[Bishop_Malachi]

You get more of what you legalize.

When Congress and the President recently passed a bill that criminalizes smoking for those under the age of 21, they knew that some people would still do it. Did that stop them? Of course not.

It’s the same thing with weed, pornography, and lowered-FCC standards. You relax them and you get more. The more sane policy would be to council young women on the dangers of prostitution as a choice. This doesn’t get fixed through legalization. In fact, you’ll just see more of it. Most women will be mature enough at some point in their lives to realize that they made a mistake in doing it. Let’s not grow the number prostitutes by removing the legal condemnation.

[NobleFree]

Even women who have left the business have to deal with the stigma of their former profession in any run-ins with the law. Though it's anecdotal, I know one young lady who had a history of prostitution with the law, but when she was robbed and assaulted on the street several years after turning her life around, the police refused to take her seriously, and said that it was obvious she had gone back to her "old ways." She hadn't.

You get more of what you legalize.

And less of other things, such as the police negligence MarkL described.