A New British Lottery?
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:03 PM

No, not that one to pay for the London Olympics (later complemented by a more straightforward raid on National Lottery proceeds). This lottery is proposed to get people to vote -- or as those wacky Brits say, to "incentivise" voting. The suggestion to use gambling to lure punters to the polls survived a filter that screened out the possibility of doughnut giveaways because -- I am not making this up -- of concerns about obesity.

The linked Guardian article doesn't mention that the Yanks had the lottery idea first (though California's primacy in doughnut distribution merits notice); Arizona voters, uncompensated, didn't care for the idea.

Labels: Arizona, Britain, lottery, obesity

 
Arizona's Later Closing Time After Six Months
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 2:25 PM

A little more than six months ago Arizona changed its closing time laws, allowing alcohol to be sold until 2AM instead of the previous 1AM, and allowing bars to remain open until 2:30 instead of 1:15. When the bill was signed, the Governor asked for an evaluation of the new system after six months, and that evaluation has now been produced. The still-quite-preliminary verdict: "A law that delayed Arizona's cutoff for alcohol sales to 2 a.m. has shifted when many DUI arrests and alcohol-related crashes take place but has not increased their numbers, two state agencies say in new reports."

Labels: alcohol, Arizona, closing hours, driving

 
Arizona Prostitution Update
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 1:32 PM

Last November Vice Squad reported on a prostitution sting in Maricopa County, Arizona -- a sting that seemed to me to be more about generating publicity than about promoting public safety. (The November operation was part of a larger sting effort that was initiated in September.) Members of the media were embedded in the operation so that good footage would be forthcoming, and the arrested were taken to the parking lot of a shopping mall to be processed. Lots of media happened to be at that parking lot, too, coincidentally. Some 400 officers were involved in the stings, and their presence was supplemented by volunteers. A Vice Squad post in January relayed the Maricopa County sheriff's defense of the tactics in the sting -- he allowed some of Maricopa's finest to disrobe and to engage in some touching of alleged prostitutes.

Today we learn from the Arizona Republic that county prosecutors don't have the stomach to go forward with criminal charges:

About 60 people arrested last year in a prostitution sting will not be criminally charged because Maricopa County sheriff's deputies used tactics including nudity and sexual contact in their undercover operations, county prosecutors announced Tuesday.

County prosecutors believe the two-month sting, which targeted prostitution suspects and men accused of soliciting sex for money, was botched by sheriff's officials who allowed undercover deputies and Sheriff's Posse members to remove their clothing and engage in sex acts on videotape.

Of course, the sheriff of Maricopa County now hopes that the feds will take up the prosecution, though in the absence of a federal law against prostitution, he might have his work cut out for him. At least he won't have any trouble getting volunteers for his future posses, given the activities that posse members can engage in.

Labels: Arizona, policing, prostitution

 
Testing Accused Prostitutes for STDs
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 8:52 PM

Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution today links to a
2000 story out of Singapore, concerning deporting
foreign women with HIV. There is a long history
of essentially scapegoating women, particularly
foreigners and prostitutes, for the spread of
sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). As the
Marginal Revolution post concerns foreigners with
HIV, Vice Squad will focus on prostitutes.

The notion that sellers should face stricter regulations
than buyers in vice transactions isn't per se nutty, by any
means, in that the typical seller is involved in a
much higher volume of trades than the typical buyer.
And in vices from gambling to drugs to prostitution,
enforcement efforts are regularly focused on sellers.
(Here's an earlier Vice Squad post on this issue.)

But scapegoating is another matter entirely, and
many of the mandatory testing regulations seem
aimed more at humiliation than at public health.
Recently, a Ukrainian woman accused of prostitution
in Turkey tested positive for HIV. She was then
marched, weeping, in front of television cameras, while
the police encouraged her former customers to get
tested. Then she was deported. The police were
relying on a ruling -- it had been rescinded, but they
didn't know that -- that required public exposure for
HIV-positive foreigners arrested for prostitution.
(Apparently you can't contract HIV from a fellow
countryperson). Here's a Chicago Tribune article
(registration required) about the incident. The article
quotes one local as saying that the town is
conservative and that prostitute women are not
welcome there. Perhaps he should have checked
with the men involved in the more than 1300 sexual
encounters in which the woman was alleged to
have engaged during the previous three months.

Surely such treatment would never happen in America,
no? Well, maybe not, but an article concerning that
over-the-top prostitution sting in Maricopa County,
Arizona, in November claimed that Arizona state law
requires STD testing of those who are accused (not
convicted!) of being prostitutes. Here's the original
Vice Squad post on the Maricopa County incident,
with the article link and a quotation concerning the
presumed state law.

In the late 1860s, Britain was finding that some of
its naval ships were unfit for service because so
many of the crew were disabled by STDs. How did they
respond? They passed the Contagious Diseases Acts that
made it possible for the police to arrest and test
women who happened to be in the wrong neighborhood
or were otherwise believed to be prostitutes. Funny,
isn't it, how punishments for vice crimes have a way
of avoiding that messy due-process-of-law tradition
that requires conviction for a crime before punishment
is meted out?

Vice Squad hero John Stuart Mill, author of (among
other things) The Subjection of Women and On
Liberty, asked to testify before a Royal Commission
formed to look into the Acts. Mill was magnificent,
if years before his time. He basically took an
economic approach. He suggested that men who
frequented prostitutes understood the risks, as
did the prostitutes themselves. Like other
contracts among adults, these exchanges did not
require government intervention. The public interest
was twofold. First, some of the customers might
pass along their diseases to their unsuspecting
wives -- an externality, if you will. So rather than
scapegoat the prostitutes, Mill suggested that those
who passed on the diseases to innocent victims
should be punished. The second public issue was
the fitness of Her Majesty's seamen. Here, Mill
testified in favor of the direct approach, testing the
seamen themselves and punishing those who allowed
themselves to become unfit for duty in this manner.

For the story on Mill and the Contagious Diseases
Acts, see The Life of John Stuart Mill, by
Michael St. John Packe, New York: Macmillan, 1954.

Labels: Arizona, Asia, Mill, prostitution, shaming, Singapore