Get over the idea law enforcement is here to protect as a priority. They have proven over time its just a capitalist business looking for more clients. Their job is to put as many people in jail as possible with quarterly growth.
Enforcement of the law has become self-serving and those in power seem to enjoy that power. Arbitrary laws need to end. jaywalking, marijuana, escorting, a busted tail light .. these things need pep talks not forces of swat teams.
I agree with you that escorting itself should be decriminalized - I don't think that any woman who decides to make a living that way should face arrest for doing so. However, sex traffickers and pimps have to go. These people terrorize the women that work for them, often beating and sometimes killing them. The women are often kidnapped or extorted into working for these guys in the first place. Worst of all, they take their earnings from them, ensuring that they'll never be able to escape that lifestyle.
I was in the Las Vegas airport a few weeks ago. When I went to the bathroom, on the inside of the stalls, the Las Vegas Metro Police had placed notices with a phone number saying that help for victims of human trafficking is available. I noticed several billboards around town with the same message. If this has become such a widespread problem that law enforcement has resorted to trying to contact victims in airport bathrooms on their way into town, then they need to step up efforts nail the pimps and traffickers. This shutdown of BackPage was a big step backwards in that effort.
If this has become such a widespread problem that law enforcement has resorted to trying to contact victims in airport bathrooms on their way into town, then they need to step up efforts nail the pimps and traffickers.
The assumes the law enforcement is sincere in its effort. Actual story could well be:
1. Put up ads everywhere seeking to help victims so as to convince the average person the problem is huge.
It's not only women that make their living in sex work.
Are support people necessarily victimizers? Is someones driver automatically their pimp? Is the realtionship better or worse if it was transacted through an app?
If someone hosts child pornography on an AWS hard drive; should Jeff Bezos go to jail for it?
There's a lot of subtlety here.
And a government that is manifestly and overtly corrupt has no business enforcing morality on people.
Good point. I think that escorting itself should be actually legalized. Not only because they would pay tax and have a better life than they have now, but also because this would make pimps obsolete and would help cracking down sex traffickers. Men/women using a legal escorting service could check for license/id, making the whole thing safer for everyone.
Sex traffickers and pimps are for prostitution as gangs and the mafia are for drug sellers. We have legal marijuana without gang shootings, murder and smuggling, so the problem seems to be one about competition and making the legal options more competitive to the consumer compared to the illegal one. Preferable by making a self reinforcing environment where as more money getting put in the legal sector the more incentive the police has to go after the illegal one and the more the costumers want to spend at the legal one.
Too many bureaucracies become self-serving, and prioritize their self-preservation, rather than extinguishing the problems they're tasked with. This is not just my idea, it's well-studied, and has developed into studied phenomena, such as bureaucratic inertia.
Our public policy needs to somehow control incentive structures of these organizations. For example, the War on Poverty has spent trillions, with no measurable reduction in poverty. The War on Drugs, Prison State, Military Industrial Complex. And it appears to be even a cultural problem: CNN tells us we need to maintain an economy of killing innocents in order to keep jobs[1]. So many things are backwards.
In other words, perhaps public policy needs to fundamentally change the way it establishes and preserves government entities, in order to ensure their incentives align with their purpose.
No it's not. It's the job of law enforcement to, unsurprisingly, enforce the laws. If you have a problem with the laws being enforced, call your congressman.
Except cops don't follow the law. They setup illegal processes like automatic speed cams and parking rules designed for pure profit, they shoot people in the back, they continually promise to protect people but in reality they do nothing besides impose their will and take the peoples property and money.
Say that about anyone, if you cherry-pick hard enough. Yes there are some cops that misbehave, and its especially damning because of who they are. Get that. But blanket statements like "they do nothing but..." aren't contributing much?
When your legal system gives the benefit to the police about NOT knowing the law and to everyone else that not knowing the law is no excuse and when your legal system does not apply the same penalties to the police for infractions of the law as to the citizens (slap on wrist to police, throw citizen into prison for long periods of time for the same offence) then you have a problem.
For the USA, there is an endemic problem with all law enforcement and there is various serious documentation about this. That is not to say that the USA is the worst, there are many other countries that have a much more deadly situation. However, for a country that is supposed to be the leaders of the free world, it is rapidly getting the reputation of being third world in this matter.
When other countries warn their citizens not to have interactions with any US law enforcement then you should realise that there is a serious problem in the USA.
