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Posts Tagged ‘Rescued To Death’

It’s largely assumed that human trafficking is both widespread and underreported…these assumptions are unsubstantiated by research.  –  Georgia Bureau of Investigation

Check Your Premises

Very often, “child sex trafficking” is copese for “a young sex worker gave her slightly-younger friend a ride”:

A 22-year-old former [Wisconsin]…woman previously accused of child sex-trafficking has been convicted on a lesser charge.  Jalessa K. Hill…was sentenced…to 30 days in jail with work release and three years probation for soliciting prostitutes.  A charge of marijuana possession was dismissed…Judge Karen Seifert also ordered Hill to not have or use alcohol, drugs or paraphernalia, to pay $518 and to [endure] any [brainwashing] deemed necessary…Hill and Lana L. Morgan, who was 17 at the time, went…to meet with a [lying pig pretending to be a client]…

The Clueless Leading the Hysterical plain-old-non-cannabis-candy

Neither intelligence nor logic nor the ability to do basic research are prerequisites for either public office or local news media:

On [Halloween] the Bureau County, Illinois, sheriff’s office issued a press release describing “an incident following Trick or Treat” in which “parents came forward with suspicious looking candy marked as Crunch Choco Bar,” the wrapper of which “has small pictures of cannabis leaves on it.”  According to Bureau County Sheriff James Reed, “the substance was field tested and was positive for containing cannabis”…the picture accompanying Reed’s press release shows Japanese candy bars sold under the brand name Iroha Kaede, which is a kind of maple tree…Those…are actually small pictures of maple leaves.  If the candy bar really did come up “positive for containing cannabis” in a field test, that just shows how unreliable such tests are

Besides the fact, obvious to anyone who’s ever seen a maple tree (or the Canadian flag), that those designs are indeed maple leaves and not cannabis leaves (which don’t look much like maple leaves except to the extremely stupid or the nearly-blind), I can assure you as a regular consumer of cannabis candy that absolutely nobody who isn’t absolutely howling mad would give it to kids; that shit is incredibly expensive, like $3.50 to $5 apiece for candies of the size these would appear to be.  Another tip for those who’ve never had the legal stuff in their hands: the dosage of THC is helpfully marked right there on the package, with no “field test” necessary.

The End of the Beginning (#325)

Yes, these people are actually arguing for indefinite imprisonment without trial or sentence:

Growing numbers of sex offenders are still being confined in Minnesota’s controversial treatment program even after courts approved their release…Across the state, anxious communities are rushing to pass extraordinary rules aimed at banning sex offenders from moving in, with far-reaching ordinances that would effectively bar them from any residential neighborhood.  More than 40 localities have adopted such bans…the city of Dayton…passed one of the most restrictive measures yet, barring offenders from living near churches, pumpkin patches and apple orchards…The backlash is confounding state officials, who are running out of places to house sex offenders even as they face mounting court pressure to release more of them…Some measures are so sweeping that the towns have become effectively off-limits to offenders…The rush to craft such ordinances intensified late last year, after U.S. District Judge Donovan Frank issued a ruling, now under appeal, that the state can no longer confine offenders indefinitely without a clear path toward release…

Policing for Profit 

San Diego has become one of the most corrupt pocket police states in the US:

James Slatic, a California medical marijuana business owner, found out…one day in January…the San Diego police had frozen all of their bank accounts: $55,258 from Slatic’s personal checking and savings account; $34,175 from his wife Annette’s account; and a combined $11,260 from the savings accounts of their two teenage daughters, Penny and Lily…the San Diego District Attorney’s Office hasn’t charged them with any [crimes]…the Institute for Justice…filed a motion in California district court seeking the [money’s] return…five days before his family’s accounts were frozen…around 30 San Diego [cops] and DEA agents raided Slatic’s medical marijuana business, Med-West Distribution, and seized nearly $325,000 in cash from a safe…his 35 employees…lost their jobs and benefits without notice…there was no probable cause to raid Med-West…[but] San Diego District Attorney Bonnie Dumanis and the city have been particularly aggressive in policing medical marijuana businesses…

Traffic Circle

When a program on staunchly-prohibitionist NPR, in Georgia of all places, begins to question the “sex trafficking” narrative, it’s clear that its days are numbered:

…Georgia voters are facing a question about how to address what some believe is a serious and growing problem in the state and beyond: child sex trafficking.  If approved, Georgia will establish a permanent fund…based on research and statistics…distorted by extreme emotions this issue raises for many people…An early step in the plan was to…levy a $5000 or greater…fee…on strip clubs, based on a disputed link between adult entertainment venues and trafficking crimes…The Safe Harbor Amendment, on the ballot now, will create a permanent fund from this fee…state Sen. Renee Unterman…[pretends that] the number of child exploitation investigations opened by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation last year [is]…4,000…However, the GBI [said]…those…cases aren’t all proven instances of trafficking…it found evidence of human trafficking was primarily anecdotal…Lawyers for Atlanta’s strip clubs argue they don’t contribute to the trafficking of children and shouldn’t have to pay for it…they’re waiting to see if the amendment passes before making a decision on not to sue…social scientists also argue that the real origins of this problem are social factors like poverty, difficult home lives and a lack of safe housing…the narrow focus on fighting child sex trafficking [pulls] resources from a social safety net that might otherwise protect children and families…

Rescued To Death

The extent to which every “authority” in this story repeatedly denies the agency and competence of adult women is quite extraordinary; it’s like reading something from the 17th century:

Gardai [fantasize] four young…Romanian women who were arrested in Galway over the weekend, were trafficked into Ireland by a criminal gang…The four…women, aged 21, 22, 23 and 30…[explained that] they were acting alone to raise money for their impoverished families in Romania…they accepted full responsibility for operating a brothel…Det. [Willie] Byrne…[refused to believe that women are intellectually capable of setting up an escort business themselves.  He called his victims, from whom he and the other pigs stole €5,000] “little girls” and…[told the court about his masturbatory fantasy that] “they are under the control of Dublin or Belfast-based pimps…They wouldn’t have the ‘wherewithal’ to organise that themselves”…[the judge accepted this fantasy and pretended] the girls were being used by others not before the court…[yet still] convicted and fined each of them €200 [in addition to the money already stolen by the pigs, yet still pretended he wanted to]…help them…

If Men Were Angels 

“Youth pastors” are nearly as bad as cops:

A Minnesota pastor admitted to taking…photos of children that he then turned into sexually explicit images…William Helker…served as a youth pastor at All Saints Lutheran Church…took photos of children at his church and then edited them in Photoshop, including placing their heads into adult pornography, to create hundreds of new images…

Another Fine Mess

Self-important English “authorities” prefer to believe that a drop in the number of streetwalkers is due to their magical “diversion” program, instead of recognizing that the women are simply working from online ads:

Police are using powers of discretion in Bristol to introduce a partial decriminalisation of prostitution and kerb crawling…Street sex workers and kerb crawlers are being handed conditional discharges which encourage them to go on a course or seek help rather than face immediate arrest.  The “tiered system” has seen arrests for kerb crawling drop from 322 in 2011 to 10 in 2015, and has helped reduce the number of street sex workers to 150 – the lowest since 1995…

Meanwhile, in the real world, “john schools” have never been shown to have any effect at all, and “exit programs” are generally nothing but lists of phone numbers for social programs.

Welcome To Our World (#512)

Sweden is so liberal, so pro-social, so just and kind!

Fifty-five percent of Stockholmers want to ban begging…It is a marked change since last year’s Stockholm survey…when 32 percent said they supported a begging ban…more and more calls for a ban are heard at a top-tier political level, despite the ruling Social Democrat-Green government…ruling out a general national ban…Another poll carried out nationally…in May indicated that 50 percent of [all] Swedes believe begging should be outlawed…

Not Good Enough (#565) 

I’m glad to see this dangerous placebo is flopping on the market:

…the US Food and Drug Administration finally issued new guidance for companies that want to develop drugs to bolster female libidos.  But the details suggest the agency has belatedly learned some hard-fought lessons following complaints that the controversial Addyi pill did not warrant approval last year.  The…draft guidance…points to certain steps that Sprout Pharmaceuticals did not follow as part of its…marketing application to the FDA.  The drug…was approved despite debate over its safety and effectiveness…Sprout won approval for Addyi, which has been a poor seller, after an unusual campaign that accused the FDA of bias

Broken Record (#579) 

Sparsely-populated states come up with the most ludicrous concepts for supposed “gypsy whore” magnets:

One of South Dakota’s largest economic drivers also serves as one of the most vulnerable seasons for victims of sex trafficking.  Hunting season…is one of two major tourist attractions in South Dakota, the other being the Sturgis Motorcycle Rally, said Leasa MacFarling, a volunteer with the South Dakota West River Human Trafficking Task Force.  These events also serve as attractions for traffickers…MacFarling has been traveling around Pierre distributing fliers and lip balms with the warning signs of a traffic victim and the number to the National Human Trafficking Hotline…

As idiotic as this is, it’s not a new fantasy; I first reported it from Minnesota three years ago tomorrow in “Traffic Circle“.

To Molest and Rape rapist-cop-marcellus-white

Rapist cops don’t only attack women:

A…New Orleans [cop] was arrested…[on] Sept. 23…[after] he raped a teenage male relative…earlier this year…Marcellus White…[lured] the boy into his bedroom, [pushed] him onto a bed and [performed] oral sex…against the boy’s wishes…the 15-year-old boy and his mother have moved to Mississippi, unable to bear living in New Orleans in the wake of the sexual assault…in March or early April of this year when the boy was 14…police investigators obtained from the boy’s mother a June 20 email exchange with White, in which the [rapist cop] pleads for forgiveness while also asking that the mother drop her demand that White “step down from all positions” that give him access to minor children…

The Pygmalion Fallacy (#647) 

Moralistic control freaks clutch their pearls about something that doesn’t exist and never actually will as they envision it, because it was on a crappy sci-fi TV show:

…Westworld’s human guests aren’t obligated to uphold any sense of morality.  The upsell for the park involves reversion to primal urges.  In Crichton’s pessimistic view, the breakdown of normal society leads immediately to sex and violence…robots…[can be] raped…because consent, as a concept, doesn’t apply…But…research suggests that the real victims of Westworld’s barbaric sexual culture would be human…Kate Darling, Ph.D…at MIT Media Lab…says…either sex robots would continue to serve as a healthy outlet for our unhealthy urges or they would whet peoples’ appetites for unsavory sexual fare.  Both options have their own troubling implications, but the latter is more immediately problematic.  Patrick Lin, Ph.D…at California Polytechnic University, fears that sexbots might make us less human…A Westworld-like scenario presents a slippery slope similar to the one posed by or violent films or video games, perhaps even more troubling because sex robots are so “visceral” and “immersive” that they blur the line between virtual and physical reality…Sex robots — at least the sophisticated, highly anthropomorphic kind — haven’t been around long enough for us to tell if they’ll affect our sexual interactions with each other…

They “haven’t been around long enough”? WTF?  They don’t even exist!  Methinks writer Yasmin Tayag has been watching too much television if she thinks otherwise.  And both of these “scientists” are nothing but puritans in disguise if they believe that sex drives are “created” by machines.  This is the kind of crypto-moralism used to justify censorship and criminalize consensual behaviors of all kinds.

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There’s something deeply troubling about taking a person who’s at ease with her past and turning her into a victim.  –  Wendy Lyon

Think of the Children! 

An angry mother was horrified to learn she has booked a family break in a hotel the same weekend a swingers party is being held.  The woman believes it is inappropriate for the “Halloween fancy dress” bash to be held at the luxury Silver Springs Moran Hotel in Cork [on Halloween weekend]…

Lack of Evidence

It’s not only cops who think that believing a woman is a whore is grounds for assaulting her:

A [South African] swimming school owner and well-known cyclist was arrested…after he…beat up a…domestic worker in broad daylight…then excused his behaviour by saying he had believed she was a prostitute…Cynthia Joni, 44…was on her way to work…on October 2 when a…man leapt from his car and slapped her repeatedly, then threw her to the ground, without any explanation…Her…attacker was later identified as…Tim Osrin…a…member of the neighbourhood’s “security committee” [who] lives close to where the incident took place…

Do As I Say, Not As I Do

The investigator leading the probe into the Secret Service’s 2012 prostitution scandal quietly resigned…after he was implicated in a prostitution entanglement of his own…David Nieland was observed entering and leaving a building that was under surveillance as part of a [sting]…in Broward County, Fla.  Authorities later interviewed a prostitute who identified Nieland in a photo and said he had paid her for sex…Jian Ghomeshi title card

He Said, She Said

The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation dismissed Jian Ghomeshi…as host of the cultural affairs show Q…Ghomeshi…claimed he was fired due to…his [BDSM] sexual behaviour…[and says] he’s been hounded by false allegations from an ex-girlfriend…The Toronto Star reported…that three women have made allegations of violent, non-consensual  assaults…[and] a former employee of the CBC claimed [he]…sexually harassed [her]…his lawyers announced…that he intends to sue the CBC for $50-million…

Subtle Pimping

Naturally, they don’t speak up for sex workers or donate any of the money to our cause:

Stephanie Berger…co-founded the Poetry Brothel with Nicholas Adamski in 2008…They concocted the idea of a turn-of-the-century bordello – historically the realm of artists and miscreants – where writers could present their work in a more vibrant, visceral setting.  They would dress up, invent alter egos, and sell not their bodies but their poems…“Sex work and poetry are two of the oldest professions,” says Berger.  “Both are incredibly intimate acts that explore love, fantasy and the underside of people”…

Decentralization

what…has Titcoin done to be adult-industry friendly, other than insert “Tit” into its name?…For Titcoin to be desirable to sex workers, it’d need to feel like it was offering certain advantages that Bitcoin wasn’t.  It would need to embrace the community of sex workers who are discriminated against by the mainstream financial system, not just try to make money off of them…

One Born Every Minute

Two teenage boys from Norway…posted…fake advertisements on a website offering escort services.  The ads offered sex with women in exchange for gift vouchers which had to be purchased in advance via the website.  The crafty duo were set to net 150,000 kroner ($22,600) before the website owners became suspicious and alerted the police…

Saving Them From Themselves

a Michigan Sheriff’s Department has gotten itself involved in…sexting…[cops have] already confiscated 31 phones…investigations will continue to turn up even more phones, containing more evidence, and so on, until… well, until what, exactly?…at some point, an arbitrary line will be drawn to end the investigation…High school students…may find themselves facing child pornography charges…

See No Evil Tony the Tiger

One of the most ludicrous prosecutions to arise from [the UK’s “extreme porn”] law was the infamous “tiger porn” case, in which Andrew Holland was prosecuted for possessing a video of…a woman having sex with a tiger…When the case finally reached court, the judge requested that the video be played with sound – something the police hadn’t thought of doing. During the scene, the “tiger” turned to the camera and said “that’s grrrrreat!”…It’s clear that police and CPS training doesn’t include the skills to distinguish between a real tiger and a pretend one.  Holland was acquitted.  But during the legal process, he had been branded a sex offender, experienced vigilante attacks, and been prevented from seeing his daughter for a year.  He suffered a heart attack during this time…

Scapegoats

[Jerald Hill,]  the president…of a Missouri Baptist conference center is out of a job after [cops]…arrested him for allegedly arranging to have sex with [an undercover police] dog…on Craigslist…

End Demand

A municipal lawmaker in [St Petersburg, Russia] has drafted a bill introducing heavy fines for the clients of prostitutes, but they’ll be forgotten if client agrees to marry the sex worker…In the explanatory note attached to the bill Galkina [pretends that the Swedish model works as advertised]…

First They Came for the Hookers…

This is mostly typical “sex trafficking” garbage, but there are a couple of interesting points; one is the claim that there are “25,000 victims” in Chicago, due of course to highways but also because of all the farming that goes on within city limits (“large agriculture…base”).  But the other is an expansion of the increasingly-popular lie that all commercial sex involves “sex trafficking”:

…FBI agents…called for more public exposure to the “Johns”…who keep demand high.  They strongly suggested [censoring] the words ‘Gentleman’s Club” and…plastering their faces on the front pages of newspapers.  Public humiliation, they said, does make a huge difference.  The problem “will stop…if men stop buying sex”…a stronger…ordinance…makes it more difficult for adult bookstores, strip clubs and other sexually-themed entertainment to set up shop…Social media…is the number one tool of traffickers…

The Widening Gyre 

Several sex worker activists recently decided to…[take] the online Human Trafficking course offered by Ohio State University’s Social Work program…The…discussion…was “about 99.99% about forcing women to stop doing sex work.”  There was little or no moderation, with students up or down voting each other’s posts similarly to the way Reddit users do.  The instructor, Dr. Jacquelyn Meshelemiah…rarely interacted with students and never corrected misinformation… “Several of the students have claimed that they’d immediately turn…a prostitute into the police ‘for their own good’,” one student commented…the first person to be banned from the course for offering information was Dr. [Thaddeus] Blanchette…a professor and well-known trafficking researcher…

With Friends Like These…

Please, Roman Kalinowski, become a prohibitionist; if your attempt to hurt us is as totally wrong as your attempt to “help”, it’ll be a great pro-decrim argument:

World governments and the state of Hawai‘i need to accept the sale of sex between consenting adults and treat it like any other industry…Prostitution is profitable because…the demand for paid sex far exceeds the supply of sex workers.  There are high costs associated with kidnapping, secretly transporting and forcing people against their will into prostitution.  If legal…it would no longer be economically feasible to hold sex slaves…Hawai‘i [is] the only state in America which allows undercover police to penetrate sex workers…Registering with the government…has made the trade safer [in legalization regimes]…Legalizing prostitution would benefit everyone involved except for the pimps and madams currently exploiting workers…

Banishment

These types of procedures are very common in Swedish-flavored regimes:

By unanimous vote…Oakland [California granted itself]…the power to evict sex workers “associated” with a property—and to require their landlords to do the same…the city can go after the landlord for not taking action against a tenant “after being apprised by the City that the tenant has engaged in illegal activity”…The bill does not describe the burden of proof the city needs…Nor does [it] stipulate…whether this evidence is to be shared with the tenant…[nor] set forth any protections for due process.  The bill does not require that charges or a warrant be brought against a tenant [and]…there’s no clear definition for what “engaging” in illegal…activities…means…

Give Them an Inch…

European anti-migration policies grow steadily more horrible:

Seven Tunisian fishermen [are] on trial in Sicily…for the crime of rescuing 44 migrants from certain death in the sea.  They are accused of aiding and abetting illegal immigration.  If convicted, they face…[up to] 15 years in jail…Among [those rescued] were two children and 11 women – two of them pregnant and one elderly…The true object of the trial, it is suspected, is to dissuade fishermen from doing their duty…other…fishermen…recently beat migrants attempting to get into their boat with sticks, forcing them into the water where several drowned.  No action was taken against them…

License to Rape (TW3 #337) 

A reporter recently informed me that Los Angeles Times reporters are officially forbidden to refer to the acts of rapist cops with the word “rape”, as in this story of the sentencing of a monster we’ve seen before:  “[Rapist vice cop Jose Jesus Perez] was sentenced…to 25 years in federal prison for forcing prostitutes to have sex with him while he was in uniform…Perez blamed the stress from his job…[and] said he was a sex addict…

Whimsical Notions

U.S. Forces Korea has banned servicemembers from buying drinks for workers in “juicy bars,” which have long been suspected of involvement in prostitution and human trafficking.  While the military has maintained a zero-tolerance policy toward prostitution, buying drinks in exchange for female company was not strictly prohibited…[until] Oct. 15…

Train Wreck (TW3 #407)

Commercial sex workers in Abuja have reportedly been given a 2-day ultimatum to leave the city…Authorities have also threatened to punish individuals who patronize the sex workers with a death sentence…These stringent measures were said to have been formulated by Secretary for Social Development, Blessing Onuh, after she visited several locations that experience high sex trafficking activity…

The Public Eye (TW3 #410)

Belle Knox writes about how her story was used as the basis for an episode of Law and Order: SVU, a show not exactly known for an enlightened attitude toward sex workers.  Miraculously, this was what the writer of the episode told Belle:  “You, and others, have made the case that sex work is legitimate professional work, a potentially empowering choice individuals should be able to make without repercussions or stigmatization.  Other students who’ve done pornography have not survived the harassment that followed.  We wanted to tell their stories, too.

Rescued To Death

Another excellent essay from Wendy Lyon:

…the…“woman-protective anti-abortion argument” [is] a strategic shift away from the foetus fetishism that has traditionally defined the right-to-life movement…At the same time…[there’s] a new anti-sex work campaign led by women who describe themselves as “survivors”…The idea that regret is…a reason to legally constrain women’s actions is conceptually flawed, paternalistic and degrading.  It’s grounded in age-old sexist nonsense about women needing choices to be made for us…women who don’t regret their abortion or sex work threaten to undermine the effectiveness…of those who do; thus, they must be silenced, discredited, or worse still, recruited…[by] persuading them that they were traumatised all along and didn’t know it…

Bottleneck (TW3 #443) 

a federal judge in [Washington state] issued a temporary injunction to block the release of…licenses, which include dancers’ stage and legal names…and photos …the man who requested the info, David Van Vleet, said his request was for “the public good” and he had merely wanted to “pray for those dancers by name”…A final decision will be issued December 15…

The Course of a Disease (TW3 #443)

if there’s one thing on which Northern Ireland’s divided politicians can always be sure to agree it’s the regulation and control of women’s bodies.  All for their own good, of course.  That’s why the Northern Ireland Assembly has voted overwhelmingly in favour of a ban on the purchase of sex…when radical feminists and religious fundamentalists join forces, facts tend to go out the window, often with dangerous consequences for those they seek to “save”…The Police Service of Northern Ireland has long made it clear that…such a law would be unworkable…But…enforcement was never the point …campaigners….seek the satisfaction of a symbolic victory:  the ability to declare our shores closed to prostitution…[just as] anti-abortion activists like to proclaim Ireland free of abortion…

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This essay first appeared in Cliterati on April 27th; I have modified it slightly to fit the format of this blog.

Though it’s wrapped in layers of feminist and “anti-crime” rhetoric, the truth is that the war on whores (whether in its pure form or disguised as concern over “sex trafficking”) is “deeply rooted in Protestant Christianity’s obsession with ‘pure and pious womanhood’, and even when there is no Christian group involved in a prohibitionist scheme the same themes of sin and degradation echo through their rhetoric, even if translated for a non-Christian audience.”  One of the most telling examples of this can be seen in prohibitionist adoption of the “hate the sin, love the sinner” doctrine:  we are repeatedly told that prohibitionists only want to help sex workers, to “rescue” us from “objectification” and “degradation”, to “save” us from our own choices.  As Furry Girl put it:

They support us!  They acknowledge our choices!  They see us as real people!  And they can’t wait to show their loving solidarity with us by putting us in jail, taking away our income, and making our jobs as dangerous as possible…They see nothing odd about trying to have it both ways:  being the heroic would-be saviors of the fallen with one hand, and with the other, the cause of the fallen’s increasing unhappiness.  They’re the abusive boyfriend who brings you flowers after giving you a black eye…

KKK cross-burningI’ve written before on the necessity of ceding not one inch of ground to the prohibitionists, and this is a perfect example of what I mean by that; by allowing them to pretend that they care about us when their every behavior screams the exact opposite, we allow them to dictate the narrative and define the rules.  It is absolutely vital that prohibitionism be called what it is: a jihad against sex workers.  Prohibitionists seek nothing less than the total annihilation of our kind; if we were a race, the term would be “genocide”.  Nobody would accept the input of avowed Nazis on matters pertaining to Jews, nor to KKK members on issues involving black people, but until prohibitionists are widely recognized as the sex worker equivalent to those hate groups, they will continue to be given voices in the public debates about our lives and livelihoods on the grounds that they are “concerned” about us.  Here’s an example from Scotland:

A prostitute savagely beaten and raped…says a police clampdown is putting more working girls at risk.  Sarah…was working in a flat in Perth when serial rapist Graeme Bell attacked her after arriving for a pre–booked appointment…Sarah…said she feels angry that girls working in a flat with others risk being accused of running brothels…the situation is more dangerous since Edinburgh Council stripped the city’s saunas of their licences…she said…“I do not understand why Edinburgh has scrapped its tolerance”…

But Sarah, the police have explained why they effectively destroyed the sauna system; it was to “help potential victims”, apparently by destroying their livelihoods.  Here’s a similar example from the United States, where those who want to “help” sex workers are not satisfied with merely making it impossible to work legally:

…[Under a new] California…bill, anyone convicted of [agreeing to pay for sex]…would be required to receive jail time regardless of whether the Court believed [it]…appropriate…the bill calls for convicted customers to spend “not less than 48 hours of continuous confinement [in the county jail], nor more than six months” on a first offense, as well as a fine of one thousand dollars [half of which goes into police coffers]…The bill doesn’t even try to explain why…the 48 hour time frame is necessary or how it was arrived at…the bill gives law enforcement a direct and inappropriate incentive to entrap people since they would get at least $500 a head…for every person convicted…This [may] deter those customers who are otherwise law-abiding…but not…a violent felon…Having more committed criminals…in the client pool…only makes sense if one believes that the best way to “protect” sex workers is to make their jobs as dangerous as possible…

And in Arizona, prohibitionists don’t even bother with making new laws; they simply ignore whichever constitutional rights of sex workers impede their efforts to “save” us:

…Project ROSE strikes me as a ghastly cross between a Crisis Pregnancy Center and a 12 step program, with police and prosecutorial force behind it…They are really trying to claim that handcuffing people and taking them to a location where they are not permitted to leave is not an arrest?  They are really trying to claim that being “assessed for eligibility” by cops is not an interrogation?  They are seriously acting like…suspects being required to make incriminating statements about themselves and a deal with prosecutors to avoid being charged and put in jail is somehow fine and that all the above can happen without the suspects being advised that they can talk to a lawyer first?  Project ROSE [claims that women]…are “never arrested” by snatching them off the street and handcuffing them for “manifesting prostitution” or whatever…if this is such a helpful program, [what’s wrong] with simply allowing…suspects caught up in it to…talk to a lawyer of their own choosing about whether or not this is the right thing for them before they agree to it?…Why are you so afraid of diligent defense attorneys snooping around your program, Project ROSE?…

woman tortured by InquisitionPeople who truly want to help others don’t subject them to arrest and coercion; they don’t evict them from their homes or workplaces, don’t try to steal their income and don’t put bounties on the heads of those who provide that income.  Prohibitionists want to “save” sex workers like the Inquisition wanted to “save” heretics:  preventing them from “sinning” by any means necessary, even if it means they end up tortured, locked in dungeons or dead.

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