[thriftwy]

Should not cops, like, read this website too and do a raid everybody they seen someone offer themself nearby while looking teenage?

The major problem in our society is that police and detectives cost us a lot of money but basically do nothing. The only thing really saving us is that people of XXI century are unbelievably benign.

[KirinDave]

What's most vile about police enforcement around prostitution is that it focuses quite proactively on punishing all the wrong people.

Women with few choices who need help? Proactive arrest. ESPECIALLY if they're women of color.

Free, safe people who are willingly selling a service to customers? Why, that's a crime!

But pimps? Well that's just way too much work. I still remember an Oakland cop I talked to telling me, "The best way to stop a pimp is to arrest his girls, and then he has no money and gets in trouble with his boss."

It's a truly sad state of affairs when the literal slavers are the people law enforcement feels least inclined to catch, instead focusing on punishing people who for the most part are harmless (often with profound racial biases in enforcement, e.g., the "black women in a parked car with one man is suspicious" policy in many major cities).

[Pxtl]

The problem is that anti-pimping laws have impeded prostitutes' ability to operate safely without pimps.

Most anti-pimping laws ban any kind of profiting from the proceeds of prostitution. So if a prostitute tries to arrange an apartment to work out of, or hire a legitimate bodyguard, the law sees those people as pimps. As a result, she ends up having to work with a criminal that offers protection and a workplace: IE a pimp.

[KirinDave]

I'm pretty sure that's a problem, but not THE problem.

[tunetine]

I understand the problem is basically understaffing. You don't have enough workforce to spend the time tracking these people down then actually doing something about it. It's the reason burglaries and bank robberies go unsolved until you have multiple occurrences and enough people see footage on the news.

[thriftwy]

I understand the problem is wrong priorities, where cops are engaged in busy work so they have no time to fight the actual crime.

Said busy work often concerns imaginary crime, like going after weed consumers or "computer pirates".

Often the system is either dysfunctional, and avoids crime, or crooked, and works to cover up crime.

[KirinDave]

Staffing issues exist, but in general police don't prioritize pimps over johns or girls. Especially if they can get drug convictions.

[nickthemagicman]

This a very strange biased analysis. I'm neighbors with a police officer,my best friends sister is a police officer. People are not benign by a long shot, the police stay VERY busy,and prostitution is not a big deal in the first place so it's not a high priority.

[thriftwy]

So you tell us that prostitution by a 13 years old girl is not a high priority for them? That's all what we ever needed to know then.

[nickthemagicman]

I hate to break your bubble but tons of shit happens like this constantly and all the time. Like 1/3 of all murders go unsolved. The police don't have the resources to catch all of the bad shit humans do to each other.

[thriftwy]

What's "the resources" and why don't they have enough to even try and catch people raping thirteen years old girls!?

Damn, don't we put people in prison whose sole crime is having jpgs with nude photos of said girls? And then we turn a blind eye to men who actually do the pimping and raping of such girls on industrial scale. I call bulshit on this one.

To me this system seems deliberately broken and we should bring people who broke it to justice.

[nickthemagicman]

Over half of people in jail are drug offenders, most with no other crimes other than drug possession or dealing.

You want to know where the resources are going, instead of being used to catch people raping 13 year old girls...

Just look where the most money is MADE in the justice system to find out where the manpower is directed.