It is already legal :) (Should prostitution be legalised?)

Member Name: stanners

Product:	Should prostitution be legalised?
Date:	20/11/00 (51 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Perhaps a safer environment for the girls?

Disadvantages: Social chaos

Lots of good opinions written so far.. couldn't decide which one to comment on so decided to write my own.
Well yes prostitution in itself is already legal. There are thousands of women, and men, up and down the country who work on their own from home, and are not breaking the law. Some of them even pay tax on what they earn!
What isn't legal is street prostitution and brothels.
I personally think that these should not be legalised, for many different reasons.
Street Prostitution has no benefits which I can see a good argument for. Some people have intimated that some women choose prostitution to better themselves, for drugs, for money, etc etc. With Street Prostitution this is very rarely the case.
Most Street Prostitutes start very young, as young as 12 / 13 years old. They are groomed by pimps who pick on the vulnerable girls - childrens homes are often a target. The pimp will shower the girl with affection, gifts, etc. He will then have sex with her, and tell her how much she means to him. Then he will introduce her to drugs, and rely on her dependence for the drugs. Still remember these girls are 12/13! Then his attitude will change... the sex will become more violent, and the supply of drugs will dry up unless she complies to his wishes. Eventually and inevitably this all leads to her working the streets (not actually as uncomlicated as that, but you get the idea). The girls then start working the street - now strangely they still worship the pimp, as although he may have started beating them, supplies them with drugs and has forced the girls into the position of selling herself for sex - he is still quite often the only person that has shown them any affection up until now. The girls will then earn between £20 and £50 for each punter. They will get about 30% of any money they make - the rest will go to the pimp. All the drugs they were given in the past by the slate, apparently for nothing - they now find they owe the pimp for.
They are completely trapped from this moment on, and the cycle is very hard to break.
They become drug dependant, regularly beaten and run the risk of beatings with the punters, or worse. Many prostitutes say they have been raped many times by their punters, sometimes by many men at the same time.
When prostitutes are asked what they want - many of them say they want a better life. This is wrongly assumed that they mean they want a better life, paid for by the money they earn. What they mean is they want out of what they are doing, so they can have a better life.
All in all prostitutes are to be treated as the victims in this whole scenario, and the pimps and the punters are the "abusers".
Legalising street prostitution will never happen in this country. Home based "escorts" will always exist.
The argument of legalised prostitution making it safer for the girls is pretty thin too. I think the point is being missed, that these women do not actually WANT to be prostitutes in the first place - and more effort should be put into re-educating them and helping them get out of the cycle they are caught up in.
As for the assumptions made that most of the punters are businessmen - again wrong. Only about 20% of those kerbcrawlers in Southampton, could be classed as businessmen. In fact they were from all walks of life, from teenagers to retired men. Many were from ethnic minorities as well. Also perhaps not so surprisingly, about 30% of those that are stopped have a previous conviction for a sexual offence - ranging from indecent assault to rape, etc. So are we saying we should legalise places for this type of individual to go??
Going back to street prostitution, the police do tolerate prostitution to a degree, as they now target the kerbcrawlers themselves, therefore taking away the demand for the supply.
Another problem that street prostitution will cause in the near future in this country, is the sexual exploitat
ion of women illegally imported into this country. Already there is evidence of this up and down the country, where women, mainly Eastern European are being forced into prostitution, by ganglords who threaten violence to them and their families. This is usually as a "payment" for getting them out of their original country in the first place. If this country was to legalise street prostitution, this would open this problem up to a far greater degree, swamping many streets with more victims - many of whom would be foreign, and with whom proving their age as being over 16 would be a difficult task. This obviously is only the tip of the iceberg, and I accept there are arguments for and against some form of decriminalisation of the offence, but with the offence of Kerbcrawling soon to become arrestable, changes are unlikely.
Questions? :)

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