Legalizing or decriminalization of prostitution

Legalizing Prostitution
There are a number of crimes that are commonly and often referred to as “victimless”. Just a few of these crimes include drug use, rough sex and prostitution. There are those that suggest that consenting adults should be allowed to do whatever they wish. There are others that suggest that the “victimless” tag is less than accurate and the so-called victimless crimes that occur are often comorbid with illegal or unethical outcomes or behavior. Prostitution can absolutely be included in this discussion. Indeed, if two consenting adults enter into a prostitution transaction and no other illegal behavior occurs, there are many that ask where the harm might be. While this may be a valid question to many people, the answer to the harm question is actually “quite a bit”.
Pros & Cons
On its face, there would not seem to be a lot of support or logic to the heavy enforcement that surrounds prostitution. Indeed, a lot of resources and manpower are often dedicated to enforcement against prostitution and yet it occurs nonetheless. Even if it is more relegated to seedy motels and street corners in the more squalor-ridden parts of town, it still happens. Beyond that, there is a supply and demand equation to all of it. Women (and sometimes men) have sex to sell and there are women and (usually) men that wish to buy it. However, the same argument could be used for drugs and other such things. Beyond that, the presence of prostitution is often preceded or followed by many issues. An upside to legalization prostitution (or at least decriminalizing it) is coming to terms with the fact that a good portion of the women who engage in the practice are doing so for sad or terrible reasons. Whether it be mental health problems preventing gainful employment, a prior criminal record presenting and creating the same problem, the prostitute trying to support a drug habit or something else like that, the list of reasons that women engage in certain fields of work like prostitution, stripping or other such things are usually not full of good reasons. Perhaps prostitution should be decriminalized (rather than made legal) so that the police and social service forces can get to the root of why these women are engaging in prostitution rather than just throwing them in a cell and fining them. Generally, those two behaviors on the part of law enforcement do not do any good. If there is a true underlying problem, just arresting them is not going to work and this is especially true if they already have a record (Tirado, 2017).
Even with the above, allowing prostitution to continue unfettered is not a workable solution either. Just a few of the reasons why this is true is because of the spread of HIV/AIDS and other sexually transmitted diseases, the fact that the men (typically) that are going after these prostitutes have families and jobs that they should be paying attention to, many of the women involved are just doing the “job” so as to support a drug habit or because they are controlled by a pimp and other such things. Again, if a woman is selling her body, the list of reasons why she is doing so cannot be good. The only way the above issues could be addressed is to allow the practice legally under the proper conditions, inclusive of protection being used in every instance and STD testing of the prostitutes being the norm. This will obviously not be taken positively by people with moral and religious concerns. Even so, it is most certainly a lesser of two evils when compared to what is currently going on (Narizhnaya, 2017).
Conclusion
While it is true that there is the “they are going to do it anyway” argument to prostitution, as well as other “victimless” crimes, that does not mean that the current paradigm and environment should be allowed to occur with no regulation or control. Getting to the root of why these women sell themselves and at least stemming the negative effects that prostitution can cause or aggravate is far superior to what is currently going on. The current enforcement-only paradigm that is currently in place cannot be allowed to continue as it has been because it simply is not working and it just makes a bad situation worse.




















References
Narizhnaya, K. (2017). Decriminalizing prostitution could be the key to closing Rikers Island.
New York Post. Retrieved 10 August 2017, from https://nypost.com/2017/04/02/
decriminalizing-prostitution-could-be-the-key-to-closing-rikers-island/
Tirado, L. (2017). Why We Should Decriminalize Prostitution. The Daily Beast. Retrieved 10
August 2017, from http://www.thedailybeast.com/why-we-should-decriminalize-
prostitution