Last year, my city began cracking down on prostitution, child porn and other “related” offenses. In the mainstream media, these sort of things get lumped together. As a person who is capable of critical thinking, I have to wonder if this should be the case.
This focus on sex crimes meant a change of some laws, including newly-proposed fines for people caught providing sex for money or soliciting sex workers. Public humiliation in the form of releasing names and photos has also been named as one of the police department’s strategies to fix sex “crimes.”
Intellectually, I understand why the police want to shame people into obeying laws, but I just cannot put my full support behind illegalization of sex work. And I don’t think a person’s name or reputation needs be thrown under the bus for soliciting a sex worker when there are far more serious crimes — crimes that actually hurt people — to be investigating and trying.
In a recent newspaper article, the author discussed a man recently arrested. He had been a school teacher. Before his name had even been made public, he resigned. His career was over, of course. But I can’t help but feel like this is an extreme that a person shouldn’t have to take. After all, he will be fined without having to serve any jail time. Either it’s serious enough for jail time or it’s not — and their names don’t need to be made public.
Perhaps I come at this from a personal point of view. When this effort began last year, the police conducted an online sting. They posed as sex workers and even children/teenagers online to lure people out. Several people did proposition minors and went to meet with them. I have nothing wrong with this sort of sting. One of the men who simply arranged to meet an of-age sex worker. Upon arriving, he was instead met by the police who ushered him to the police station where he stayed overnight because it was a late Friday.
This man was a good friend’s ex/on-again off-again/it’s complicated friends with benefits. Today, he’s been dead for almost a year. He took his life because no only did the police release his name, but a bang-up job by the local media splashed his name among those who solicited a minor for sex. This was not the case, but reports weren’t amended until after his passing.
Despite the fact that the media and police are immediately releasing names without fact checking, this is obviously still enough of a problem that the police are performing major stings almost a year later. Humiliation isn’t a deterrent for people, even if they are otherwise upstanding citizens. According to the police, the type of people who are soliciting sex workers are from all walks of life. These are people who are willing to pay for sex. Nothing more or less.
As a woman, I can think of many worse ways to pay bills. I would rather live in a place where my rights as a human being are protected if I am a sex worker, rather than my name slandered and rights ignored simply because of my line of work. But I don’t live in a place like that because the world is still so far from that. =/
