“Corral’s reckless chase was in pursuit of someone suspected of soliciting prostitution. The whole business was kicked off by the suspect offering to pay an undercover female cop posing as an adult sex worker.
Police put in danger the lives of countless people in order to arrest someone for trying to have consensual but non-state-sanctioned sex.”
“As with so many overly punitive or privacy-invading schemes surrounding sex work, policies like the one taking effect in North Carolina have been sold under the guise of stopping human trafficking—despite targeting anyone involved in paid sexual exchange, even when it’s between consenting adults.
Cops, politicians, and antiprostitution activists argue that by targeting anyone who would pay for sex, they’re going to “end demand” for all prostitution—thereby also thwarting forced, coerced, and underage prostitution, aka human trafficking or sex trafficking.
This is absurd, of course. We can’t eradicate the human sex drive, nor can we ensure that everyone can fulfill it without money changing hands. The state is not going to “end demand” for sex, no matter how hard it tries.
Besides, we know from other types of prohibition that increasingly punitive laws don’t have the major deterrent effect that proponents suggest. A certain sort of person will be deterred by something being criminalized at all, but many people willing to risk arrest and punishment aren’t likely to be deterred by the fact that they could potentially receive a longer sentence.
What is likely to happen with increased criminalization of prostitution customers is that customers will actually gain more power and more of an upper hand in sex work negotiations. After all, they’re the ones incurring more risk (at least in North Carolina and Texas; Oklahoma seems to have ramped up penalties on everyone involved). Undoubtedly, this will make customers less likely to submit to screening methods and perhaps less likely to act in other ways that are beneficial to sex workers.
In the end, sex workers will be the real victims of this policy change.
The vast majority of customers will never be caught and never face increased punishment. But the threat exists for everyone, and the ramifications of this increased threat will reverberate throughout the sex work scene in North Carolina, with potential consequences for anyone involved in selling sex.”
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“Ramping up penalties for prostitution customers illustrates one of the many ways in which authorities are repeating the mistakes of the war on drugs in their war on sex trafficking.
As the drug war ramped up, we saw ever-escalating penalties: more prison time, more severe charges, more conditions on those convicted, etc.
As the drug war ramped up, we saw a shift from law enforcement focus on major drug suppliers to anyone selling drugs to anyone buying drugs.
The drug war shift to targeting drug buyers was even sold as an “end demand” strategy, with advocates arguing that we could stamp out drug trafficking (the supply side) by going harder after drug users (the demand side).”
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“Yes, we massively ramped up drug arrests, prosecutions, and convictions. We filled our jails and prisons beyond capacity with people found guilty of drug crimes. We devastated many lower-income communities by putting so many people from them behind bars while simultaneously creating incentives for gang activity to thrive. We threw boatloads of money at enforcement, and enabled all sorts of crazy police-state schemes in service of this. We militarized police and poked a million holes in civil liberties.
We did not, however, end demand for drugs. We did not stamp out drug addiction and drug-related gang activity. We most emphatically did not win the drug war.
And we will not end demand for sex, nor stamp out sexual exploitation and sex-related crime, by repeating all of the drug war’s mistakes. But states like North Carolina seem intent on trying. ”
“Situations like the ones we’ve seen in Lewisville, West Ocean City, and countless other places highlight how bankrupt our current approach to “helping human trafficking victims” is. If these women really are in trouble, there has got to be a better way to get them services than making them jack off a cop (sometimes several times) first. And if they’re neither victims nor perpetuating harm against anyone, then leave them alone.”
“What we’ve really got here, for the most part, is a bunch of adult men and women trying to engage in private and consensual sexual activity—and the state saying, no, you should go to jail for that.
It’s a gross infringement on privacy and bodily autonomy masquerading as a blow against the baddest of bad guys.”
“Two women who claim they were paid for sex by former Rep. Matt Gaetz provided House ethics investigators with “numerous” photos related to time they spent with the Florida Republican, a lawyer for the women said Tuesday, including from an alleged 2019 trip to New York.
The women said they were paid by the former congressman for sex on that trip, during which they also joined Gaetz at a Fox News studio while he filmed a TV appearance, their attorney Joel Leppard told CNN’s Erin Burnett on “OutFront.” Gaetz allegedly covered the women’s travel costs as well, Leppard said.
The women additionally provided the House Ethics Committee with selfies Gaetz is said to have sent them, according to their lawyer. They also testified that they sent nude photos to Gaetz, sometimes at his request, Leppard said.”
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“Leppard noted the House panel heard testimony from several other witnesses.
“The evidence that the House has, I would presume, is overwhelming, because my clients were just two of the other witnesses, and there are very important witnesses who have yet to come out and give a preview of what the House Ethics Committee results might show,” he said.
House investigators, according to the lawyer, asked the two women about records they had obtained showing payments, largely transmitted electronically, allegedly made to them by Gaetz. Leppard said the records showed one of his clients was paid more than $6,000 by the congressman and the other more than $4,000.
“What I’m telling you is just a fraction of the evidence that’s available, of the thousands of documents” the House obtained, Leppard said.”
“On its face, there’s nothing wrong with providing additional psychological support for federal agents who work with trafficking survivors. But HSI—a division of Immigration and Customs Enforcement—has quite a questionable record when it comes to “helping” trafficking victims. At times, HSI has been known to subject suspected victims to potentially traumatizing experiences. And much of the “human trafficking” work the agency does just involves plain old prostitution stings.”
“In 2023, Maine became the first U.S. state to partially decriminalize prostitution. It’s unlikely to be the last. And sex-worker rights activists are concerned.
By criminalizing prostitution customers but not sex workers, Maine’s law may seem like a step in the right direction. But it threatens to derail momentum for full decriminalization, while recreating many of full prohibition’s harms.
It also represents a paternalistic philosophical premise: that sex workers are all victims and their consent to sexual activity is—like a minor’s—irrelevant. And this premise is used to justify all sorts of bad programs and policies, including drastically ramping up penalties for people who pay for sex.”
“The Department of Justice claimed this was about “keeping women and children across America safe” from sex trafficking. But behind that bravado, the government’s actual case was clearly something less noble. A performance of protection. A publicity stunt. A massive scapegoating set against the backdrop of a moral panic. And a politicized prosecution against people who engaged in and defended the most dangerous thing to any government: free speech.
Ultimately, the Backpage prosecution was a small-scale tragedy that upended individual lives as well as something much bigger. Its effects were wide-reaching and devastating for many sex workers. And yet—it wasn’t ultimately about sexual commerce or sexual crimes, not at its core. This was a warning shot fired at entities that enable all sorts of digital communication and a test bed for further legal attacks on tech companies that won’t suppress speech as politicians see fit.
That Lacey was convicted of “international concealment money laundering” is bizarre, since the money transfer was not concealed: His lawyer informed the IRS about it, as required by law. And it was not made for nefarious purposes, according to Scottsdale lawyer John Becker’s trial testimony. Lacey had needed some place to park his savings after U.S. banks, scared by a years-long propaganda crusade against Backpage, had decided doing business with the company or its associates was a reputational risk. So Becker and another lawyer advised Lacey to deposit the money—$17 million, on which taxes had been paid—with a foreign bank.
It’s hard to see how Lacey conducted a financial transaction “to conceal or disguise the nature, the location, the source, the ownership, or the control of the proceeds of specified unlawful activity,” even if you accept the government’s premise that this money was derived from unlawful activity. And, to be clear, I don’t accept that premise, since Backpage’s business should have been protected by the First Amendment (not to mention Section 230 of federal communications law).
But Backpage made money from adult ads, and the government alleges that some of those ads were illegal enticements to prostitution. Therefore, the case alleged, anything done with money made from Backpage was de facto illegal. That’s how Lacey—and former Backpage executives Jed Brunst and Scott Spear—wound up facing money laundering charges for merely moving money around.”
“the Maine measure would institute what’s known as “asymmetrical criminalization” or the “Nordic Model” of prostitution laws, a scheme criminalizing people who pay for sex but not totally criminalizing those who sell it. This model has become popular in parts of Europe and among certain strains of U.S. feminists.
But keeping sex work customers criminalized keeps in place many of the harms of total criminalization. The sex industry must still operate underground, which makes it more difficult for sex workers to work safely and independently. Sex workers are still barred from advertising their services. Customers are still reluctant to be screened. And cops still spend time ferreting out and punishing people for consensual sex instead of focusing on sex crimes where someone is actually being victimized.
A recent study of prostitution laws in European countries found full decriminalization or legalization of prostitution linked to lower rape rates, while countries that instituted the Nordic model during the study period saw their rates of sexual violence go up.”
“Overall, liberalizing prostitution laws was linked to a significant decrease in rape rates, while prohibition was linked to a significant increase—but the magnitude of these two shifts was far from equal. Rather, “the magnitude of prohibiting commercial sex is about four times as large as that of liberalizing it,” write Gao and Petrova.
The average rape rate in the sample countries was nine rapes per 100,000 people. Countries that liberalized prostitution laws saw a decrease of approximately three rapes per 100,000 people, relative to countries that did not change their prostitution laws. Meanwhile, countries that banned or further criminalized prostitution saw an increase of around 11 rapes per 100,000 people, relative to the control countries.”
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“Gao and Petrova do offer the caveat that “changes in prostitution laws might not be random. It is possible that a country changes the laws as part of a general program to improve women’s social status and is thus instituting other policies that may affect rape rates,” and although they attempted to control for this in various ways, these techniques “may not fully address the possible nonrandomness of prostitution laws.””
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“their findings are in line with a spate of previous research linking liberalized sex work laws to decreases in sexual violence. For instance, a 2018 study showed that rapes in Rhode Island decreased when the state temporarily decriminalized indoor prostitution. A 2017 study found fewer sexual assaults after legal street prostitution zones were opened in 25 Dutch cities. Another 2017 study linked the launch of Craigslist “erotic services” ads in various U.S. cities to decreases in female homicide rates.”