Not a Victimless Crime by D. Hughes & R. P. George on National Review Online
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August 10, 2009, 4:00 a.m.
Not a Victimless Crime
Why the libertarian idea of decriminalizing prostitution is not so good.
By D. Hughes & R. P. George
Tiny Rhode Island prides itself on its history and charm. But since it decriminalized prostitution
in 1980, it has become a haven for something decidedly uncharming: the trafficking of girls and
young women into the commercial sex industry. There is a lesson in this for the nation.
Last month, a missing 16-year-old girl from Boston was found bleeding and incoherent in an
apartment in South Providence. She was being held captive by an escaped convict who had her
stripping in one of Providence’s many sex clubs.
In April, the so-called Craigslist killer allegedly assaulted a prostitute in a Warwick hotel. A
federal investigation has linked some of Rhode Island’s “Asian spa” brothels to organized crime
rings.
Late last year, an Asian woman ran from a brothel and burst into a nearby shop to plead for help,
gesturing to indicate that she was being forced to engage in sex acts.
The intersection of highways I-95 and I-195 makes Providence an ideal location for the sex trade.
Strip clubs and other sex establishments are flourishing there.
Activists fighting against sexual exploitation in Massachusetts say that many of the women and
girls they aid have been trafficked to clubs in Rhode Island.
Decriminalizing prostitution sounds good in theory to some people of good will. It appeals to
certain libertarians who imagine that without legal prohibitions, women will make “free choices”
to sell themselves or not, just as they please. But the experience of Rhode Island exposes this as a
tragic fantasy.
Without effective law enforcement, the sex industry is expanding rapidly, creating a haven for sex
traffickers. Far from a libertarian utopia, decriminalizing prostitution has fostered coercion,
exploitation, and abuse. In the early 1990s, Rhode Island had four strip clubs and one gay
bathhouse. By 2005, there were nine “houses of prostitution,” according to the Providence
Journal. The state has become a magnet for Asian-style spa-brothels, strip clubs, “gentlemen’s”
clubs, gay bathhouses, and adult bookstores. There are now 40 known establishments offering
prostitution, 12 of which have opened since January 2009, according to researcher Melanie
Shapiro. Many more brothels have opened underground in residences and hotels.
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Not a Victimless Crime by D. Hughes & R. P. George on National Review Online
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Rhode Island police are stymied by the lack of laws enabling them to investigate effectively in
order to identify victims and prosecute traffickers. Prostitution was decriminalized in the state as a
result of a lawsuit brought by a prostitutes’ rights group in 1980. Since then, Rhode Island has had
no laws against prostitution so long as no solicitation occurs outdoors. Outdoor solicitation
remains illegal as a form of loitering for indecent purposes.
Rhode Island has laws against sex trafficking and pimping (pandering, transporting, and harboring
for prostitution, and deriving support and maintenance from prostitution). But without a predicate
prostitution crime, state police lack the grounds to intervene and interview likely victims.
Enforcement of federal sex-trafficking laws is also severely hampered. Consequently, there have
been no federal or state prosecutions for sex trafficking and no state prosecutions for pimping for
many years.
Rhode Islanders talk about the “embarrassment” to the state, and some legislators have worked for
years to close what has come to be called “the loophole.” Each time, they have been defeated.
This year, State Rep. Joanne Giannini (D.) introduced a bill creating a basic prostitution law. To
allay fears that it would make the victims of trafficking subject to criminal charges, her bill
explicitly gives them immunity. It passed the Rhode Island House of Representatives
overwhelmingly.
Then the Senate Judiciary Committee weighed in with a bill going in the wrong direction. State
Sens. Paul Jabour, Charles Levesque, and Rhoda Perry crafted legislation that would repeal all of
Rhode Island’s anti-pimping laws. Their bill would partially replace these felony crimes with a
misdemeanor penalized at $1,000 and would make prostitution a civil offense, comparable to a
traffic violation, with a penalty of $100 to $250. The bill passed the State Senate unanimously.
Law-enforcement agencies have rightly condemned the Senate bill for failing to give them the
legal tools to investigate sex-trafficking crimes and for repealing or weakening existing laws that
could be used if there were a predicate offense. The bill is so bad that many suspect it was passed
deliberately to obstruct the passage of a serious prostitution law.
The Rhode Island legislature is in a deadlock. Another year could go by without real reform.
The State Senate’s obstructionism has been aided by the silence of many who should be speaking
out. Some local and national anti-trafficking organizations have actually worked behind the scenes
to oppose the desperately needed reforms. They blame the lack of trafficking prosecutions on lack
of political will and inadequate police training. In reality, trafficking laws work only where law
enforcement is empowered to fight prostitution.
Other groups, such as the Rhode Island chapter of the ACLU and Rhode Island NOW, have
opposed passage of a prostitution law for ideological reasons. They support the decriminalization
of prostitution and mistakenly believe that good trafficking laws make prostitution laws
unnecessary. The Rhode Island experience demonstrates that it is long past time to lay that utopian
hope aside. The truth is that these very groups are to blame for obstructing efforts to equip police
to protect victims of trafficking.
It is an unspeakable tragedy that women’s rights groups and even organizations dedicated to
fighting trafficking are failing to understand how basic prostitution laws help officials to identify
victims and prosecute traffickers.
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Not a Victimless Crime by D. Hughes & R. P. George on National Review Online
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Rhode Island’s lawmakers have a choice: They can give Rhode Island a serious prostitution law
this year, or they can continue their obstruction.
Whatever they do, though, let the tragic consequences of Rhode Island’s experiment in
decriminalizing prostitution be a lesson to lawmakers in other states, and to all who care about
protecting women and girls from sexual exploitation.
— Donna M. Hughes holds the Eleanor M. and Oscar M. Carlson endowed chair of women’s
studies at the University of Rhode Island. Robert P. George is McCormick professor of
jurisprudence at Princeton University.
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