| Nice feelings you have there. Why can't we legalise sex work and cut a lot of pimps out of the equation? Maintain a "ban" on street walking, but allow brothels and escorting. What is prostitution anyway? A coal miner sells his body in similar ways to a prostitute. Why can't we legalise drugs and cut cartels and gangs out of the equation? Personal use amounts, manufactured and taxed like other drugs (alcohol, cigarettes etc) Why can't we legalise abortion and cut backyard operators out of the equation? Why should your moral stances take precedence over the safety of others? You can't legislate behaviours away. They're going to happen. We've been taking drugs for 10s of 1000s of years. We've been trading our bodies for benefits for at least a few thousand. These actions are largely harmless. Let's realise that making them illegal is a large part of what makes them dangerous. |
My ultimate viewpoint is that criminalization makes criminals and a lot of people want sex workers and drug users (there are others, of course) to be considered criminals and be treated as such. I don't see the societal benefit of this, as it just leads to illicit systems taking place that serve to exploit people. Sex work isn't harmful, but sex trafficking and abuse are- there is definitely a way to allow people to participate in sex work with dignity and protection from exploitation- and criminalizing sex work only contributes to forcing people into situations where they operate in shady unregulated realms where the control rests with organized crime instead of giving that control to the sex workers themselves. Because they can't operate legitimately, and the status of criminalization comes with stigma and marginalization that further create more issues rather than solving any issues.
People will buy sex and people will sell sex, they have been doing so since time immemorial regardless of the law- so IMO the priority should be in making sex work safe, focusing LE and CJ systems toward human trafficking, exploitation, abuse, and slavery instead.