Prostitution now illegal for the clientele...

[Vermilion]

Proposed law reforms in the UK are planning to make it illegal to buy sex.

Article here

Surely this just means that all the law-abiding men will stop using prostitutes - all the men who might report something that seems wrong. Those men who don;t care about the law, who choose trafficked women as a preference because they like the aspect of cruelty - those men are not going to be put off by a law. Seems like the government are just making things worse to my PoV.

 

[oggbashan]

At the moment it is legal to buy sex in the UK.

It is legal to go to a prostitute's base - room or home - if she is working alone or with a maid. It is illegal to profit from someone else selling sex. That makes almost all sexual encounters probably illegal.

Our local "brothels" have been raided several times this year. Each time the women were providing sex under coercion usually physical and financial. The women were not prosecuted but were initially detained as illegal immigrants. What happened to them isn't clear but they didn't go to court.

Og

 

[jeninflorida]

why not make it freaking legal? if this and pot were legal the police could go after bigger targets. I do not agree with selling of humans i.e. slaves but sex is always 4 sale.

Proposed law reforms in the UK are planning to make it illegal to buy sex.

Article here

Surely this just means that all the law-abiding men will stop using prostitutes - all the men who might report something that seems wrong. Those men who don;t care about the law, who choose trafficked women as a preference because they like the aspect of cruelty - those men are not going to be put off by a law. Seems like the government are just making things worse to my PoV.

 

[JackLuis]

why not make it freaking legal? if this and pot were legal the police could go after bigger targets. I do not agree with selling of humans i.e. slaves but sex is always 4 sale.

But then it wouldn't employ all those cops who could be investigating politics and Banking.

 

[gauchecritic]

Proposed law reforms in the UK are planning to make it illegal to buy sex.

Not quite. The reform (as I understand it) is making the puchasers of sex with 'trafficked' women liable to charges of rape.

 

[Liar]

Not quite. The reform (as I understand it) is making the puchasers of sex with 'trafficked' women liable to charges of rape.

That's what I read too yesterday. Sounded entirely reasonable. I'll see if I can dig up the article.


...


Yep. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/7735908.stm

"Buying or selling sex is legal but soliciting and pimping are not."

If that means what it means in some other countries, legal prositution is limited to buying sex from a self-employed sex worker who is offering the service.

So they're pretty much just amping up the punishment for something that was already illegal.

 

[CharleyH]

why not make it freaking legal?

Why is it illegal in many countries?

 

[lil_elvis]

Why is it illegal in many countries?

Hi Charley

You really have to ask? It has a long history of immorality - one of societies great loves: to try to regulate peoples lives with legislation

 

[impressive]

Proposed law reforms in the UK are planning to make it illegal to buy sex.

So much for the sanctity of "marriage."

 

[Pure]

apparently the swedes have had some success with such a law.

how does a client know if a woman is 'trafficked'?

second, the equation of "prostitute" and "trafficked woman" is questionable, but a slogan of the xian right, in the US.

presumably the law won't work that well, in view of the a) demand, and b) the supply.

it is, in theory, fair, though, that both are charged if both act voluntarily. i'm not sure i'd agree with the Swedes that ONLY the man in charged (the buyer) and that all women are acting under duress.

best is for NEITHER (adult) to be charged, but for traffickers of both sexes to be charged. and any adults pimping or buying children.

 

[oggbashan]

It is, and will still be, legal to buy sex in the UK.

The difference is that the contracting parties must be free to make the decision whether to buy and sell without interference or coercion by anyone else. The buyer will have to be able to "prove" that the seller was acting by their own unfettered will.

Therefore the buyer will be presumed to be guilty until they have demonstrated their innocence. That is a major change in English Law.

Og

 

[manyeyedhydra]

Sigh.

Harriet Harman and Jacqui Smith (ministers responsible) should be taken out to a field and hit repeatedly over the head with giant dildos until the message: 'What consenting adults get up to in private is their own business," finally percolates through their thick skulls.

The same treatment should be meted out to the editors of the tabloids, except I think they'd probably enjoy it too much.

 

[Pure]

??

ogg said about the new law: The buyer will have to be able to "prove" that the seller was acting by their own unfettered will.

Therefore the buyer will be presumed to be guilty until they have demonstrated their innocence

if this is the law, it's ridiculous. how do i know if the ho, or any seller, is acting "unfettered"; they don't have a brand on their forehead. no one is holding a gun. how do i know if a waitress waiting on my table has been fetttered; if there's a psycho hubby at home making her work while he snorts coke?

if the seller speaks little english, or is obviously asian or ukrainian, do i assume 'coerced'?

obviously if it's a teen chained to a bed, yes. so the law should say that IF a reasonable person would think it likely there was coerceion, then the onus is on the buyer.
===


liar's bbc url has this info:

Under the plan, the Home Office is planning to criminalise paying for sex with a woman "controlled for another person's gain".

Those convicted would get a fine and a criminal record.

Pleading ignorance of the circumstances under which a prostitute is working will not count as a defence.

Under the plans, people who pay a prostitute for sex knowing they have been trafficked against their will could be charged with rape.


this wording is quite ambiguous: if ignorance is no defence, does that mean it's as i've recommended above: "ought to have known" = a reasonable person would think likely.

otoh, the last sentence say "knowingly", which means any guy can say "i didn't know" and maybe he'll get off unless her room says "trafficked sex slave" over the doorway.

 

[fifty5]

Maybe... maybe not...

I can actually see what this law is trying to achieve, which could be very different from whether it will work, or even more, whether it will work as published...

As I have gathered, before this law, it was legal to buy and sell sex, but not legal for a pimp to profit from the transaction or for sex workers to importune anyone in public.

I gather that now it will also be illegal to buy sex from a sex worker who has been imported to the country under false pretences - "trafficked" - and I deduce that if a native of the 'new' EU countries deliberately came to the UK to follow a career as a sex worker, that would still be legal (subject to previous pimping and soliciting laws).

The issue addressed seems to me not to be about the purchase or sale of sex as such, neither before nor after the recent legislation. Instead it's about the animals that prey upon other's weaknesses, whether via drug addiction (an old ploy) or (the new one) via tricking innocents from more economically challenged parts of the EU into migrating in the hopes of other employment (such as being a nanny or domestic help), then getting forced to become prostitutes.

In intention, neither old nor new legal positions seem to me to be bad.

In practice, neither old nor new positions may be effective. Pimps and traffickers both seem to me to be despicable low-life who make money out of vicious exploitation of weaker folk. They are unlikely to care much about either their girls or the punters.

However, with enlightened policing, the new law might persuade punters to do what they possibly should have done before: go into the witness box to testify against that exploitation.

Before, it would generally be a matter of shame to admit going with a prostitute (I'm not saying that's right, just that it's mostly the case). The result of that was that a critical witness against the real villains probably wouldn't testify.

Now, such punters can be offered a choice - the witness box or the dock.

Indirectly, this just might be a good thing.

What I find most frightening is the statement in the article that: "The Metropolitan police have estimated that 70% of the 88,000 women involved in prostitution in England and Wales are under the control of traffickers."

 

[manyeyedhydra]

What I find most frightening is the statement in the article that: "The Metropolitan police have estimated that 70% of the 88,000 women involved in prostitution in England and Wales are under the control of traffickers."

I believe that stat came from the Poppy Project, a group with a clear, biased agenda. It may be true (which would be sickening), but bear in mind the bias of the source. The group has publicised other findings that have not held up under closer scrutiny. I've read a number of articles by Bindel et al and have not been convinced by the methodology used to provide the figures.

this wording is quite ambiguous: if ignorance is no defence, does that mean it's as i've recommended above: "ought to have known" = a reasonable person would think likely.

Which is the problem. It's an effective ban, without actually looking like a outright ban. Given the largely underground nature of prostitution, I think it would be very difficult for a client to hire the services of a prostitute without knowing exactly for sure whether or not they were breaking the law. 'Ignorance is no defence'

Sadly this is less about protecting trafficked women and more about forcing through certain moral beliefs.

 

[SEVERUSMAX]

Sigh.

Harriet Harman and Jacqui Smith (ministers responsible) should be taken out to a field and hit repeatedly over the head with giant dildos until the message: 'What consenting adults get up to in private is their own business," finally percolates through their thick skulls.

The same treatment should be meted out to the editors of the tabloids, except I think they'd probably enjoy it too much.

Personally, I think that prostitution laws are an example of why at least half of politicians should be taken out and executed. But that's just my opinion. Or at least severely flogged and sentenced to 200 years of hard labor in the Alaskan penal colony created especially for them.