The Mosley Case
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:02 AM

Repugnance is a funny thing. Many things that were widely viewed as repugnant years ago, such as blood transfusions or charging interest for loans, are widely accepted today. And other practices that used to be common and accepted -- indentured servitude, say -- have come to be viewed with repugnance. (See economist Alvin Roth's paper for more on repugnance.) Out-of-the mainstream sexual behaviors seem to be losing their repugnance for many people; there was no hint of residual repugnance in the Supreme Court's 2003 overturning of anti-sodomy statutes. And now, in Britain, there is a trial that holds the prospect of reducing the repugnance that sometimes is induced by or aimed at sadomasochism. The case involves a claim of invasion of privacy.

The basic story is that a British tabloid solicited some footage of a sadomasochistic afternoon involving 5 prostitutes and a prominent 68-year old motor-sport and married man, Max Mosley, whose father Oswald was a leading British fascist of the 1930s. [Oswald and his second wife, Max's mother, were interred by the British during the war, around the time that Max was born and toddling through his early years.] The sadomasochistic scene involved some German authoritarian role play, which the tabloid deemed to be Nazi-themed; the not-safe-for-work footage is you-tubeable. (The dominatrix who recorded the activities, slated to be a chief witness for the newspaper, has been dropped from testifying.) Max is contending that the S&M session was a private matter of no public interest. The newspaper's best defence, I suppose, is that the session involved illegal S&M, and the fact that the behavior was criminal provides a public interest. (Prostitution per se is not illegal in Britain, and that angle does not appear to be helpful to the newspaper. Some of the prostitutes have testified for Mosley, and there is no whiff of coercion in the pricey five hour affair, which ended with a cup of tea, of course.)

Is S&M illegal in Britain? Yes, if the practice involves lasting bodily damage -- though there is some dispute over how lasting that damage has to be. The legal standard dates from a 1980's case (the Spanner case) arising out of consensual homosexual S&M activities.

But win or lose, the Mosley case might be reducing the repugnance that is sometimes felt towards sadomasochism. Seemingly normal people enjoy it and practice it -- why should others care? Mosley claims that he has been an S&M enthusiast for 45 years, and he defended the behavior in court:

Impassive in a charcoal suit and sober tie he [Mosley] told the court: “I definitely disagree with the suggestion that any of this is depraved or immoral” adding that it was a “perfectly harmless act between consenting adults.”

Mosley's position has been gaining broad support -- and perhaps increasing the acceptance of S&M by non-practitioners.

Vice Squad, now back in Chicago after a (masochistic?) couple of months abroad, proposes some regulation of adult extreme S&M (6-page pdf here).

Labels: Britain, litigation, prostitution, sex

 
The Poisoned Fruits of Comstockery
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 1:03 PM

Anthony Comstock, licensed vice suppressor, would brag of the people he drove to suicide by prosecuting them for their First Amendment-protected activity. (Though it took a long time and much persecution for their activity to receive First Amendment protection.) Comstock's victims included Ida Craddock, whom he pursued Javert-like.

Our current Comstockery has claimed another victim, it seems, today. Comstock would be proud. This victim even was convicted in Comstock-fashion, for misusing the mails. Hers is the second needless death from this pointless prosecution of voluntary adult behavior. Madness envelops us.

Labels: policing, prostitution

 
Another Cost of Criminalising Vice
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 9:40 PM

The officers responsible for killing Sean Bell following his bachelor party at a strip club have been acquitted of all charges by a New York judge. I have not followed the case or the testimony so for the sake of this post I will accept that the verdict is reasonable. Other cases of police shootings of unarmed people -- most notably the Diallo killing -- also have resulted in exoneration for the police. (There might be an argument that those shot in the Bell case used their car as a weapon, but even if true, that only occurred because they were suddenly cut-off and boxed in by unmarked police cars. Here's a New York magazine article with many of the details.)

Sean Bell is dead, and there is no criminal responsibility for the police. It isn't hard to understand the latter part. Police have to make split-second decisions in highly uncertain and stressful situations. Lethal force, which can be applied at a distance, is widely available. A police officer who guesses that a suspect is holding a cell phone could easily be killed, if that guess is wrong and the object turns out to be a gun. (The first police officer to shoot in the Bell case believed from overheard conversations inside the club that a gun might be present.) I think that this is one of the main reasons that courts are extremely reluctant to convict police after the shooting of an unarmed citizen.

But what is the lesson? Well, it is a general point in public policy: the less effective are after-the-fact sanctions, the stronger the case for imposing before-the-fact controls. It is very difficult, and perhaps even undesirable in most circumstances, to hold police accountable for errors in judgment that result in the death of innocent (or even guilty!) civilians. Therefore, one should only initiate police/citizen encounters when the stakes are high. The police who killed Sean Bell were at the strip club as part of an anti-prostitution sting operation.

The criminalisation of prostitution puts prostitutes, clients, and police at great risk. The toll in the US is small relative to the deaths brought on by the criminalisation of drugs, but it is significant nonetheless. The criminalisation of prostitution isn't necessary -- many places get by just fine with legal, regulated prostitution. Even if prostitution policing were perfect and costless, and even if prostitutes were not put at great risk from clients in a prohibition regime, I would not favor the criminalisation of prostitution. But the violence suffered -- by prostitutes, johns, and police -- as a result of criminalisation makes a strong case for a legal, regulated adult sex market. One of the enduring mysteries of vice policy is why this steady violence has had so little impact on improving public policy towards prostitution.

Labels: policing, prostitution

 
Financial Services for Sex Workers
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 4:15 PM

Academics like me have access to a "Save More Tomorrow" plan, in which we can overcome our usual present-bias in an attractive, painless manner and move our savings rate closer to what our long-run selves think is desirable. Most people are not so fortuitously situated. Commercial sex workers, who can earn substantial sums, often have a hard time saving money, for various reasons. First, they might be caught up in a high expense lifestyle, perhaps including substantial expenditures on alcohol and other drugs. Second, they might face demands (even extortionate ones) from those who recognize that sex workers might have some cash hanging about. For these and other reasons, I think that a robust policy towards prostitution generally should include access to financial counseling, along with help for alcohol and other drug abuse.

Via Tyler at Marginal Revolution, we learn of a bank that promotes savings accounts for sex workers in India. The bank even facilitates savings by sending employees around to pick up deposits. Here's the BBC story.

Vice Squad noted back in September that Hungary was providing financial planning services to sex workers.

Labels: India, prostitution

 
In Which My Forgetfulness Plays a Role
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 3:48 PM

The loyal Vice Squad reader will recall that a mere two days ago, we posted about a memoir by a British prostitute. I had picked up a copy of the memoir at Heathrow, I think, in December. (I cannot resist those 2 for 1 or 3 for 2 or other book 'sales' at the airport -- even though with the current exchange rate, an American ends up paying $25 per paperback.) But it seems that I had picked up another copy of the same book on an earlier trip, and had managed to forget all about it. (I have a tendency to have a few bags of books lying about, unopened since purchase.) So I have in my possession an extra, unread copy of Confessions of a Working Girl, and would be happy to send it to a good home. If you are 18 or over and live in the US, and are the first person to e-mail me at vicesquad_at_gmail.com, I will send you the book. [Update -- the book has been claimed, and is en route to Charlottesville.]

Labels: Britain, prostitution, solipsism

 
Obligatory Prostitution Post
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:41 PM

Well, prostitution was headline news today -- so there's no need to comment upon that (lest Vice Squad posts be viewed as pertinent). But to not stray too far afield, perhaps it is time to talk about prostitution in Britain. After all, it has been a few weeks since Vice Squad reported on a book by a British prostitute -- once more into the breach.

This time the book in question is Confessions of a Working Girl, by “Miss S”. Again, we have to take it on faith that the author really had the experiences that she describes – but that faith is easy to muster for this book (at least for me). The author was starting at university and looking to make some money, so she took a job at a massage parlour – actually a brothel – near where she lived. (These events took place about ten years ago, though that is not mentioned in the book; rather, we learn the timing from Miss S’s comments on her Amazon.uk webpage.) The book is more or less her diary of approximately eleven months’ employment in the brothel. You know how Bridget Jones records her weight and her alcohol and cigarette consumption in her diary entries? Miss S tells you how many clients she services, and how much money she makes. There are 723 clients in toto, and she earns about 20 pounds each; she figures that it amounts to about twice what she made in an earlier “normal job.”

Belle de Jour was an upmarket call girl, and Miss S worked in a rather well-managed (no drugs allowed, for instance) brothel – neither of these writers dealt with the perils of streetwalking. Their memoirs, therefore, cannot present a full overview of Britain's commercial sex sector, of course -- but both authors are revealing about their slice of the industry. Miss S has a tendency to tell only half of a story, but nevertheless, the details that come out about how the brothel operates are pretty interesting. Clients, for instance, can exit through a back door, to lessen the chance that someone they know will see them leaving a massage parlour. The working girls don’t wear perfume, because that might be noticed by wives later; if they feel the need for scent, they use men’s deodorant instead. Miss S also is possessed (at least authorially) with an amazingly even temperament. Bad things do occur in the brothel -- a police raid, undertaken not for running an illegal brothel but on suspicion of drugs; some Russian brothel employees being taken away when they are uncovered as illegal immigrants; a client of another employee who refuses to take a 'no' to his request for sex without a condom – but these revelations all are described in a sort of all-in-a-day’s-work manner. The difficulty in maintaining a regular life outside of the brothel comes through, however. Miss S's biggest problem had nothing to do with the brothel – she and her flatmates were stalked by a drug dealer and his crew.

Miss S cannot match the stylish prose of Belle de Jour, nor does she try. But she comes across as less self-absorbed than the delightful Belle, and as honest. I think that I prefer her sort of blue-collar book to Belle's more artsy memoir -- though this reaction might reflect the fact that Belle's book lacked novelty, only because so much of it was taken from Belle's (quite novel, and award-winning) blog.

Miss S's brothel work ends with her heading to London to become a stripper, or to specialise in more high-end sex work. (Like Belle, Miss S engaged in legal sex work in Britain – it is the brothel managers who are breaking British law.) The back cover of the book contains a somewhat veiled photo of the author, dressed for work, apparently; the accompanying description indicates that Miss S. did indeed move on to an escort agency, eventually becoming a “fully independent” sex worker. We can expect to learn more in a forthcoming sequel -- which I intend to read, despite being in no hurry to get to Belle's second book.

Labels: Britain, prostitution

 
Indoor v. Outdoor Prostitution
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:17 PM

Today we covered prostitution policy in our Regulation of Vice class. The assigned readings were articles by Weitzer and by Murphy and Venkatesh. Both make a compelling case that indoor prostitution is much safer than outdoor sex work, and also less connected with public nuisance. It is my impression that the extent of violence directed at prostitutes, and its severity, is significantly greater for streetwalkers than for indoor sex workers. Today also brings news of a conviction in the trial of the man who was charged with the December, 2006 murders of five outdoor prostitutes in the Ipswich area in Britain. I recognize that legalization and regulation of indoor commercial sex work, and possibly even of some streetwalking, is no panacea, but the shortcomings have to be immense to counteract fully the almost assured fall in fatal violence directed at prostitutes that would accompany legalization. Incidentally, the convicted murderer had frequented massage parlours for 25 years, and as far as is known, without incident; he had been familiar to outdoor sex workers in Ipswich for about three years prior to the murders. A not-too-long paper (29 pages, double-spaced) presenting an overview of my thoughts concerning regulating pornography and prostitution is available here.

Labels: Britain, prostitution, robustness

 
Due Processless in Seattle
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:32 PM

It is so much easier to deter crime by punishing those you suspect of having committed a crime, rather than going to all the rigmarole of actually, you know, convicting them of a crime. This fact has finally come to the attention of Seattle, which hopes to seize the cars of folks who are suspected of soliciting prostitutes. The city attorney doesn't even hide the fact that it is a punishment intended to deter (though, um, wouldn't punishing unconvicted individuals be, you know, unconstitutional)?: "'The positive thing about forfeiture is it would deter the guys who pick up street prostitutes,' said City Attorney Tom Carr, whose office is studying the legislation."

Incidentally, although I do believe that this measure violates the due process clause of the 14th Amendment, I would be against it even if current Constitutional interpretation were to disagree: even if Constitutional, it is a bad idea. Asset forfeiture skews the priorities of law enforcement, away from those crimes that are most socially costly, towards those that are most lucrative to the law enforcement agency. The linked article offers the view of an assistant city attorney that the city would not be making money, that the forfeited and then sold assets would only cover the city's costs, with the remainder going to social services. But what costs they must have!: "Local law enforcement would retain as much as 90 percent of the money received by the seizure and sale, with the rest to be deposited into a statewide account set up to prevent prostitution."

Vice Squad has long been aghast at civil asset forfeiture provisions which present the skimpiest of quasi-legal fig leaves for covering up the punishment of people who have not been convicted of any crime.

Labels: asset forfeiture, prostitution

 
City-Owned Brothels
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 8:06 PM

A student mentioned in a recent paper that government-owned brothels would never be countenanced. While this might be true in the current US, history provides many examples of state-owned brothels. Ancient Athens featured some government brothels, as did many European and Chinese cities during the Middle Ages. A brave (and now ex-) Vancouver city councillor called for a city-owned brothel in 2005, and I believe that the US federal government briefly administered Nevada's Mustang Ranch in the early 1990s.

Labels: prostitution

 
Belle de Jour's First Book
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 8:00 PM

British call girl/award-winning blogger Belle de Jour published her first book (she now has a second, with more on the way) back in 2005. (The book has already inspired a mini-series.) Vice Squad finally got around to reading it, uh, well, I finished today -- maybe we are not as cutting edge as I like to think. Vice Squad is a long-time admirer of Belle's blog, but at first I was not as fond of the book, which is a memoir largely drawn from her blog. The new material includes a short vignette at the beginning, purporting to tell how Belle got into the call girl business. I found the early pages to lack the ring of truth that I have come to associate with Belle, and thought that more lurid material was sort of purposely front-loaded, as if the publisher had suggested that the book would sell better if it could engage those with short attention spans (I do not exempt myself from that characterisation.) But I thought that the book improved, and I ended up enjoying it.

When you compare Belle's book with something similar from across the pond, say, Callgirl: Confessions of an Ivy League Lady of Pleasure, the one thing that jumps out at you is how much easier life is for Belle than for her American cousin. Belle was not engaged in illegal activity in Britain -- prostitution per se is legal. American call girls have to worry about the police and various stings, even if the probability that they will have trouble from that direction is pretty small. The illegality seems to place a significant weight on the mind, a weight that Belle's prose does not betray.

In her blog, Belle would occasionally comment on prostitution control, or provide some interesting (and policy-relevant) details about her profession. These posts are not reproduced in her (first) memoir.

Labels: Britain, prostitution

 
More on the Swedish Approach to Prostitution Control
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 9:14 PM

In Sweden, sales of sex are decriminalised, while the (mostly male) purchasers are behaving illegally. This approach, which does not comport with standard Vice Squad precepts, has been receiving substantial attention in Britain. (The "opposite" approach of criminalising sales of sex while giving a de facto pass to the johns also fails to pass through the Vice Squad filter.) A recent Guardian article opens with a story about a purported john ("torsk" is the Swedish term) who is contacted 8 months after his alleged assignation, and eventually fined about $2,400.

Street prostitution seems to be well down in Sweden since the 1999 adoption of the new rules. But street prostitution seems to be declining in many places, in part because of the rise of the internet. Trafficking of sex workers into Sweden from abroad, according to the article, has increased in recent years, though perhaps not by as great an extent as in some nearby countries.

Last week the Guardian's Sunday sister publication, the Observer, contained an op-ed arguing against the Swedish approach. Some letters in rebuttal -- including one from the MP who is sponsoring British legislation that moves prostitution control in the direction of the Swedish model -- appear in this week's Observer.

Labels: Britain, prostitution, robustness, Sweden

 
Legal Prostitution in the US in the Early 20th Century
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:03 AM

One of the hazards of writing a book is that you might eventually discover something wrong, or infelicitously worded, right at the beginning, and then you are confronted with your error again and again over the years. On page 2 of Regulating Vice I mention that prostitution was "legal in much of the United States in the first two decades of the [20th] century..." I thought that I had said "legal or tolerated" but I didn't actually include the tolerated part. Is it true that prostitution was legal in much of the US early in the 20th century? [Most large cities had red-light districts where prostitution was tolerated -- Storyville in New Orleans was the most famous example. (Scroll down here for more on Storyville; thanks to the SWOP East Sex Workers Outreach Project for the link.) I have seen conflicting claims on whether prostitution was legal or just tolerated in Storyville.] Well, I am still unsure, but it looks as if the answer is "no" -- that is, prostitution was tolerated in much of the US at the time, but it was not legal. I have just reviewed chapter 2 of David Langum's great book on the Mann Act, and it mentions the legalization and regulation of prostitution in St. Louis in 1870. Apparently such regulatory moves were more common, as they provoked a considerable backlash in the form of various purity societies working against legal recognition of prostitution. Nevertheless, Langum states that "almost all of the [urban red-light] districts existed only by tolerance and lacked any legally protected status...[p. 25]," so it looks as if my page 2 claim is wrong. Ugh.

Labels: Mann Act, prostitution, Regulating Vice

 
Vice Legalization as an Anti-Corruption Strategy
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:22 PM

World Bank economist Branko Milanovic discusses all those corrupt countries out there with very poor governance. He sees the spread of corrupt countries to be connected with globalized trade and travel more generally. Thanks to globalization, "In corrupt states, profitability soars in the production of goods and services that are internationally illegal: drugs, sex trafficking, contraband weapons or cigarettes, or counterfeit goods." More trade allows further specialization in production, and some states specialize in the production or distribution of illegal goods, spurring capture of the state apparatus by organized crime. Hectoring politicians in corrupt countries to be more honest ignores the incentives created by these structural features:

A different approach is necessary: legalize the currently illegal activities like prostitution and drug use and modify the often draconian US and European immigration laws that stimulate human trafficking. If prostitution and drugs indeed became like haircuts and candies, their production would obey the same rules: Countries that export beauty services and confectionary products are not notably more corrupt than others.

Bad governance harms economic development. Drug prohibition leads to bad governance, even more so now that global trade has become much less expensive. Drug legalization, therefore, can promote economic development.

Thanks to SWOP East Sex Workers Outreach Project for the pointer.

Labels: drugs, Prohibition, prostitution

 
Regulating Ads for Sexual Services
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:33 PM

This week's Economist has an interesting article on classified advertising in British newspapers for escort services or adult massages or other (presumably) sex-related businesses. There is a concern that some of the ads involve trafficked or underaged women, as opposed to voluntary adult workers. (Adult prostitution per se is legal in Britain, though street walking and the related activity of buyers, "kerb crawling" in cars, is illegal.) "Last month the South Wales Echo ran a story about trafficked women working in Cardiff, only to discover that all of the brothels named in the article had advertisements in the same issue." (Brothels, too, are illegal, as are the activities of pimps or organizers of escort services that provide sex.)

But the British understand harm reduction, so they have not rushed to ban the ads. Following the prostitute murders about one year ago in Ipswich, a local newspaper company consulted with the police, and they agreed to continue to run the ads, to try to keep as much of the trade above-ground as possible. The newspaper requires that such ads be paid for with a check or credit card, so that the advertiser can be located in the event that irregularities appear.

Labels: Britain, marketing, prostitution

 
The BBC Embraces Some Controversial Topics
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:11 PM

A friend of Vice Squad sends us a pointer to this BBC article on disabled people, some of whom have very limited options for 'normal' romantic relationships, paying to have sex with prostitutes. The article focuses on one 25-year-old disabled British man who went to a legal Spanish brothel for sex. Later, he returned with two other disabled men, and BBC cameras (funded by the taxes paid by television owners in Britain) came along. The disabled apparently tend to favor the legalisation of prostitution, if one survey referred to in the article can be believed:

A survey for the Disability Now website in 2005 suggested that 75% of disabled people believed in the legalisation of prostitution, with 62.5% of men and 19.2% of women saying they would use trained sex workers. It's a situation that exists in the Netherlands where a voluntary group provides just such a service for disabled people. Most clients pay for it themselves but some local authorities subsidise the service.

Recall that prostitution per se is already legal in Britain, though associated activities such as solicitation are illegal; the Netherlands has even more liberal laws regarding prostitution.

The article gives time to people who do not support legal prostitution for the disabled or for anyone else, and it has attracted many interesting comments, also on both sides of the issue.

Speaking of interesting uses for the tv tax revenues, the BBC is showing "Fanny Hill," a two-hour adaptation of the famous 18th-century erotic (or indecent, if you prefer) novel, Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, by John Cleland. The book was banned in both Britain and the colonies (er, the US) for more than 200 years after it first appeared. But Cleland's novel has been available legally in Britain since 1970, and is now adapted for publicly-financed tv!

Labels: Britain, obscenity, prostitution

 
A Shift for Vegas: Legal Prostitution is Being Advertised
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:18 PM

Back in July, a federal judge struck down a Nevada state law that prevented the legal brothels (located in rural counties) from advertising in Nevada's two most populous counties, which contain Las Vegas and Reno and in which brothel prostitution is not permitted as a matter of state law. I think that the lawsuit was short-sighted on the part of brothel owners, and that voluminous or particularly provocative ads will increase pressure to end the state acceptance of legal prostitution in rural counties. But so far, it seems, the ads are discreet -- they are targeted away from the good people residing in Las Vegas, and aimed instead at tourists and those dodgy alternative types. The risque' ads come from the Vegas strip clubs, apparently.

Labels: dancing, Las Vegas, Nevada, prostitution

 
A Cost of the Swedish Model of Prostitution Control?
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:31 PM

The social costs of different types of prostitution vary quite a bit, with coerced prostitution being much more objectionable than the adult voluntary trade. Internationally trafficked women who are coerced into prostitution are particularly vulnerable, as generally they have no resources to summon help. So it sometimes happens that they inform a customer of their plight. In Sussex, in the UK, the police are asking customers to be vigilant in looking for signs of coercion, and to report it to the police.

In Sweden, customers of prostitutes are engaging in illegal activity, though the behavior of the prostitutes themselves is not criminalised. Is it likely that Swedish johns would report coerced prostitution to the police, knowing that they might then be subject to arrest? As in the case of drugs, alcohol, and other vices, prostitution policy can't be judged based upon the noble intentions that underlie a policy -- we have to ask about the actual effects. The criminalisation of prostitution renders prostitutes, particularly streetwalkers, at enormous risk of being a victim of violence. The criminalisation of johns, likewise, might not conduce to the safety of prostitutes.

Thanks to SWOP East Sex Workers Outreach Project for the pointer.

Labels: Britain, harm reduction, prostitution, Sweden

 
Hungary Formalizes Prostitution
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 10:49 PM

Some elements of the sex trade (not including pimping or brothels) have been legal in Hungary since 1999, but eliminating the threat of arrest does not put prostitution on a par with other forms of self-employment. For instance, prostitutes could not take part in Hungary's social security system or provide documentation to potential lenders about their income source. This is changing, however, as Hungary has begun to issue entrepreneurial permits to prostitutes. "The permits allow prostitutes to give receipts to customers and become part of the legal economy by paying taxes and making social security contributions, said Agnes Foldi, head of the Hungarian Prostitutes' Interest Protection Association." Though the government is issuing the permits, it is not keeping a list of the names of permit holders; any central registry, of uncertain privacy, would dissuade many sex workers from applying for a permit.

Hungary's tax authorities also have been offering financial planning and accounting advice for sex workers -- counseling for financial matters and for drug and alcohol abuse should more generally be part of desirable prostitution regulations, in my opinion.

Labels: Europe, licensing, prostitution, taxes

 
Belle de Jour
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 11:45 PM

Belle de Jour is the nom de plume of a putative (and now former) British sex worker; Belle's renown took off when her blog won the Guardian's Best Written Blog award of 2003. Since then, she has published two books and contributed a regular column to another British daily.

Belle is back in the news because an eight-part tv series based on her adventures will begin to air in Britain next week. Reactions are polarised, with many commenters arguing that the show will misleadingly glamourise prostitution, while others (including Vice Squad) suggest that it is fine to dramatise one slice of the prostitution market, even if it is the least problematic slice. Belle herself is unimpressed with the critics (who have yet to see the show, of course), but her characterisation of academic vice commentary hurt a little; it was something along the lines of: "...soundbites from po-faced academics who also have no direct experience of the lives they imagine they are saving through master's theses that a grand total of four hand-wringingly earnest people read..." I didn't say that her description was inaccurate, only that it hurt.

Labels: Britain, prostitution

 
Legalization and the Black Market
- posted by Jim Leitzel @ 8:32 PM

In some areas where prostitution is legal, illegal variants of prostitution still seem to flourish. (They might be illegal because the prostitutes are underage, undocumented, or ineligible or unwilling to work in the legal sector for some other reason, or just for tax evasion.) I have often compared this situation with alcohol in the US, where the legal sector, though taxed significantly, seems to outcompete the illegal sector, almost eliminating it. Phil Cook's Paying the Tab, however, indicates that the comparative success of the legal alcohol sector after Prohibition was far from automatic. "Initial liquor tax collections were disappointingly low, in part because the bootleggers continued to supply something like 45 million gallons per year (66 percent of the tax paid amount) [p. 30, reference omitted]." The Feds responded with a massive surge in enforcement and some new regulations that aided their efforts, resulting "in a considerable shrinking of the black market by 1937 [p. 31]."

Labels: alcohol, Cook, Prohibition, prostitution, taxes