Authorities say the erotic services section of Craigslist is widely used by prostitutes, and at least a dozen women in the Washington area have been attacked after offering their services on that site.These words suggest that ending the erotic services section will improve public safety. Compared to what?
Hookers ye shall have with ye always. Before Craigslist, many women in that trade walked the streets. Some still do -- but (and this is the important point) not as many. From a March 17, 2008 piece in a local paper in Rockford, IL:
Rockford police made 105 prostitution arrests in 2007, which Pozzi said were street-level arrests. Police have made 16 prostitution arrests so far this year.Of the 16, six worked online. By my calculations, Rockford had seen a serious reduction in its street prostitution.
The headline here -- from Riverside, California (in the Inland Empire) -- tells the story:
Internet replacing streetwalking for Inland prostitutionPay attention:
"In this age, Internet prostitution is the biggest thing going," said Riverside police Detective D. Woolley.Friends of mine live in that town. Anyone now visiting University Avenue (which leads into UCR) for a late-night snack run might be surprised to learn, as I was, that the street once had an uncontrollable prostitution problem. The girls are gone. That is, they were gone. They might be back tonight. The families who own the small Mexican restaurants on that street -- which serve some of the best tacos I've ever had -- probably won't enjoy seeing the problem return, and neither will I.
He noticed a spike in the number of ads on Craigslist three years ago and at the same time the number of prostitutes walking University Avenue, a once-popular strip for streetwalkers, has been whittled down to a handful of prostitutes.
(I suppose the previous paragraph reveals the true nature of my own appetites these days.)
Make no mistake: Prostitution, in all cases, is a degrading and dangerous way to make a living. But the profession always has existed and always will exist. We have no evidence that Craigslist increased the overall number of prostitutes, but we do have evidence that Craigslist changed the way they operate.
All computer contact creates a forensic trail. For that reason, computerized prostitution is the safest form ever devised for women working alone. (Please note that I said "safest," not "safe." These judgments are always relative.)
Everyone agrees that streetwalking is the most dangerous form of prostitution. Jack the Ripper, the Green River Killer and a host of other noteworthy maniacs preyed on walkers.
The pattern continues to this very day: See here and here. The Daytona Beach killer, who terrorized streetwalkers throughout 2006, has never been caught. The fiend targeting street hookers in Albuquerque, New Mexico is still on the loose. This guy killed 17 streetwalkers -- a run which ended only after the cops pulled him over (his truck had no plates) and found a rotting body in the vehicle.
The Boston madman was tracked after his first victim -- precisely because he used a computer. Had he picked up a streetwalker, he would probably still be free.
12 comments:
In places where prostitution is legal but regulated, the women are healthier, safer and keep more of the money they earn.
The "johns" are also less likely to contract an STD or get robbed.
Exactly who is the prohibition on selling sex supposed to protect?
Fortunately the increased danger is probably temporary. Craigslist getting out of this business creates a huge opportunity for others. In a month or two there will be another online contact service picking up the slack, or several of them.
Prostitutes are throwaway trash, according to the PTB (powers that be). They are never someone's daughter, mother, sister, niece, aunt, son, nephew. Ergo, when one gets killed, she/he was asking for it. When one finds a safer way of doing business - let's close that down, cause the business is so scuzzy, and whichever god is being invoked says it's wrong.
The carnage won't stop until the majority of society recognizes that it has been around since the beginning of time, because of the age old supply and demand concept. If there's no demand, there's no supply - and who are the ones in the demand sector? Once we become enlightened, legalize, tax and legislate working conditions, most of the carnage will stop - most, not all because there will always be those who work "under the table", but it will seriously reduce the opportunities for sickos to find victims.
Sorry, I usually lurk and rarely post, but this is a hot button issue
P.S. thanks for the post. Not many people pay attention to these issues today.
HT.
I wouldn't worry, Joseph. It's just a publicity stunt. From what I read they're just changing the name from "erotic" to "adult."
Also, there was a tv series on how teens are being kidnapped and used in horrific trafficking because the pimps can simply keep them locked in a room in a house and get all the vile johns via internet.
So, the question of trafficking needs to progress beyond whether it's by street or by net.
The johns need to be targeted. Let them share some serious dangers.
Joe, there's about a 99% chance the Burque "fiend" has been dead for nearly three years now.
He was most likely a man named Lorenzo Montoya, who was shot to death in December 2006 by the boyfriend/pimp of the teenaged pros he'd just killed in his mobile home, which home was in a trailer park located less than two miles from the West Mesa burial site.
Here's a clip from KOB-TV about Montoya--and what his former co-worker(s) had to say about him.
www.kob.com/article/stories/S829737.shtml
Zee: I'd like to see some evidence of the kidnapping claim, although you may well be right about it.
Another point has to do with the folks who live near streetwalker locations. I think they would much prefer for the hookers to operate out of motel rooms than to offer "car dates" on their neighborhood streets.
LOL: If the Appleturkey killer is gone -- good riddance.
Many streetwalkers get raped by men who know the cops won't believe the victim.
They also get robbed by Johns who forcibly extract a refund after services are rendered.
Joseph, I next to never watch tv, so you'd have to google the series yourself. It might've been MSNBC but i just can't remember.
But the law enforcement is using the same tools, and one of their stings yielded a different bust than the one they were preparing for. It's rampant.
Maybe not all of the teens are kidnapped...maybe some are runaways...still the human traffickers and those that rape them need to be put away. At the least.
Words can't even describe how low and beyond laughable the scum are who need to buy or rape...yet "john " is such an innocuous term compared to whore, isn't it?
I am pretty sure that series was on MSNBC.
Recently MSNBC did a similar show on Internet prostitution. It found that according to the experienced sex workers, the Internet is especially good for high-level call girls but not for the low-level women who use craigslist and the like. They were telling investigators that too many inexperienced girls use those services and leave themselves open to physical attack. The higher-level services, by contrast, did a thorough screening of each potential client (several insisted on getting full, real, names and addresses, for instance).
Of course, streetwalking is probably even more dangerous -- and it has the unfortunate side effect of "requiring" the women to have pimps, which Internet advertising does not. The real difference, then, is in the operations that work on a quasi-legal level like those higher-cost services, and more "fly-by-night" operations where the women can't do any screening of their clients.
The answer to all of this is to make prostitution and other sex work legal, period. It's safer for everyone, better for the community, less costly, and infinitely more sensible.
In a documentary on the Netherlands entitled Sex, Drugs, and Democracy, a woman legislator was interviewed, and saidthat although she didn't like legalizing prostitution, people were going to do it, there was no way to stop it, so it should be made as safe as possible. I wish there were many more politicians that sensible about human behavior.
Sergei Rostov
I live in Rhode Island, and this has become quite the firestorm around here. Prostitution indoors has been legal in my state for over twenty years now, but thanks to the "dangers" of the internet our legislators are working overtime to change that law. What good will it do? Speaking as someone who actually does live on a streetwalker crawl I'd say none at all. In the warmer months I see at least one woman a week walking my street, I fully expect that to go up when this goes through. Will anyone be safer? Viewers of the evening news I suppose. Because it's never a top story when some street hooker winds up dead, especially if she's a minority. The only way for it to make the news is if it has that twenty first century spin to it. Enter the internet. So we'll go the rest of our lives not hearing of another prostitute dying around here. Except people like me who live in the city, we'll hear it all. I can't help but wonder if that psycho from my neighbor to the north would have ever been caught if he picked up ladies from the street. It would not have been that fast at least, I can guarantee that.
Good comments, all. I fully recognize all the good points on a topic that can never rise to valid in terms of human interaction.
Meanwhile, the fuckwad CEOs of craigslist are WHINING, which places them --- I can't saw lower than the pimps or johns---but equal to that scum which perpetuate the human trafficking trade.
The whining craigslist brass want some sort of CREDIT for switching the NAME of their human trafficking category...oh, and this is RICH...for charging $10 an ad. So they will be PROFITTING for furthering human traffic and by changing the name of the category want us on our knees fluffing them.
Post a Comment