I agree with you that escorting itself should be decriminalized - I don't think that any woman who decides to make a living that way should face arrest for doing so. However, sex traffickers and pimps have to go. These people terrorize the women that work for them, often beating and sometimes killing them. The women are often kidnapped or extorted into working for these guys in the first place. Worst of all, they take their earnings from them, ensuring that they'll never be able to escape that lifestyle.
I was in the Las Vegas airport a few weeks ago. When I went to the bathroom, on the inside of the stalls, the Las Vegas Metro Police had placed notices with a phone number saying that help for victims of human trafficking is available. I noticed several billboards around town with the same message. If this has become such a widespread problem that law enforcement has resorted to trying to contact victims in airport bathrooms on their way into town, then they need to step up efforts nail the pimps and traffickers. This shutdown of BackPage was a big step backwards in that effort.
If this has become such a widespread problem that law enforcement has resorted to trying to contact victims in airport bathrooms on their way into town, then they need to step up efforts nail the pimps and traffickers.
The assumes the law enforcement is sincere in its effort. Actual story could well be:
1. Put up ads everywhere seeking to help victims so as to convince the average person the problem is huge.
It's not only women that make their living in sex work.
Are support people necessarily victimizers? Is someones driver automatically their pimp? Is the realtionship better or worse if it was transacted through an app?
If someone hosts child pornography on an AWS hard drive; should Jeff Bezos go to jail for it?
There's a lot of subtlety here.
And a government that is manifestly and overtly corrupt has no business enforcing morality on people.
Good point. I think that escorting itself should be actually legalized. Not only because they would pay tax and have a better life than they have now, but also because this would make pimps obsolete and would help cracking down sex traffickers. Men/women using a legal escorting service could check for license/id, making the whole thing safer for everyone.
Sex traffickers and pimps are for prostitution as gangs and the mafia are for drug sellers. We have legal marijuana without gang shootings, murder and smuggling, so the problem seems to be one about competition and making the legal options more competitive to the consumer compared to the illegal one. Preferable by making a self reinforcing environment where as more money getting put in the legal sector the more incentive the police has to go after the illegal one and the more the costumers want to spend at the legal one.
I was in the Las Vegas airport a few weeks ago. When I went to the bathroom, on the inside of the stalls, the Las Vegas Metro Police had placed notices with a phone number saying that help for victims of human trafficking is available. I noticed several billboards around town with the same message. If this has become such a widespread problem that law enforcement has resorted to trying to contact victims in airport bathrooms on their way into town, then they need to step up efforts nail the pimps and traffickers. This shutdown of BackPage was a big step backwards in that effort.