffic stop, since plenty of people at first ignored the signs. He added that such violations are especially useful for regular patrol officers, who might not have the training or experience to spot the signs of a potential sex-work transaction.
>"We used to stop cars all the time with the signs in Hollywood. The majority of the time it was residents, but now and again we’d hit someone who picked up a prostitute and catch them in the act
So basically now that LAPD goes fishing more often LAPD catches more fish.
Won't this just become learned behavior? A lot of people that use prostitutes are repeat customers, they're just going to learn to not turn right. Seems to me that the turning right only serves to help police ticket or pull over individuals that could even be lost. It's basically like a speed trap that some neighborhoods enact to fund their towns and local police. Eventually it will move from punishing their actual target, to punishing everyone for ticket revenues.
Good luck getting it reversed. If there's one thing government is really good at, it's not reversing bad laws once their purpose has been served, especially if money becomes involved.
What is the legal basis for outlawing prostitution? Seems like I've read so many articles about "stopping" prostitution which have merely moved to another form and continued on like this article stated.
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