Legalization of Prostitution Many Believe

Legalization of Prostitution

Many believe that the world's oldest profession, prostitution, should be legalized and the arguments appear justified.

In the mid-1990's during the height of the Heidi Fleiss, the Hollywood madam, conviction, several cities, including San Francisco and Atlanta, appointed a task force to analyze the issue of legalizing prostitution, however neither city has changed its policies (Bovard Pp). Many feel that legalizing prostitution would help halt the spread of AIDS and moreover, improve law enforcement (Bovard Pp). Too often, says writer James Bovard, "police use their time and resources to stage sting operations against prostitutes rather than to fight violent crime" (Bovard Pp).

Prostitution has long been illegal in every state except one, Nevada, and unfortunately, the laws against it tend to bring out the worst among law-enforcement agencies that routinely rely on trickery and deceit to arrest people (Bovard Pp). For example, in 1983, police in Albuquerque, New Mexico, placed a classified ad in a local newspaper asking for men to work as paid escorts, and then arrested the fifty men who responded to the ad for violating laws against prostitution (Bovard Pp). In 1985, the Honolulu police paid private citizens to "pick up prostitutes in their cars, have sex with them and then drive them to nearby police cars for arrest" (Bovard Pp). In San Francisco, police wired some of the rooms in the city's leading hotels in order to make videotapes of prostitutes servicing their customers, however, there was little to stop local police from watching and videotaping other hotel guests in bed as well (Bovard Pp). And in some cities, local female police officers masquerade as prostitutes and when a customer stops to negotiate, other officers rush in and confiscate the person's car under local asset-forfeiture laws (Bovard Pp). In the last few years, the Washington police force has tried numerous tricks to suppress prostitution, including passing out tens of thousands of tickets to drivers for making right turns on certain streets known for solicitation, because the drivers "didn't see the tiny print on the street sign saying that right turns are illegal between 5 p.m. And 2 a.m.," while at the same time the murder rate has skyrocketed and the city's arrest and conviction rates for murder has fallen more than fifty percent (Bovard Pp).

In 1998 Jesse Ventura recommended that Minnesota consider legalizing prostitution, saying, "It's a lot easier to control something when it's legal than when it's illegal...We need to look at solving these social problems in a different way" (Kuebelbeck Pp). In 2001, Germany voted in a new law under which prostitutes would be entitled to social security and would be able to pursue customers who refuse to pay through the courts (German Pp). Christine Bergmann, Germany's social affairs minister, said that it was time to end the "hypocritical double morals" of German society" (German Pp). Germany's prostitutes will be entitled to join state health and pension schemes and claim welfare benefits, whether they are self-employed or work in a brothel (German Pp).

In 2004, citizens in Berkeley, California collected signatures for a ballot initiative for the decriminalization of prostitution, that would oder the police department to give the "lowest priority" to enforcing anti-prostitution laws, arguing that as long as something is illegal, "it's going to remain unsafe and exploited" (Lock Pp).

According to research reported in the May 2003 issue of the Michigan Law Review, "ifeminists view the choice to become a prostitute in the same way as the choice to undertake any other profession, while the radical feminists' theories focus on men's dominance and women's victimization" (Warnick Pp). Authors Jean Almodova and Martha Nussbaum advocate legalizing prostitution because, "like abortion, prostitution involves a woman's decision about what she will and will not do with her own body," and at root, "that decision is a choice and it should be the woman's choice, not the government's" (Warnick Pp).

The futile fight against prostitution is a major drain on local law-enforcement resources and locking up prostitutes and their customers is especially irrational at a time when more than half the states are under court orders to reduce prison overcrowding (Bovard Pp). Gerald Arenberg, executive director of the National Association of the Chiefs of Police, advocates legalizing prostitution, as does Dennis Martin, president of the same association, who declared that prostitution law enforcement is "much too time-consuming, and police forces are short-staffed" (Bovard Pp).