PROSTITUTION LEGALIZATION PRIMER

(A Public Service Announcement from Suburra Publishing.)

Fact #1

Tax Dollars and Police Resources.

Billions are spent on the criminalization of sex work. One of the only studies of the cost of prostitution enforcement was done in the mid-1980s. It found that in Dallas the average arrest, court, and incarceration costs amounted to roughly $2,500 per prostitution arrest, and that large cities spent an average of over $13 million on prostitution control every year. (Figures adjusted to 2005 dollars.) Half of the sixteen cities studied spent more on prostitution control than on either education or public welfare. Despite the fact that judges are loath to use strapped prison space on prostitutes, police still focus resources on prostitution.

This prioritizing is not without consequences. During Houston’s crusade against prostitution in 1975, 11% of the police department’s criminal investigative force handled prostitution cases exclusively. While Houston waged this failed prostitution battle reported felonies increased and their rate of arrest decreased. In the mid-1980s, Cleveland spent eighteen officer hours on prostitution duty for every violent offense that failed to yield an arrest.

 
This was at a time when national polls showed (1) 94% of people that called the police believed they should have responded faster than they did, (2) less than half the population could say prostitutes did more harm than good, and (3) people ranked prostitution’s severity 174th out of 206 offenses. “A store owner knowingly puts ‘large’ eggs into containers marked ‘extra large’” placed 175th.
 

Information taken from You Will Die: The Burden of Modern Taboos, Book I  by Robert R. Arthur. Detailed documentation of sources can be found therein.

Page last modified August 29, 2007.