Alleged prospective sex buyers in this scheme first had to respond to a survey and provide information online, including their driver’s license photos, their employer information, credit card information, and they often paid a monthly fee to be part of this.”
Wait, what? (͡•_ ͡• )
That should make the prosecutors jobs much easier.
Wow, imagine willingly providing that information to what you know is a criminal organization. The people who signed up are obviously a major security hazard to whoever they work for.
Yeah. This is the real issue here.
Sex work should be legal and the morality discussion here is about people lying to their spouses and if anybody is being forced into sex work… all interesting topics.
But anybody implicated in this situation needs all security clearances and access dropped because they are high risk morons.
100%. I wouldn’t even give all that information to my online pharmacist and I need some of those medications to survive.
Seriously. How dumb do you need to be to be in an actual high ranking (government) position and willingly give up all that info to an even slightly shady organisation? Never mind an illegal prostitution network you are sure is both illegal and easily blackmailable.
Say something is exclusive and idiots will do anything to get in.
Facebook got so huge because at first you had to be in college to be on it. After a couple years they opened it up to everyone and pretty much everyone signed up.
The ease of prosecuting is directly proportional to how wealthy and influential the accused is.
Remember, it’s a legal system … not a justice system … you can easily distinguish the difference by how wealthy you are (or are not)
Could be a honey pot. Either the guys running it wanted to use the info to blackmail the clientele or sell the info to foreign intelligence
I’m guessing it was that one P411 website or whatever. That site has been in the news in the past. It baffles me that people would willingly comply with such invasive identification requirements for something that’s illegal. I get the idea behind it is to try and prove that you’re not a cop/murdery type of criminal in order to protect the sex workers, but… yeah, lol.
Criminals and criminals masquerading as religions love to get blackmail on their clientele/members, it’s probably the more lucrative part of their enterprise, and it keeps those members/clientele loyal, because who wants their nasty ass secrets leaked out or sold to their enemies?
Not really, because the people who made the survey are probably smart enough to not include anything about exchanging money for sex. Basically, there’s nothing illegal about filling out a survey about who you are and what are your likes or dislikes. There’s also nothing illegal for someone to pay another person for their time.
So no mention of exchanging money for sex and it’s incredibly hard to prosecute.
No idea if you’re right or not but that’s not what I meant. I meant they don’t have to hunt down the johns, the johns already provided all the possible info the prosecutors would need to find them.
I think what the person above was implying is that having your name on that list is not de-facto evidence of participation. I’m sure the DOJ has more than just that one piece of evidence if they’ve already made arrests, because sex workers in America are nothing if not extremely careful about how they conduct their business to avoid exposing themselves or their clients to law enforcement stings.
How exactly does that help? It’s not like they are going to do stake outs on these guys. It’s not enough probable cause for any type of warrant or anything.
It would help support a case if you already had one, but as an entry point it’s all but completely useless, if not actually completely useless.
Which is why they won’t release the names, because doing so would open them up to lawsuits. All risk no reward.
Why is sex work even illegal in the first place.
Selling is legal, fucking is legal, why isn’t selling fucking legal?
– George Carlin
Seas he also the fella that said “Getting paid for sex is illegal… UNLESS YOU RECORD IT!”
For years I’ve contemplated the idea if I came into a bunch of money if starting a porn studio where the customer is an actor/actress in the porn.
We have a building and several “sets” with cameras recording, customer picks their “partner” and “set” and “shoot the porn”, after they are done the video is burned on to a dvd(or blue ray or potentially put on a private file server).
The customer isn’t paying for sex, they are paying for the video.
Pretty sure it would have a ton of legal push back and I would need a lot of money for the lawyers to fight the cases.
But 1. Safer for everyone imvolved(it’s video taped so you won’t beat/hurt/kill the other party) 2.technically legal just like shooting porn
Because one of the biggest issues with sex work, human trafficking, gets worse with legalization. Studies across Europe have shown that countries that outlaw prostitution see a decrease in human trafficking victims while countries that legalized or decriminalized it see an increase.
Unlike with drugs, you don’t just create a way to increase the supply. A very small minority of women actually want to engage in sex work. And the few who do, usually envision the high class escort lifestyle. But working in a brothel charging $100 per client isn’t something many want to do.
But legalizing prostitution increases demand. Which makes it more profitable for criminals to utilize human trafficking to fill that demand.
https://orgs.law.harvard.edu/lids/2014/06/12/does-legalized-prostitution-increase-human-trafficking/
One source of it.
It also doesn’t help at all with protecting victims of human trafficking. Victims of human trafficking are already protected. But they don’t step forward because of threats against their own well being and that of their families. Something that doesn’t change just because their work technically is legal now.
Which leaves a small percentage of people who fall into financial hardship and consider prostitution as a method of overcoming said hardship. For them that might slightly improve their situation. But that still means exploiting vulnerable people and isn’t people engaging in sex work because they want to. And it’s even questionable if people in these scenarios would follow the legal way.
So while initially it might seem like legalizing it solves a lot of issues, it is more difficult than that.
I reckon that even though sex work is legalised, and still caused issues, the problem is that there is no government regulation. It’s one thing to say by the government that they won’t prosecute sex workers, but if it’s not regulated and abuse still happens then nothing changed for all intents and purposes. Best analogy I could think of is like allowing food factories to manufacture food, of course. But if there is no regulatory watchdog to monitor and test to make sure food factories are not putting random and dangerous stuff into food, then legalising an activity is pointless.
Basically, the sex industry having been legalised by many countries is unofficially a libertarian set up. Yeah, the government exists and allow sexual transactions between agreeing parties, but they’re hands off on how the practitioners in the industry would conduct business. There is no government agency for sex workers to complain to if they’re abused. I know people would ask, how exactly would the government regulate sex? That, I will leave to policy experts.
Edit: wording
Thanks for the data. I think the issue here is not that legal prostitution creates problems, but rather the government bodies being incompetent at protecting the victims, then.
There are other industries in which people “sell their bodies” for profit (the military and construction come to mind), and if those can be quite regulated, why can’t prostitution?
government bodies being incompetent at protecting the victims, then.
My guess is that it’s just more difficult to control prostitution than it is to control construction work. Construction happens in the open, you need to get tons of permits, multiple companies are involved, inspectors check everything regularly. It would be difficult to force some people to work on a construction site without anyone realizing. But how are you going to make sure that each sexual intercourse in some strip bar is ‘legal’? Are you going to put inspectors in bathroom stalls? How can you check every cash transaction? It’s pretty much impossible. You can monitor the sex work that’s advertised and happening ‘in the open’ but there will always be some grey and black market for it. And the ugly stuff will happen there.
I see this single study trotted out every time the subject comes up and the key factor to take into account is that this is reported trafficking. If legalized sex work means more light is shed on human trafficking that means more can be done about it.
key factor to take into account is that this is reported trafficking. If legalized sex work means more light is shed on human trafficking that means more can be done about it.
Just because more is reported doesn’t mean more isn’t also happening. In fact, one could reasonably expect reporting to go down as a percentage of incidents due to ordinary citizens not expecting sex workers to be involved in trafficking since sex work is now legal. That the number goes up after the stigma is removed seems to strongly indicate a correlation with a rise in actual trafficking.
Because one of the biggest issues with sex work, human trafficking, gets worse with legalization.
Yes, because legalizing sex work is just criminalizing sex work with extra steps. It’s very easy to see an (alleged) “rise in sex trafficking” when the legalization shuffle allows politicians to all of a sudden decide what is “allowed” sex work and what is “sex trafficking.”
This is why shitty studies like the one you linked is so thoroughly non-credible - it was performed without the input of the people who actually know what they are talking about - ie, sex workers themselves.
What the fuck are you talking about?
legalizing sex work is just criminalizing sex work with extra steps
So what’s the solution?? You just made random assertions without any sources and didn’t suggest any alternatives. All while skimming over the very real trafficking/coersion problems unique to sex work.
My bet is on America’s conservative puritan history where anything good is bad.
Also sex trafficking. At least that’s the argument for keeping it illegal. :(
AFAIK, it’s not federally illegal, but mostly every state bans it. As how Nevada can have prostitution.
Sex work differs from most other type of work in one very significant way - it’s an industry in which capitalists cannot really control the means of production unless slavery (ie, a person can become the private property of another) is legalized and institutionalized. In other words, a sex worker - for the most part - is not as easily coerced into selling their labor to capitalists like most workers can be, and capitalists hate when people have a way to opt out of being hosts for their parasitism.
Sex work also has a way of subverting patriarchal norms upon which the status quo rests.
This is not to say that sex work is automatically a revolutionary, anti-capitalist or even “empowering” thing by itself - there are plenty of ways in which our socio-economic systems allows and enables de facto slavery without calling it slavery - but it certainly doesn’t fit into the neat class hierarchy that capitalists wants society to be trapped within.
You’re reading too much into it. The primary reason is puritan values. To be fair, the taboo on promiscuity is likely due to the lack of contraceptives and risks of getting sexually transmitted diseases. But access to contraceptives and education would lessen the risks these days. Though people are still creatures of habits so sex and sex work are still taboo for many without questioning why it has been in the first place.
Sex work also has a way of subverting patriarchal norms upon which the status quo rests.
cough, what? No, it reinforces those norms. Men in power get to have women at their beck and call.
This isn’t a capitalist thing. Just look at how profitable the sex industry is in Nevada.
It’s a “holier than thou” thing that we just haven’t been able to get rid of in our society.
As much as I like calling out greed for what it is, this simply isn’t one of those cases.
cough, what?
You read correctly the first time. It’s a lot more difficult to entrap sex workers in patriarchal hierarchies than a housewife (for instance)… this should not be too difficult to understand.
This isn’t a capitalist thing.
All sex work in the world today exists under a capitalist mode of production - as far as I can tell, there is (officially, at least) no such thing as “publicly-funded” sex work… and that is unfortunate.
Wait till you learn that you can be self employed outside of sex work.
For the most parts its just christian morality still ingrained in our society.
Wait till you learn that you can be self employed outside of sex work.
Yes, the homeless people trying to sell me trinkets at the intersection certainly seems to prove your point.
I disagree with this entire claim. Sex workers are notorious for “having a price” to do nearly anything. I would say they are more susceptible to doing disgusting shit for money. There’s a reason why there’s an ongoing joke about sex workers getting shit on during their trips to dubai.
Sex workers are notorious for “having a price” to do nearly anything.
And what do you think the rest of us do, eh Clyde? How many sex workers have to piss in bottles to make Jeff Bezos richer?
There’s a reason we don’t use the term “prostitute” any more - it’s got something to do with the fact that understanding how capitalism works very quickly makes it real clear who the real “prostitutes” are…
It means staying awake, staying aware and thinking, not sleepwalking through life.
I’m assuming they’re arresting the sex workers and not the politicians and military officials?
Hopefully neither, and they’ll arrest the organizers/pimps/etc.
sex workers and clients should be the lowest priority.
You know what they say about hoping, you can hope in one hand and bang an escort in the other hand and see which hand fills up quicker.
Anybody remember that one piece about our servicemen being involved in trafficking women overseas about three years ago that was swept under the rug?
