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Prostitution and human trafficking are two separate issues
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(AP Photo/Franka Bruns)
Today's Providence Journal has a column by Ed Achorn that is so misguided, that it is difficult to figure out where to start. The column criticizes the loophole in Rhode Island law which makes prostitution legal, if it occurs indoors. For a multitude of reason, the current law is effective and should remain unchanged. It makes prostitution on the streets illegal, yet doesn't criminalize consensual sex between adults that occurs behind closed doors. Edward Achorn seems to get side-tracked, and confuses several issues. This particular passage is a good example:
By refusing to pass a good law specifically banning indoor prostitution, Rhode Island is saying yes to the brutal exploitation of teenage girls and young women, many of them foreigners who are held in this strange land as virtual slaves. Their pimps are experts at preying on young women, with the help of drugs, coercion and “protection,” to keep them in slavery, miserably toiling in the fields of prostitution — serving perhaps a dozen men a day to help earn pimps hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
Mr. Achorn brings up crimes that are troubling and serious. What he doesn't seem to realize is that there are already laws on the books to address these issues. The state and federal government already have human trafficking laws on the books. If a prostitute is under the age of consent, statutory rape laws would apply. If she is being held against her will and assaulted, then charges of assault, sexual assault, and kidnapping could be brought against the perpetrator. Why does Edward Achorn want prostitution laws to apply? Is it so we can arrest the victims of human trafficking who have been assaulted and put them in jail? Of course not.
Those who want to make indoor prostitution illegal use human trafficking as an excuse to go after consensual activity. Their arguments are disingenuous and misinformed. They also seem to feel that criminalizing prostitution will make it go away. Prostitution is illegal in 48 states, yet it still occurs in all of those states. It isn't called the world's oldest profession for nothing.
There is one thing Edward Achorn was correct about. It does seem as though members of the General Assembly are intentionally trying to dodge the issue. It would be nice to see them vote against a bill that criminalizes consensual activity between adults, but that seems to be asking too much. After all, how often does the General Assembly actually do the right thing?
