Rhode
Island
is
one
of
two states in America that allow the exchange of sex for money.
In
Nevada, brothels are legal in several counties, and are required to
meet strict
STD testing and other regulations. In Rhode Island, like many European
countries, Canada, and New Zealand, the law prohibits streetwalking,
solicitation from moving vehicles, pimping, and advertisement of
prostitution, but the exchange of sex for money remains legal when
practiced in
private.
While indoor prostitution has been legal
in Rhode
Island for about thirty years, it was not recognized as such until
a few
years ago when the State Supreme Court determined that there was no
statute prohibiting
the act in private. Since that ruling, Rhode Island has seen a dramatic
reduction in the amount of street-prostitution. Pawtucket, an urban
suburb of
Providence has seen arrest rates fall from over 50 arrests in 2001 to
only 8
arrests in 2008 (links here
and here).
Providence has continued to 'bust' legal brothels and arrest legal sex
workers during this period, making statistical analysis
impossible
(records are published only for arrests, not convictions).
Recently, it has been theorized by some that
Rhode
Island might be a 'haven' for sex slavery and abuse. Those same people
proposed
to the legislature that making indoor prostitution illegal would allow
police
to determine, through arrest, if sex workers were being abused or
trafficked
here as sex slaves.
The only problem with
those who claim that criminalization is the only way to ferret out
those who
are trafficked, is that criminalization is woefully ineffective
at doing
just that across the country. On average, the entire country only has
about 40
successful trafficking convictions each year. Given that Rhode Island
only has
0.35% of the US population, we can statistically expect there to be less
than
one
trafficking
conviction
in Rhode Island every seven years.
During those
seven years, Rhode Island will arrest over 1,000 women, most of them
just
trying to feed their families and keep their homes. Ben Franklin once
said
"It
is
better one hundred guilty Persons should escape than that one innocent
Person
should suffer", a principle that runs from the biblical story of
Sodom
and Gomorrah all the way through our current system of trial by
jury.
Criminalization of prostitution to prosecute sex trafficking is
literally
making thousands of innocent sex workers suffer to convict each
slaver.
Members of Citizens
Against Criminalization believe that limited and regulated legal
prostitution
is safer for the public and for the workers, less taxing on
overstretched
government budgets, and far more in-line with traditional western
values of
compassion than criminalization is. We believe that Rhode
Island's
HIV rate, which is half the national average, is a
sign that decriminalized
prostitution is less harmful to the public than criminalized
prostitution. We
believe that more effective reduction of trafficking can be
realized
through licensing, interviews, and judicious but tenacious enforcement
rather
than through arrest, interrogation, and re-arrest. We believe that good
public
policy is based on reason, and reflects a pragmatic process that seeks
to find
the best solution to a problem, rather than the one that is
most
popular. Most of all, we believe that Rhode Island must live up to its
reputation as “A Lively Experiment” and lead the way towards a rational
prostitution
law that allows victims of abuse to seek assistance without putting
willing parties into the crosshairs of law enforcement.