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The Washington Post reports that an internet escort in Charleston, W.Va., may have saved her own life and the lives of many other women, when she shot and killed an alleged attacker who showed up at the woman's home on July 18 after answering an escort ad she had placed on Backpage.com. Neal Falls showed up with multiple pairs of handcuffs and a Subaru full of weapons and tools, including a shovel, knives, a bulletproof vest, a machete, bleach, trash bags, sledgehammers and axes. In Falls's pocket, police said, was a list of names of potential future victims, all of whom are sex workers who advertised on Backpage. Investigators are trying to determine whether Falls is responsible for a string of slayings targeting sex workers in Ohio and Nevada. "We are entering his DNA profile into CODIS, which is a national crime DNA database, to see if it matches any previous submissions from anywhere in the United States," says Steve Cooper, the Charleston Police Department's chief of detectives. "If his DNA has been located in any other crimes and his profile was entered into CODIS, there will be a match."
From the moment Falls showed up at the home of his latest alleged victim, he turned violent. "I knew he was there to kill me," says the victim who asked not to be identified. Falls pulled a gun on her and began strangling her. "When he strangled me he just wouldn't let me get any air. I grabbed my rake and when he laid the gun down to get the rake out of my hands, I shot him. I just grabbed the gun and shot behind me." Local authorities are treating the shooting as an act of self-defense. According to Cooper, "when we find multiple sets of handcuffs, a machete, an axe, a bulletproof vest and container of bleach, the first thing that comes to an investigator's mind is, 'This is a serial killer kit.'"
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Monday July 27 2015, @01:22PM
In theory you can have legal prostitution but it always seems to devolve into a mess of human trafficking and abuse.
Except of course, when it doesn't. Someone mentioned the Netherlands. Despite having some modest amount of human trafficking and abuse, they are an obvious counterexample already present in the discussion.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2015, @04:26PM
What? You cite an example proving the guy's point and claim it disproves it? Come on man. Delusional arguments like that do not help your case.
How about an actual counter-example?
That is kind of bullshit reasoning I was talking about with respect to you and runaway being fellow travelers when it comes to not understanding human psychology. When faced something that calls your beliefs into question you just convince yourself that it actually supports them. That's straight up cognitive dissonance. You need some serious introspection.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday July 28 2015, @12:21AM
You cite an example proving the guy's point
Note that it doesn't actually prove the guy's point.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @12:57AM
>> You cite an example proving the guy's point
>
> Note that it doesn't actually prove the guy's point.
Yes it does. The NL legalized prostitution in 2000 and yet sex trafficking still continues.
Or are you doing that minutiae thing again where since it doesn't exactly match the hyperbole it actually disproves the intent? Because that's a game for people who retreat into literalism when the real world is too complicated for them.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday July 28 2015, @01:25AM
The NL legalized prostitution in 2000 and yet sex trafficking still continues.
The solution is imperfect so it doesn't count?
Or are you doing that minutiae thing again where since it doesn't exactly match the hyperbole it actually disproves the intent? Because that's a game for people who retreat into literalism when the real world is too complicated for them.
Hyperbole such as:
In theory you can have legal prostitution but it always seems to devolve into a mess of human trafficking and abuse.
The minutiae argument wins yet again. I recognize that there were, even by our standards some particularly hyperbolic statements made on the perfection of legalizing prostitution. That wasn't what I responded to nor defended.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @02:50AM
> The solution is imperfect so it doesn't count?
Where is there proof that it was a solution at all?
> Hyperbole such as:
Yes. That is the exact phrase I was referring to.
> The minutiae argument wins yet again.
It is so weird that you can say that and actually mean it. Its like you are a computer or something. If there is a syntax error that negates the entire meaning of the argument.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @03:37AM
Its called "harm reduction". It'll happen no matter what, and there's nothing we can do to stop it, so we should try to make it as safe as possible for the workers. See this [harmreduction.org] page and just replace "drug use" with "prostitution".
And your argument that it hasn't completely eliminated sex-worker trafficking is the nirvana fallacy [logicallyfallacious.com]. The goal is not to eliminate it completely but significantly reduce its occurrence and harms.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday July 28 2015, @02:02PM
Where is there proof that it was a solution at all?
I treat it as a solution hence circularly it is. Now, I think what you're really asking is if it is a solution that works. I don't know. We never got that far until now.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday July 27 2015, @04:58PM
Prostitution is legal in Las Vegas, Nevada, too, so there's another counter-example to the FUD. Prostitution will happen no matter what, it can't be stopped (even fucking monkeys [outsidethebeltway.com] engage in prostitution), so the only sensible choice is to try to make it as safe for the workers as we can.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @12:10AM
> Prostitution is legal in Las Vegas, Nevada, too,
No it isn't. It's only legal in a couple of rural counties so far out in the boonies that the population is practically nil and then its only in highly regulated brothels that are pretty expensive. You can't draw much of any conclusion from such a tiny sample size with such high barriers to entry.
All the places where it is legal in the general populace, like, say Canada, still have sex trafficking problems too. Trafficking happens for a number of reasons, most of them are under the umbrella of the victims not having a choice - they lack social support systems (e.g. the runaway teen) or don't speak the language, don't know their rights, don't know where their next meal is going to come from and the traffickers install themselves in the place of the normal support systems and then exploit the hell out of their position.
I'm not arguing against legalizing prostitution, what I am arguing against is trivialization of the social complexity of sex trafficking by guys like khallow who simply can't even comprehend that the complexity even exists. If you do a half-assed job of legalizing it, you only fix one tiny piece of leverage that the traffickers use and can end up enabling them by taking some of the legal pressure off.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday July 28 2015, @12:37AM
No it isn't. It's only legal in a couple of rural counties so far out in the boonies that the population is practically nil and then its only in highly regulated brothels that are pretty expensive. You can't draw much of any conclusion from such a tiny sample size with such high barriers to entry.
Wikipedia says [wikipedia.org] 12 of 17 Nevada counties allow for it. And there's supposedly "66 times" as much illegal prostitution as legal, however that's measured.
I'm not arguing against legalizing prostitution, what I am arguing against is trivialization of the social complexity of sex trafficking by guys like khallow who simply can't even comprehend that the complexity even exists.
You forgot to wiggle your fingers mysteriously when you said "social complexity". For someone supposedly into the nuance of this thing, you sure have a simple-minded way to describe it.
If you do a half-assed job of legalizing it, you only fix one tiny piece of leverage that the traffickers use and can end up enabling them by taking some of the legal pressure off.
And there we go. Another socially complex problem solved by Slashdot's groupmind: don't half-ass it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 28 2015, @12:51AM
> Wikipedia says 12 of 17 Nevada counties allow for it.
You seem to be trying to refute my point with minutiae rather than meaning. That doesn't change he fact that they are "rural counties so far out in the boonies that the population is practically nil." Nevada only has a couple of population centers and none of them have legalized sex work.
> And there's supposedly "66 times" as much illegal prostitution as legal, however that's measured.
So? You are disproving your own position with that. Despite the fact that it is legal in parts of nevada there still is well over a magnitude more illegal prostitution. By your simple-minded theories that shouldn't happen, they'd all go next door where it is legal. Except they don't because legality is only one small factor.
> You forgot to wiggle your fingers mysteriously when you said "social complexity".
Did you miss the part where I just finished listing factors of that complexity? You are just proving my point that you are mentally incapable of recognizing these things, even when they are spelled out for you in black and white.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday July 28 2015, @01:46AM
You seem to be trying to refute my point with minutiae rather than meaning. That doesn't change he fact that they are "rural counties so far out in the boonies that the population is practically nil." Nevada only has a couple of population centers and none of them have legalized sex work.
/minutiae relevant to the topic. Two thirds of the counties of the state allow prostitution. That's significantly more than your " a couple".
Did you miss the part where I just finished listing factors of that complexity? You are just proving my point that you are mentally incapable of recognizing these things, even when they are spelled out for you in black and white.
Let's look at that paragraph in question:
All the places where it is legal in the general populace, like, say Canada, still have sex trafficking problems too. Trafficking happens for a number of reasons, most of them are under the umbrella of the victims not having a choice - they lack social support systems (e.g. the runaway teen) or don't speak the language, don't know their rights, don't know where their next meal is going to come from and the traffickers install themselves in the place of the normal support systems and then exploit the hell out of their position.
Notice the complete absence of anything quantifiable. It's vague talk about things that do happen, but which can be moderated in severity and occurrence by legalizing prostitution (particularly, creating social support systems, protection from exploitation (by creating viable escape routes), and better pay (solves the next meal problem). The real question isn't whether Runaway's hyperbole is correct or not, but whether legal prostitution helps reduce human trafficking. Also, note that most human trafficking is actually not particularly exploitative and entered into voluntarily. You just hear about the kidnap for sex rings, not about the illegal migrants who were supporting a family at home on gainful employment.