
Rhode Island unintentionally decriminalized indoor prostitution in 2003 - adventured
http://www.vox.com/2014/7/15/5898187/prostitution-rhode-island-decriminalized
======
jdreaver
Prostitution is a victimless crime. Why is it that two people can't agree to
exchange sex for money? You can't legislate morals into existence (not saying
prostitution is immoral, but people who want to outlaw it probably do). The
world's oldest profession will probably be outlawed for some time to come
because adding support for prostitution to your platform is political suicide.

EDIT: Since I don't want to reply to everyone individually:

I am not condoning prostitution as a career. I am saying that criminalizing
prostitution hurts all parties involved. There is a common misconception that
wanting to repeal a law means you support whatever that law outlawed. I don't
think prostitution should be illegal.

The rule of law is not a place to push morality. There is no reason for the
government to interfere in a consensual transaction between two people. If a
pimp is forcing a prostitute to sell themselves, that's called slavery, and it
is illegal. Selling a prostitute to someone else against their will is
illegal, and it is called human trafficking. Simply selling your body harms no
third party against their will.

~~~
tedks
The world's oldest profession is farming.

While harm reduction is a great thing, legalizing prostitution would have a
hugely detrimental effect on the fight against human trafficking and the
status of women in general. The idea that women's bodies can be commodified
and sold to men is the foundation of patriarchy, and as long as prostitution
exists we'll never have a free society.

It's also laughable to say that prostitution is ever some fantasy rational
economic exchange. Women are forced into prostitution, either by being
literally enslaved, or by economics.

~~~
Mz
The reality is that since women make, on average, 2/3 of what men make and
most people are heterosexual, most sexually active women are sleeping with
someone who makes quite a lot more money than they do. Because if you flip
that around, it means men make on average 1.5 times what women make. For that
and a very long list of other reasons, most women are de facto trading their
bodies for money in some sense, to some degree, almost every time they have
sex.

So I have kind of a big problem with your idea that prostitution is per se
some big moral problem here.

~~~
tedks
Yes, this is a critical issue at the core of feminist struggle. Read some
Dworkin.

~~~
Mz
I don't see it that way. I have read quite a lot and thought quite a lot on
the subject. But I don't imagine you really want me to give you my 2 cents
worth since you seem to be coming from an (unfounded and rather disrespectful)
assumption that I am ignorant.

I mean, you could have _asked_ had I read Dworkin rather than framing your
remark like you are sure I haven't, which is kind of an insulting, dismissive
thing to do. And, upon googling, gee, if you mean THIS Dworkin
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Dworkin](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrea_Dworkin),
then: no thanks. I happen to like men and sex, I worked hellaciously hard to
get there and I am not interested in drinking deeply of her rage. Her apparent
thesis -- that porn is linked to rape and violence against women -- flies in
the face of statistics that internet porn apparently reduces incidence of rape
and, from a quick skim of the Wikipedia page, I get the impression she was
pretty angry and dissatisfied with life. I generally try to get my advice from
bon vivants, not embittered cynics.

~~~
tedks
Andrea Dworkin is one of the foremost feminist thinkers of the 20th century.
If you're dismissing her offhand you are not a feminist.

------
seszett
> _a third, uncomfortable hypothesis: it 's possible that violent males
> consider prostitution and rape as "substitutes". With prostitution legally
> acceptable and cheaper than when it was a criminal offense, would-be rapists
> might shift away from violence toward women, opting to purchase sex
> instead._

I'm really not sure how one could consider "uncomfortable" the idea that some
people who would otherwise commit a crime, would instead opt to pay for a
legal service?

When prostitution is legal, isn't this situation just the same as someone
buying a car instead of stealing it, or streaming a movie on Netflix instead
of torrenting it? The only difference I see is that the rape prevented would
have been worse than stealing or copying, so it's even more important to
prevent it.

 _edit:_ I can see people saying that I'm comparing a crime against people
with crimes against objects. So here's another situation: someone paying an
employee instead of enslaving him.

~~~
rayiner
Studies show that rapists are not, in general, men who can't get sex another
way, but rather men who want to exert power over women. The uncomfortable
hypothesis is that prostitution fulfills the same urge to exercise power.[1]
It's uncomfortable because of what it implies about the nature of
prostitution.

[1] The quote, usually attributed to Charlie Sheen, that "you don't pay a
prostitute for sex, you pay her to leave afterward" is illustrative of this
hypothesis as well.

~~~
thaumasiotes
Charlie Sheen was a man who didn't have problems getting a woman to agree to
sleep with him. That doesn't mean he had sex out of a love of exercising power
instead of the normal sexual drive; the quote is telling you that he
considered a prostitute's monetary cost to be a lower price than paying
nothing to a girl who would then brag to all her friends and the National
Enquirer that she was Charlie Sheen's girlfriend, flip out when she saw him
kissing an actress, show up crying at his house in the middle of the night,
etc etc etc.

------
jusben1369
Am I the only one who thought, given it's now 2014 and that the law was
changed nearly 5 years ago, that we also now have an even more complete set of
data with which to support the hypothesis? But they don't seem to go there at
all?! The chart appears to show crimes rising again once it was outlawed but
for the most part the article is written as though it's 2010.

~~~
mlinksva
No, that was my first thought upon skimming the article. Here are some numbers
from
[http://www.risp.ri.gov/documents/UCR/2013.pdf](http://www.risp.ri.gov/documents/UCR/2013.pdf)

State 11A SEX OFFENSE, FORCE: RAPE

    
    
      2013: 338
      2012: 301
      2011: 324
      2010: 302
      2009: 302
      2008: 276
    

Providence (where article said sex work is concentrated) 11A SEX OFFENSE,
FORCE: RAPE

    
    
      2013: 87
      2012: 90
      2011: 77
      2010: 76
      2009: 59
      2008: 44
      2007: 46
    

Don't know why this doc does haven't statewide numbers for 2007 (some
locations also have 2006, Providence doesn't).

A really odd thing is that PROSTITUTION: ENGAGING seems to have been at by far
its highest in 2008. I can't think of a good explanation. Maybe police were
pissed off about indoor prostitution being legal, so they cracked down extra
hard on outdoor prostitution, but since indoor was re-illegalized, they don't
care?

------
coder23
_Selling is legal, fucking is legal, why isn 't selling fucking legal!? Why
should it be illegal to sell something that is perfectly legal to give away?_

\- George Carlin

------
jack-r-abbit
Situation #1: Person A and Person B have consensual sex together. Person A
gets paid by Person C, who films this sex and sells the video. (it is called
porn) _Legal_

Situation #2: Person A and Person B have consensual sex together. Person A
gets paid by Person B. (it is called prostitution) _Illegal_

I don't understand how adding a camera crew and having the money come from
someone not involved in the actual sex some how makes it legal.

~~~
buckbova
In scenario 1, both person A and B receive payment from C.

~~~
jack-r-abbit
Not always. But that even so that shouldn't make any difference.

------
vanderZwan
The authors say they aren't sure, as if this was a unique experiment making it
hard to drw conclusions from. However, there have been other places where
prostitution has been decriminalised. The Netherlands, for example. Surely
there has been research on the effects there, the results of which can be
compared to this situation?

~~~
cobrausn
You don't even have to go that far - Nevada decriminalized prostitution a
while ago, IIRC.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_Nevada#Legal_si...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prostitution_in_Nevada#Legal_situation)

------
eCa
The graph in the article is really bad. The heading says "Reported rape
offenses per capita" while the vertical axis says "Rape offenses per capita".

Two things:

* Those are _not_ the same thing.

* 40 rapes per capita? (Yes, the article says per 100,000 but the graph should stand on its own.)

------
jws
_…compared to similar control states_ wherein South Dakota, Idaho, and Iowa
are the control states‽

For those not up on their US states, Rhode Island (388 people per km^2) is a
fly speck of an east coast state. South Dakota (4 people/square mile) and
Idaho (7 people per square mile) are large rural western states, Iowa (20
people/km^2) is a giant cornfield with some insurance company headquarters
hiding in the middle.

I don't have time to check the FBI databases today†, but it smells like a
cherry picking.

␄

† Ok, a little time. The selected states are definitely on the high side for
forcible rapes in 2009.

------
jcrjcr
If prostitution were legalized then it could be regulated making it more
likely that proper healthcare and protection is administered. It also gives a
prostitute the ability to report to the police if there is foul play without
worrying about getting in trouble for the prostitution itself. Much like the
war on drugs, trying to eliminate prostitution by criminalizing it is not an
effective way of eliminating the problem (if you see it as a problem).

~~~
Mz
FYI: _Legalized_ and _decriminalized_ are not the same thing. A professional
prostitute and political activist named Dolores French
([http://www.amazon.com/Working-My-Life-As-
Prostitute/dp/05756...](http://www.amazon.com/Working-My-Life-As-
Prostitute/dp/0575602368)) was for decriminalization and against legalization.
She claimed that legalization typically involves regulation of a sort that is
often no better for sex workers than the violent pimps that are so frequently
decried as the cause of everything that's bad about sex work currently.

They aren't the same thing and the article here specifically uses the term
_decriminalized_.

~~~
pigDisgusting
I'm on the fence about those semantics. I think we're splitting hairs here.

Is there honestly a profound difference between the two? If prostitution were
legal, yet regulated, failure to adhere to the proper regulations could still
result in the same consequences for the cases that criminal policing targets
anyway. Does legalization mean permissible with documentation?

What are the specific results of " _decriminalization_ "? Does it simply mean
that it's classified as a lesser misdemeanor, punishable by fines and
community service, rather than felonies plea bargained to trespassing, that
result in years in county lockup after repeat offenses? Or does it mean
ordinance violations for things like disordely conduct, that do not accumulate
as serious offenses on an individual's arrest record?

Does decriminalization mean that certain parts of town don't get policed as
much on the weekends, and cops look the other way, when it comes to certain
hotels and drinking establishments?

Does regulated legalization mean solicitation goes unreproached even in broad
daylight on a sunday morning on main street, so long as you carry your
laminated photo ID card on your person, while you loiter near the gas station?

Does legalization mean that johns experience zero repercussions for
patronizing regulated whores, while decriminalization leaves johns open to
petty offenses where they still cannot patronize under any circumstances, but
if caught no jail time will result?

~~~
Mz
My best understanding: _Decriminalization_ means it is not illegal.
_Legalization_ means it is regulated.

Let me see if this helps make it clear:

I used to subscribe to some sort of energy/environmental magazine. Solar power
or whatever. And there was a story about a guy in Chicago who wanted to make
his own home-grown power and go off the grid in the midst of Chicago. And he
called around to see what agency was in charge of this, who he needed to apply
to for permits and that sort of thing. And he got told, basically, that this
had not yet made anyone's radar and there was no agency in charge of this
stuff. There was no where he needed to go in order to get permission.

He hung up the phone and realized as long as he didn't mess up badly and make
the radar of the police or others, he could do any damn thing he wanted. So he
set about doing what he wanted and went off-grid. It was perfectly "legal" to
do so and no one was up in his business about it. It was a new thing and no
rules had yet been made for it, basically. So there was nothing stopping him.

Legalizing prostitution would be more akin to, say, the way we have driver's
licenses. There would be a process for applying to get your hooker's license
and proving you did not have VD or whatever. Decriminalization is more just
saying "If a woman (or other person) wants to charge money for sexual
services, she is not breaking the law and cannot be charged with a crime for
that."

Or so I understand, law not being some strong point of mine.

------
cgcdesigndev
While this is a serious issue and everyone will have their varying opinions on
it...

I really want Seth MacFarlane to make an episode of Family Guy based on this
(The show is based in Rhode Island).

