Prostitution is the provision of sexual services for negotiated payment between consenting adults. Prostitution can be dated back to at least 2400 B.C. when it appeared on an ancient sumerian list of professions. Although sometimes called the “world’s oldest profession,” it 's banned in all states except for certain parts of Nevada. However, countries, such as the Netherlands, Germany, New Zealand, and Canada legally accept money for sex. Countries, like Mexico, Argentina, Austria, France, and Italy also allow prostitution, but do not allow pimping and running of brothels. The United States should legalize prostitution as doing so could help reduce violence against prostitutes, help the economy, and stop sex trafficking. Legalizing prostitution …show more content…
Sex trafficking involves commercial sexual exploitation, is a gendered phenomenon whose victims are overwhelmingly women, and includes both international and domestic cases, in which there is no border crossing. Non consenting adults and all children forced into sexual activity (commercial or otherwise) deserve the full protection of the law and perpetrators deserve full punishment by the law. According to Linda Smith and Samantha Vardaman, child prostitution is “in cases where children under eighteen years of age are being prostituted, they count as victims of sex trafficking by definition, irrespective of whether they self-identify as victims.” While the U.S. federal government encourages states localities to identify and criminalize sex trafficking victims, the widespread failure of state and local governments to do so results in failure by the United States to comply with its own “minimal requirements for the elimination of human trafficking” articulated in the TIP report. If prostitution was legalized and sex workers had a good relationship with law enforcement. Law enforcements can use sex workers as vital key information sources to uncover sex trafficking rings. Prohibition of prostitution only provide cover to sex traffickers because it gives them the power to use the law to threaten women victims, particularly the younger ones. Women and children, who are forced against their will into …show more content…
According to Jeffrey J. Barrows, "Even if a prostitute is being tested every week for HIV, she will test negative for at least the first 4-6 weeks and possibly the first 12 weeks after being infected. If we assume that he or she takes only 4 weeks to become positive, because there is an additional lag time of 1-2 weeks to get the results back, there will be at best a window period of 6 weeks for a prostitute. The average prostitute services between 10-15 clients per day. This means that while the test is becoming positive and the results are becoming known, that prostitute may expose up to 630 clients to HIV. This is under the best of circumstances with testing every week and a four-week window period. It also assumes that the prostitute will quit working as soon as he or she finds out the test is HIV positive, which is highly unlikely. This is not the best approach for actually reducing harm. Instead, in order to slow the global spread of HIV/AIDS we should focus our efforts on abolishing
Prostitution is one of the oldest professions in history. In this modern age there are several classes of prostitutes with several methods of finding work, but they still face violence in their business. Though prostitutes are frowned upon by society and treated as criminals, under the law they should not be scrutinized by the morals of the people. Prostitutes frequently feel they have no options due to their illegal work, should they be assaulted they cannot turn to the police since many officers refuse to aid them as criminals. Prostitution should be regulated to fight human trafficking, increase quality of life for the women working in the industry, and generate taxes for the government while reducing the cost of dealing with prostitution.
An estimated 20.9 million people are currently being trafficked worldwide (The Polaris Project, 2014). According to the Trafficking Victims Protection Act of 2000 (TVPA, reauthorized in 2013), sex trafficking is defined as, “A commercial sex act induced by force, fraud, or coercion, and/or in which the person induced to...
The United States is a major port for human trafficking and, “Due to the covert nature of human trafficking, it is difficult to ascertain which countries are the primary source nations for trafficking into the US” (Hepburn). People of all ages and genders are at risk to human trafficking (Hepburn). Women and girls make up about fifty-six percent of the people trafficked for forced labor, while men and boys make up the other forty-four percent; children make up forty to fifty percent of those numbers (Hepburn). Ninety-eight percent of the people trafficked for sexual explorations are women and girls (Hepburn). Children tend to be targeted more than adults because they are much more vulnerable. Human trafficking has different forms, and “While trafficking for the purposes of commercial sexual exploitation is more publicized in the media, it is not the only form of trafficking that takes place in the US” (Hepburn). Trafficking for the purposes of forced labor is just as likely to occur as trafficking for the purposes of sexual exploitation (Hepburn). Many citizens have never heard of human trafficking for something other than sexual exploitation. Hepburn shows that, “Forty-three percent are trafficked for purposes of...
Prostitution is an issue that has been around for centuries. Many have tried to legalize prostitution, not only for themselves, but for the country. Back in 2004, Berkeley, California tried to legalize prostitution, but didn't have much of a success with only 36 percent of the votes.
Prostitution is illegal in the United States, except for some counties in Nevada. However, prostitution is in most part of the United States, despite the fact that it has been legalized. Prostitution is an act whereby, one sells his/her body for sex. In the United States, Prostitution is divided into three broad categories; street, escort, and brothel prostitution. Brothel prostitution takes place in brothel houses, which are houses where prostitutes can sell sexual services. This kind of prostitution is illegal in all parts of America, except in some counties in Nevada for example; Douglas County, Clark County, Carson City, Washoe County, and Lincoln County. Another form of prostitution is escort prostitution. This is always considered as entertainment, and massage services. It is supposed to be heavily regulated, but unfortunately, it is not because, in many counties where it is practiced, the only difference between escort and street prostitution is a phone call away. The last category of prostitution is street prostitution. This is the most unaccepted, and illegal type of prostitution in the United States. Street prostitution involves scantly dressed up women, and men roaming the streets looking for client to sell their bodies. It is the most frowned kind of prostitution because it is done openly. The question is should prostitution be legalized in the US? The answer is yes, this is because, it will help eliminate all the vices related to prostitution.
Sex trafficking is essentially systemic rape for profit. Force, fraud and coercion are used to control the victim’s behavior which may secure the appearance of consent to please the buyer (or john). Behind every transaction is violence or the threat of violence (Axtell par. 4). Just a decade ago, only a third of the countries studied by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime had legislation against human trafficking. (Darker Side, par.1) Women, children, and even men are taken from their homes, and off of the streets and are brought into a life that is almost impossible to get out of. This life is not one of choice, it is in most times by force. UNODC estimates that the total international human trafficking is a $32-billion-per-year business, and that 79% of this activity comprises sexual exploitation. As many as 2 million children a year are victims of commercial sexual exploitation, according the the U.S. State Department.-- Cynthia G. Wagner. (Darker Side, par. 4) The words prostitute, pimp, escort, and stripper tend to be way too common in the American everyday vocabulary. People use these words in a joking manner, but sex trafficking is far from a joke. Everyday, from all different countries, people are bought and sold either by force or false promises. Some are kidnapped and others come to America with dreams of a dream life and job. The buyers involved in the trade will do anything to purchase an innocent life just to sell for their own selfish profit. Many people wouldn’t think of a human body to be something you can buy in the back room of a business or even online. But those plus the streets are where people are sold most often. There are many reasons and causes for sex trafficking. The factors behind sex traffic...
When people think prostitution they think of sex for money, diseases, crime, work place violence such as rape and also robbery. In every way they are right. Prostitution has become one of our major issues in the U.S. It has caused spreading of disease, unplanned pregnancy, deaths and robbery. You would think that with all the issues given with prostitution that we should continue with its illegalization, but that’s incorrect. Like many crimes prostitution is one that can never be completely contained. Though the use of marijuana is illegal, someone as simple as a middle school student can obtain it. Though the drinking age is obviously the age of twenty-one, many college or high school
Wurth, Margaret H, et al., “Condoms as Evidence of Prostitution in the United States and the Criminalization of Sex Work.” Journal of the International AIDS Society. 16.1 (2013): 1 - 3. Academic Search Complete. Web. 16 Oct. 2015.
Is prostitution wrong? Is it possible to stop prostitution entirely? The debate on whether prostitution should be legalized in the United Sates is not a new one. On the topic of prostitution different ideas such as morality and freedom of choice come to play. The differing of opinions on whether prostitution should be legalized in the United States vary greatly, but generally they fall into three categories: anti-prostitution, decriminalization, and pro-legalization.
One reason why human trafficking is a serious crime that many people are unaware of is because it secretly takes place in the United States. Between 2007 and 2012, there were reports of 9,298 different cases of human trafficking (Polaris Project). An example of how unknown this topic is is that 41% of sex trafficking cases and 20% of labor trafficking cases were proven to have United States citizens as victims (Polaris Project). And this is only what we know so far. There are thousands of cases that we don’t know about. Many people also don’t know that men, women, and even children are also taken hostage by human traffickers. An example of this would be that out of those 9,298 cases that were reported, women were victims of sex trafficking in 85% of those cases. Men were victims of labor trafficking in 40% of those cases (Polaris Project). Approximately 300,000 children are at risk of being prostituted in the United States (U.S. Department of Justice). Children are even more under the radar than we know about. On average, one in three teenagers on the street will be lured toward prostitution within 48 hours of leaving their home (National Runaway Hotline). For example, two female friends who were minors ran away from home and were prom...
Little do most know, but on “[a]verage [prostitution] arrest[s], court and incarceration costs amount to nearly $2,000 per arrest. Cities spend an average of 7.5 million dollars on prostitution control every year, ranging from 1 million dollars to 23 million dollars.” Prostitution is the oldest known profession. Currently in 49 countries and counting prostitution is legal. Here in America there is a stigma following the label prostitute. We would rather resort to underground markets of sex labor. Endangering health, rights, and economics. Legalizing prostitution can reduce health hazards by giving heath care, also by giving rights to those that choose prostitution as their profession. In the long term this
First, Prostitution shouldn’t be criminalized because it is a victimless crime. In no way is there a victim in what prostitutes do, of course you could argue that the spreading of diseases could be a victim. But the fact that it could happen during regular intercourse should completely nullify that argument in favor of legalizing. Criminalizing prostitution is a way for slowing the spread of sexually transmitted diseases; it is not a way to confront the problem of STD’s. We saw this quite clearly in the time of alcohol prohibition in this country. “Those who don’t learn from history are doomed to repeat it”. –Unknown
Second, prostitution is a great health risk to the U.S. because of the spread of sexually transmitted diseases (STDs). A major concern about STDs is the spread of AIDS, which is currently a deadly STD because a cure has not been found for the disease. The transmission of STDs is already on the rise due to many uneducated teenagers having unprotected sex. In addition, most of theses teens are not going to a physician to be screened for STDs. Because of this, many curable STDs are going untreated and being spread throughout a community.
Prostitution is considered to be the oldest profession in the world. Many people support the idea of legalizing prostitution, while others do not. This controversial debate has been ongoing since the beginning of time. I desire to take a stand on the value of human worth, which is why I oppose the legalization of prostitution between consenting adults in our State.
Prostitution should be legalized because it should be treated like any other consensual, in-demand, and legitimate service. A prostitute performs sexual acts in exchange for money or gifts; therefore she sells her body and talents just like any other service. This system of selling sexual favors can be a profitable business and occupation for some. For example, a masseuse provides her service, massages, for people who want and are willing to pay for them. And, she uses her talent to create a source of income. This ...