When his rampage finally ended, he said he had picked his victims because they might never be reported missing. Because most were prostitutes. We are asked to remember those victims on Dec. Chances are, you have not marked your calendar. We need instead to think about decriminalizing sex work itself while marshalling our resources to address actual harm: coercion, rape, fraud, abduction, statutory rape, battery, murder.
Maxine Doogan, president of Erotic Service Provider Legal, Education and Research Project ESPLERP , a grassroots organization for erotic service providers, warns that threat of arrest deters those involved in prostitution from reporting when they have been victims or witnesses to crimes.
The criminals among us know that. It is telling that countries with the most strict prostitution laws, like the United States, also exhibit the highest rates of violence against prostitutes. Acknowledging the real-world effects of criminalization, Amnesty International took a bold stand in August and recommended the decriminalization of all aspects of sex work with the aim of protecting sex workers.
That section broadly criminalizes both the buyer and seller of any sexual touching, regardless of consent. Today the loudest drum beat is a call to rescue sex workers as long as we imagine them coerced, duped or underaged and it is coupled with a headlong drive to root out and punish anyone caught patronizing or working with a sex worker. Of course there is a great need to find and prosecute customers or pimps who batter, control or murder. But, as Amnesty understands, they should be prosecuted because they batter, control or murder, not because they are customers or pimps.
Shaming and criminalizing the innocuous businessman or the awkward college student who decides to visit a prostitute may satisfy a moral or political compulsion, but that high-minded effort is not going to protect the victims of the next Ridgway.
