Essay, Research Paper: Prostitution 2

Solicited Sex
Two consenting adults can have sex, so why is it illegal for two consenting adults to have sex but to have one pay the other. Prostitution should be legal because it would save money and make the live of partakers more safe.
The legalization of prostitution would save tax payers money. The average cost, according to San Francisco police department, of an arrest, trial, and incarceration of a prostitute is 2,000 dollars. If prostitution was legal would eliminate this cost. Along with no longer having the cost of arresting people involved in prostitution, but the government would be able to tax the prostitutes income like it taxes everyone else. This would create millions of dollars that could, if need be, be used to regulate prostitution.
If prostitution was legal and regulated it would be safer for clients. COYOTE s (a organization lobbying for prostitution) has a plan to regulate prostitution where all prostitutes would have to have a license to work. This would be helpful because to be licensed they would have to go through a class to educate them on sexually transmitted diseases and be periodically checked for them. This would lower the already low statistic by the US Department of Health that says only 3-5% of the sexually transmitted disease in the US are related to prostitution. Better educated prostitutes would be able to recognize problems with there clients and decline services to them. Another part of COYOTE s plan is the prostitutes would be able to by insurance that covered the treatment of STDs. This is so prostitutes would no longer have to continue working until they were healed or again approved to work. All of this would just benefit the clients, but there are benefits for the prostitutes as well.
If prostitution was legal the fact from San Francisco prostitution task force that only 4% of prostitutes that are raped report it to the police would change for the better. Lets say that Sally is standing on a street corner and someone asks to join her for a ride. This is the only way she has ever known how to make money she goes along. Now lets say that after the business transaction is done the guy refuses to pay and beats her for insisting that he does. Sally bruised, and no richer than she was before, knows that she can not go to the police because she has been arrested before for prostitution and would be turned away or arrested again, so she doesn t go. Another rapist on the lose to do it again. If prostitution was legal they would not have to subject themselves to the risk of walking streets, and instead work in brothels or create their own businesses.
According to the San Francisco prostitution task force 85-90% of prostitutes that are arrested work on the street, although street work accounts for approximately 20% of prostitutes. So the polices efforts are only affecting a smallest amount of prostitutes. A very disturbing fact that the San Francisco prostitution task force found is that a large amount of prostitutes that are arrested are women of color. This is only a disturbing statistic if you also the minority of prostitutes are women of color. This means that police are using the laws to be raciest.
Why is being rewarded for being physically attractive or sexually competent considered illegal? Commercial sex is demeaning only when an uneducated society defines it to be so and makes it a crime. There is nothing degrading about earning an honest living the best way you know how. Some would regard janitorial work as degrading. The Commercial sex information service states that in many cases, circumstances prevent prostitutes from finding real work, no matter how much they would like to. A good example of this is that they might have arrest records which ensure that no firm will hire them. In a way society is being a hypocrite in that by having prostitutes arrested gives them police records and then no one will hire them because they have a record so they have to go back to prostitution.
You can t stop prostitution so you work with it and make it the best it can be. This was said by Sgt. Dave Rossell a police officer in Ontario Canada were prostitution is legal. It is true that in a perfect world no one would need prostitution, but we have so many other problems in this world that need to be taken care of before prostitution that it should not be illegal. As well legal prostitution would save money, make money, and make the whole process safer for both client and prostitute.
Bibliography
Discrimination vs. Legalization. Freedom USA. 1997.
http://www.freedomusa.org/couotela/decrim.html (1 April 2000)
Fact vs. Fiction. Commercial Sex Information Service. 1999.
http://www.walnet.org/csis/groups/swav/hognschool/fictionfact.html (1 April 2000)
Loebner, Hugh. Magna Carta for Sex Workers.
http://www.loebner.net/freedom/magana-carta.html (1 April 2000)
Stats on prostitution. Prostitutes education Network. 1996.
http://www.bayswan.org/stats.html (1 April 2000)