Should Prostitution be legalised?

[Knock-on]

How can you encourage prostitution? This is the oldest profession in the world after all.

You cannot stop it but I would think it's pretty difficult to encourage it. I suspect it has leveled out and would not increase nor decrease if it were regulated. All that would happen is that the organised crime would be reduced and the prostitutes better looked after.

Lets face it, you can never stop prostitution so why not regulate it rather than sticking our heads in the sand?

[reidy_fan]

think it should be regulated I.e in brothels etc where security can be put in force but that only works if the girls themselves are not drug addicts

the problem with the street girls (In Glasgow anyway) is that most are on the streets because of heroin, crack or cocaine (or all 3) and until something is done to remove that part of the equasion then there will always be these girls. They are driven out there by need and addiction or by bullying boyfriends etc. For as long as class A drugs like heroin are illegal you will always have this problem, perhaps one way of improving the situation is to legalise heroin, remove the dealers from the streets and that might go in some way of removing the girls need to go out there and deal with the dodgy punters in order to get their next fix

[fandango]

This is an interesting piece in relation to this subject.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/in_depth/6183491.stm

A telling quote:
"Just remember, all of you, that 97% of punters are married or in long-term relationships. If these men weren't eager to have some sort of sexual experience with us then we would all vanish. They are someone's father, son, husband as we are someone's mother, sister and even wife."

One of the things we are inclined to do is talk about our attitude to the (mostly) women who are in the sex business. What really should be looked at is the people who use and obviously feel they need this service. As men we need to look at ourselves maturely and figure out why we as a gender do this.

[Eki]

Yes it should be legalised. It already is here in NZ. Treating sex workers as criminals just keeps them in danger IMO as they often won't go to the police when they are in trouble.

Agree. Here it's legal to sell your own body, but pimping and brothels are illegal. I think that's a good approach. It's not the prostitutes who are criminals, but those who exploit them.

[Nick The Flick]

[quote="tstran17_88"]Now, I’ve never been to the state of Nevada, where prostitution is legal outside the city limits of Las Vegas and Reno, but it seems to me that it’s probably 1000 times safer than a street walker in Los Angeles or New York City. QUOTE]

I've been to all four cities, only been propositioned in Vegas- at 9am on my way to buy some Paracetamol (must have been a slow night!). Oh god, I sound like a sex tourist now. I went to Vegas for a wedding. My wife was there and so were my kids.


Anyway, If you make it legal, it will still be the same men that use the service. It's not going to drag anyone that is currently not interested in prostitution to start going. In some cases it may make things safer, in that the girls aren't hiding from the police when on the streets.

There will always be wierdo's though and hookers will always be an easy target, as they get into people's cars. Even if you make it illegal to sell sex outside of a brothel, it will simply turn to something like escort girls next.

[Ian McC]

I can't see any British government having the balls to do anything like legalise this, I would expect it will continue to be ignored.

[Nick The Flick]

If the government could make money from legalising it, I'm sure they would.

They could even use it as traffic calming. You don't see kerb crawlers breaking the speed limit.