Posted on 03/15/2008 1:53:34 PM PDT by Extremely Extreme Extremist
NEW YORK - On the Web, on billboards, on television and in newspapers, men who solicit prostitutes are being shamed across the country.
The spectacular fall of New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer may have been the ultimate form of public humiliation over a prostitute, but it also renewed the debate over how cities should deal with the world's oldest profession.
Many cities believe targeting johns to cut demand is the best way, among them Chicago, Raleigh and Durham, N.C., and Arlington, Texas, where pictures of those arrested for soliciting prostitutes have been posted on police Web sites. Other cities that have tried the shame approach include St. Paul, Minn., Chattanooga, Tenn.; Cincinnati, Denver, Detroit, Los Angeles, Knoxville, Tenn., and Omaha, Neb.
Some cities have seized the cars of those who solicit sex. Some have sent "Dear john" letters to their homes so their families can learn what they've done.
Such crackdowns can backfire, though. In Kansas City, officials posted pictures of men arrested in prostitution cases on TV, but stopped the practice. Police Capt. Rich Lockhart said the program was a success at first, snaring some local lawyers and ministers.
"It actually was quite effective, especially initially," he said.
But as the affluent and educated learned of the dangers, police found they were arresting more street people as customers in the city's prostitution-infested areas.
"The problem's always there," he said. "We didn't arrest any fewer people. We just arrested different people. It's one of those problems that's not going to go away."
He said the effort to curb prostitution is "a little like being on the hamster wheel. It's very tiring at times."
Other cities have required men to stay out of areas where prostitution flourishes or to attend schools like the one Norma Hotaling formed in San Francisco.
A one-time prostitute, Hotaling started SAGE (Stand Against Global Exploitation) 13 years ago, and the organization runs a class aimed at preventing recidivism among the clients of prostitutes. The program educates first-time offenders about the dangers of prostitution and trains them to build real intimacy out of their fragile personal relationships.
Michael Shively recently presented preliminary results of research he did for the National Institute for Justice on the effectiveness of Hotaling's program. Shively, who works for a social science research company in Massachusetts, found the program reduced recidivism and was cost-effective since fees were paid by offenders.
He said his two-year study also had identified about 200 communities nationwide "that do some kind of a shaming effort."
"Most of it is posting in the newspaper or on a Web site the name and sometimes more information, sometimes pictures, of people who get arrested. Far more do it for the prostitutes," he said.
Hotaling said she prefers education of prostitution clients and opposes publicly shaming customers to combat prostitution because it shames their families too.
"Regular guys cross the line into prostitution without blinking an eye," said Hotaling.
Carol Leigh, a San Francisco sex worker rights activist, said Spitzer's fall — he resigned last week, days after being outed as a client of a high-dollar prostitution ring — was more proof that government should decriminalize prostitution to protect sex industry workers.
"These laws breed hypocrisy," she said, finding some sympathy for Spitzer even though he had worked to increase penalties against the customers of prostitutes.
David Bigeleisen, a San Francisco criminal defense lawyer, said he has been working to propose legislation to permit prostitution houses in California to be licensed or zoned like taverns.
"Sunlight is better than darkness on this. You wouldn't have to have a bordello in the same neighborhood as a school," he said. "Laws against prostitution don't have much effect stopping prostitution but they put it underground and it results in a lot of exploitation of women."
In New York, attorney Ron Kuby said the criminal justice system might not be ready for tougher laws, the kind Spitzer advocated.
"Most judges regard prostitution as a largely harmless vice, a commercial transaction for sex," he said. "What's the difference between that and a noncommercial transaction for sex? Kristen making $2,700 an hour with her clothes off, and the people who complain wouldn't mind if she was making minimum wage mucking out toilets with her clothes on."
He certainly overpaid for what he got.
How about all of the enablers and defenders of prostitution spend a month being a prostitute? And I am talking about performing as a lot lizard or street walker working hard to pay his/her pimp. Or how about the basic, “because it is a sin?”
This is so ridiculous. Even on Fox News Business Block, one of the shows discussed this topic and I was shocked to see, Majority of the Opinion was to legalize Prostitution.
The best argument was made by the Liberal on the show AGAINST prostitution (Quenten Hardy of Forbes on Fox). Essentially, Porn and Gambling were legalized with some good in mind but whatever things that were supposed to improve, didn’t and we have LOTS MORE of both.
If Prostituton is Legalized, I would suspect lot more teenage girls would get into it. It would become just another valid job option, easy money if you will.
More importantly, parents, especially Fathers of Teenage girls would probably lose even more leverage and whatever control they still have. Probably STDs would go up and then we would end up funding ‘safe prostitution’.
Amazing when a Liberal douchebag is busted how majority of the Liberals argue to simply change the definition of what is right and wrong. If this loser was a Republican, would Liberal be arguing to legalize prostitution? Such hypocrites.
Of course. Every time a Dem violates the law, there is an immediate debate about whether the law should be repealed.
Many prostitutes do it as a form of self punishment.
They often commit suicide or end up as drug addicts. ‘Kristen’ is reported to already be an addict.
Wait a minute. It IS legal and the vast majority of teenaged girls STILL have no interest in getting into Congress.
> Amazing when a Liberal douchebag is busted how majority
> of the Liberals argue to simply change the definition
> of what is right and wrong.
No, of what is legal and illegal.
None of which changes the facts:
1. Breakers of even odious laws are open to blackmail.
That shoe hasn’t dropped yet in this case.
2. This particular breaker was an enthusiastic
persecutor (sic, intended) of such laws.
> If this loser was a Republican, would Liberals
> be arguing to legalize prostitution?
Need you ask? One of the wire services was even
identifying Spitzer as (R,NY) “by mistake”, of course.
Holland has long experience with legalization, and one of the big surprises is that legality has not "cleaned up" the business. Legal prostitution simply exists beside --- parallel to --- the usual filth: trafficking, rough practices without (ha) condoms, underage girls and boys. All this exists simultaneously with comparatively "decent legal prostitution” because some johns don’t want sex nice. Some want young flesh, and they want the action to be dangerous, down and dirty.
The Dutch are beginning to realize that. But legalization has changed social mores, creating a permissive attitude even toward the uglier stuff, which is still illegal but what the heck. Law teaches: and legal prostitution teaches that the market rules.
Then there's abolitionism. Saudi Arabia. The degree of personal surveillance required to actually abolish prostitution means the death of all civil liberties. Not a good trade-off.
That leaves us with #3: illegalization. The law-enforcement aspect is frustrating, and only sporadically effective. But it can some good around the edges. Some young whores and would-be whores are dissuaded, some pimps are busted, some johns are shamed. It sends the right message.
And the hypocrisy? No problem. Hypocrisy exists always and only because community standards exist, and some people merely pretend to abide by them. Fine. The existence of pretenders is better than the non-existence of standards.
Should we also legalize money laundering and mail fraud? Should we repeal the Mann Act? Almost every comment you see in the press focuses on prostitution and totally ignores Spitzers other Federal crimes.
I mean if pornagraphy and prostitution were readily available, I am sure that little 5 month old baby girl would not have been severally sexually attacked by her mom's live in......./sarcasm/..
there just is NO crime in Las Vegas or Reno and that college girl that was raped and killed was just done by someone who didn't know he could go buy a night of sex in town.....
It has to do with the conduct and judgment of an elected official.
only Pubs or Christians or white males can commit sins and crimes, didn’t you know that?
Can you imagine the current "immediate material gratification" crowd? A young girl asks her folks for money to buy a walkman. They say "No". The next night she's late coming home. Two days later she's got the $250 walkman...
I advocate legalization with resources devoted to illegal prostitution (underage, forced, and drug pushing). I agree that legalization is no panacea. At the margin, I think that legalization is preferrable to the current situation. I favor legalization because I see prostitution as a victimless crime except in the illegal situations. Legalization may increase prostitution at the margin but I do not see much of an increase.
The danger of legalization is excessive taxation. Prostitution will rival smoking as a favorite whipping boy except that prostitution is not addictive (maybe I am wrong about the addiction assertion). Excessive taxation would push it underground again.
I think that many prostitutes prefer its current illegal status. Regulation and taxes would likely drive down profits and demand. Prostitution is implicitly legal now. Law enforcement does not have resources to shut down the large numbers of escorts operating in a city. Most prostitution busts (except street prostitution) are initiated by the IRS or Homeland Security for visa violations.
Ha! Oh I'd starve. So how about you attending the autopsies of these screwed up women who get picked up by a monster?
From the article:
“Kristen making $2,700 an hour with her clothes off,...”
My guess is that she made a few hundred of that and the rest went to the club’s owners.
I have often argued that prostitution should be legalized. Even if it were, would a man tell his wife that he was running down to the ‘cat house to get some’? Chances are, it’s something that he’d still want to keep secret and would subject him to blackmail to keep it secret. It would still expose someone like Spitzer to pressure to act/vote/rule in a certain manner.
Bad judgment is bad judgment regardless of legality.
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