50 academics spoke up. Can you amplify their voices?
Last week 50 academics signed on to a letter written by Ron Weitzer and myself. It was a collaborative effort and required compromise and you can read the letter here. Today there have been several news stories about this letter. If you support the overall mission of keeping prostitution in RI from being criminalized please comment on the stories listed below, or blog about the same. Here are some links:
Academics oppose banning indoor prostitution in Rhode Island
Boston Herald - Boston,MA,USA
Academics urge RI to keep indoor prostitution legal
Providence Journal - Providence,RI,USA
Professors Oppose Rhode Island Banning Indoor Prostitution
FOXNews - USA
Rhode Islands Future: Politics & Culture:: 50 Academics Sign ... By BrianHull RIRepbulican.com |
Update: More news coverage! Please comment on these stories if you can!
Providence Daily Dose: (author is a state rep)
http://providencedailydose.
Boston Herald:
http://news.bostonherald.com/
WJAR 10 Providence:
http://www2.turnto10.com/jar/
US BRK:
http://www.usbrk.info/court/
WBZ Radio (Boston):
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/
News on Feeds:
http://www.newsonfeeds.com/
Newstin:
http://www.newstin.com/tag/us/
USA Today:
http://content.usatoday.com/
Breakingnews.com:
http://www.breakingnews.com/
Comment on ProJo article "Academics urge RI to keep indoor prost
I left this comment on a very contentious discussion on the Providence Journal's article "Academics urge RI to keep indoor prostitution legal". The article was well written and the commentary was predictably divisive. Here is a link to my comment there, and a link to the article with all the comments. (Read at your own risk. The more thoughtful comments are further along in the discussion.)
If you comment on any of the articles above, will you please leave a note here letting us know and linking back to your comment?
...because public space really matters!
Elizabeth
Prov Journal
I left this comment in the same discussion that you noted above. The article
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RI has had decades of legal indoor prostitution, and has spent billions less than neighboring states prosecuting consenting adults for doing adult things with other consenting adults. Where is the violent crime, trafficking and rampant spread of infections predicted by prohibitionists in RI?
In other states a prostitute who has knowledge of a crime such as assault or trafficking is unlikely to step forward as a witness for fear of prosecution or persecution. He or she is unlikely to to be treated as a victim in case of rape, robbery or assault even if they do come forward. Murders of victims thought to be prostitutes are not investigated with rigor in some municipalities because the prevailing attitude on the force is that it's not as important to find that killer as a killer of a more mainstream worker.
If you want to tie up police services, courts and jails, if you want less reporting of violent crime while crime increases, if you want to lower tax revenue while raising state and county expenses then by all means RI could join 48 other "civilized" states and pull sex workers and their clients into an already overloaded judicial system.
Or simply observe the existing situation and determine what can be done to improve working conditions for those adult taxpayers who have chosen sex work as their occupation.
Casey,
The state doesn't protect you in your home or office, it prosecutes violent crimes after you report those crimes. That it's currently legal allows victims of crimes to report those crimes, with security tapes to help identify criminals, convictions are more likely.
More to your point women working indoors are much less likely to be raped or assaulted than less safe street based sex workers.
If you have different information than sex workers themselves have about what they think you might consider the reliability of your source.
Federal law prohibits trafficking and there are already state laws prohibiting coercion. If you encounter a trafficked individual please provide that person a safe haven and bring them to FBI offices as they are better able to deal with kidnapping victims than you are.
Chris
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