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Around the world, there's a growing movement to decriminalize sex work. Last year, Amnesty International, the largest human rights group in the world, came out with a recommendation that governments should decriminalize consensual sex work and develop laws that ensure workers are "protected from harm, exploitation and coercion." A United Nations commission has also come out in support of legalizing prostitution.
But the idea is a divisive one, stirring impassioned debates and concerns about the ways varying approaches could harm sex workers. Amnesty's recent policy drew strong support from public health advocates and intense backlash from those aiming to end prostitution completely.
Understanding the scope, harms and public health implications of policies addressing the world's oldest profession is really tricky. While prostitution - the buying and selling of sex - is a multibillion dollar industry, the sex trade is clandestine by nature. It's taboo. That makes it really hard to study, especially in the United States.
That's most often the case, except in this one part of the country, where the laws of prostitution were totally upended. It's a peculiar story that's largely left out of the current discussion. The place in question is not Nevada, where there's a small number of regulated brothels in certain rural counties.
It's a whole state - Rhode Island.
For several years, ending in 2009, indoor prostitution such as in massage parlors, strip clubs and through online escorts, was not a crime in this tiny New England State.
The whole thing happened somewhat unintentionally. But at the time, it fueled a heated public debate about sex, crime and health.
Years later, some are revisiting the lessons learned.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 10 2017, @01:45AM (2 children)
And yet nobody has come up with an effective strategy of dealing with the problem. Making it legal just increases the amount of money that's to be made by selling sex. With increased money comes all sorts of people trying to make money off of it. Strip clubs have done an OK job of avoiding it, but they're hardly free of the problem as there's all sorts of ways for unscrupulous people to get access to the cash that somebody else makes from sex work.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday August 10 2017, @08:38AM (1 child)
Can you back up that claim with any hard data?
For alcohol, making it illegal increased the profits, and making it legal decreased them. The main profiteers of prohibition were the providers of alcohol.
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday August 10 2017, @01:52PM
No, he can't back that up. You've already cited alcohol - and we have marijuana to look at today.
There is some possibility that legalizing prostitution would mean some modest increase in the total amount of money changing hands in America, but the price is unlikely to go up. When alcohol was legalized, more alcohol was sold, and the price went down. With marijuana, more of it is being sold, but the price hasn't changed drastically. Well, the smoke seems to have gone down some, but gubbermint tacked on their surcharges.