Reply #150: The problem isn't legalization creating demand

[LadyHawkAZ]

the problem is piecemeal legalization shifting the demand to localized areas, bringing in traffickers who are willing to gamble on high profit, and equally patchy enforcement. Demand is a constant. Making it illegal has never, ever, ever, in the entire course of history, worked. The only effect that making it illegal has had is increased production of dead prostitutes and jails.

Take Nevada. Patchy legalization. The legal, heavily regulated brothels have a trafficking rate of zero, which is also just about their disease transmission rate. They produce happy, healthy, fairly wealthy women with no criminal record who go on to other jobs or college. The tricky part? It's only legal in certain counties, but people flood to Nevada all the time *thinking it's also legal in Vegas*. So having arrived and found otherwise, your guy has a choice of a) a 45 minute drive to Pahrump, for an expensive good time in a heavily regulated brothel with inspections and taxes to pay for, or b) an unregulated girl downtown who'll blow you for a twenty and leave you more gambling money. Guess which option they tend to choose? And guess where all the traffickers are going to go?

The girl giving the $20 blowjobs on Fremont WILL get arrested at some point. And she will be back as soon as she gets out of jail, because once you have soliciting on your record in Nevada, you don't get another job at any level above janitor and you're lucky if you find a landlord who will let you rent. That's what making it illegal does. What problems have you solved by doing this? Where's the incentive to get out when she (or he) decides they want out? Who is benefiting from this situation?

Someone posted a couple of links above demonstrating that demand does NOT drop when prostitution is made a crime. Here's another, from a country where you face life in prison if you're caught.
http://www.uri.edu/artsci/wms/hughes/philippi.htm
From the article:
"The number of prostituted persons in the Philippines is about the size of the country's manufacturing workforce, according to Rene Ofreneo, a former Philippine labor undersecretary and an expert on the sex trade. (Dario Agnote, "Sex trade key part of S.E. Asian economies, study says," Kyodo News, 18 August 1998)"
Who benefits?