Over the past several years or so I’ve read various news items about how various progressive counties like the Dutch and the Swedes were scaling back the decades long experiments in the non-criminalization of drugs and prostitution because they had found that the areas in which they let these activities flourish tended to attract various annoying and undesirable elements.
I realize every country is different, but are there any lesson other industrialized democracies can take take away from these experiments?
You are wrong about Sweden. Drugs are definitely illegal. It is illegal to buy sexual services too, but not to sell them. The criminalization of the purchase, but not selling, of sex was unique when first enacted, in 1999. I think the reason why to only criminalize the purchase has to do with the cultural Marxists beliefs in Sweden. You know, those who sell are oppressed victims of the fascist society and so on.
Actually, in the least progressive parts of Europe, like in Greece, prostitution and brothels are legal.
Or, you know, because for a price, there will always be a supply (c.f. the American war on drugs). Drying up demand, while not necessarily easier or more effective, I’d think would at least be safer. I have a hard time imagining a Cali cartel on the demand side of the cocaine trade.
One thing the Dutch have done is restrict the sale of MJ in coffeehouses to residents of the country, to discourage people who visit the country just to use the drug. AFAIK, MJ and other commonly used illicit recreational drugs haven’t been fully legalized anywhere, unless you want to consider relaxed local laws, like California’s easy access to legal MMJ, a form of de facto full legalization.
Drugs in Portugal aren’t exactly legal, but the offense is purely administrative. The socialists in charge (no, really; they were actual socialists) channelled the money they spent from fighting drugs to treatment for those with problems. Ten years out, it’s regarded as a success.
Yes if only we could make having sex with young women less attractive to men. I’ll get right on it! (Where did I put that industrial sized bucket of saltpeter?)
Also remember when you legalize certain drugs or sex trades, historically it’s been done in sections. Like in Nevada in counties with small populations or in countries, it’s sold at bars.
What you get is ghettoization of the area, better known as red light districts, which attract certain elements in one area instead of spreading it out. So in effect you’re making it concentrated and it MAY look worse than it is.
This is not to say “zoning” it is bad but you can tell with other commercial products when you zone it you can have unintended consequences.
I don’t know about Sweden, but here (Canada) and likely in some other places the argument for the selling of sex being legal and the buying illegal is that it prevents the prostitute from having to make dangerous split-second decisions about whether to get into the car with a guy who she isn’t sure won’t murder her. Nothing to do with Marxism at all.
This is an excellent point, and especially bears repeating in the US, where individual states have far greater say in what will and won’t be allowed within their boundaries than the administrative divisions of most countries.
Good point. My sources really were dubious. Thanks for making sure everyone knows the bullshit I posted about Portugal is not to be trusted. :rolleyes:
Anyone who makes that argument obviously hasn’t listened to Swedish sex workers. That’s precisely one of the reasons they give as to what has happened since the buying of sex was made illegal. See the Norwegian study referred to above, as well as this link. The fairly obvious reason is that the buyers want the negotiations over with as quickly as possible so they don’t get arrested.
On a couple other points:
There is now an “official” Swedish evaluation, but frankly it’s a load of hooey. It admits at the start of it that its terms of reference prohibited it from even considering whether the law should be done away with, which means that its findings were only ever going to point in one direction. It also didn’t do any real research into the effects of the law but only talked to a handful of people, most of whom are supporters of the law, whose word it took for granted. As for those who oppose the law (actual sex workers), it acknowledged their existence without addressing any of their arguments. Basically it was more of an exercise in self-congratulation rather than a real evaluation.
Part of the problem with the Dutch experiment - and actually, a general problem with legalised prostitution - is that it was aimed more at public order rather than the rights of the actual workers. When those two things conflict, the former is prioritised. So that has obviously created a number of problems for the workers. Some of the tolerance zones were badly planned; Amsterdam’s, for example, was located way outside the city centre where sex workers were not likely to travel. There are similar problems in a lot of other countries were legalisation has taken place. I’m researching this at the moment (from a sex workers’ rights perspective) and I’m actually shocked at how badly designed some of these regimes are.
For an example of one that has generally worked pretty well, see New Zealand. They decriminalised, rather than legalising, prostitution (although a legalisation scheme applies to managed brothels, which seems to be the only sane way to allow them) and have taken a firmly rights-based approach.
The official review can be found here. It hasn’t worked perfectly in every respect, which is due in part to design flaws (which are being addressed) and in part to the impossibility of attaining any perfect scheme. But in general, it’s been more successful than any other scheme seems to have been, and certainly a far sight better than criminalisation.
This just in the bordertowns. The places where Germans/Belgians/French would come just to score dope. Anyone can still het their stuff in Amsterdam or most of the Netherlands for that matter. It is quite a new policy, so it remains to be seen whether the tourists won’t just drive to the next closest border town.
[quote=“ruadh, post:16, topic:585926”]
Part of the problem with the Dutch experiment - and actually, a general problem with legalised prostitution - is that it was aimed more at public order rather than the rights of the actual workers. When those two things conflict, the former is prioritised. So that has obviously created a number of problems for the workers. Some of the tolerance zones were badly planned; Amsterdam’s, for example, was located way outside the city centre where sex workers were not likely to travel. There are similar problems in a lot of other countries were legalisation has taken place. I’m researching this at the moment (from a sex workers’ rights perspective) and I’m actually shocked at how badly designed some of these regimes are.
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I’m not that familiar with anything that might have happened decades ago (if that’s what you’re refering to) but most red light district in the Netherlands are very centrally located. Usually near the main trainstations and anyone who knows the dutch, knows that’s a bout as important a place as there is.
There is a definately a lot of things that are not perfect, but these are difficult - if not impossible - to deal with. Just a few months ago a district in The Hague (where I live) because the police had leads about human trafficing. All the girls were brought to city hall, which was stocked with interpreters and other supportive organisations and they were all payed (don’t know how much) for their loss of revenue. I still haven’t heard about anything actually coming out of this, except for some drugs they found in one of the rooms. This was a pretty big and expensive operation and they (politicians if nobody else) would’ve surely made it widely known if even a few girls would have talked or used the opportunity to get out of that world.
The legalisation of prostitution* in New Zealand in 2003 seems to have been pretty much uneventful (as has the recognition of same-sex civil unions in 2005). Studies haven’t shown any great increase in the sex trade and an attempt by Church groups to secure enough support to force a referendum on the issue (10% of registered voters required) was a total failure.
Some local authorities have tried to limit or eliminate prostitution in their areas through by-laws but these have been successfully challenged in court for being ultra vires. Some brothels have been prosecuted for breaching alcohol licensing laws though.
Overall I think the legalisation of prostitution has been successful - you’re no more likely to be accosted by prostitutes than you were pre-2003 and there seems to have been very few downsides to the move.
*Prostution per se wasn’t actually illegalpre-2003 - but soliciting and brothel-keeping was.
“Tolerance zones” and “red light districts” are not the same thing. A tolerance zone is where street prostitution, which is technically still illegal in the Netherlands, is allowed. A red light district is where the brothels are located. The tolerance zones tend to be occupied by those who can’t get work in the brothels for one reason or another. A lot of them are drug addicts, and they weren’t going to get on a bus and go into the Amsterdam zone outside the city centre. It ended up being populated by sex workers from outside the EEA who couldn’t legally work in the brothels, and trafficking victims. And so it was closed down in 2003 or 2004.
Prostitution is legal in most jurisdictions in Australia and has been for as long as I remember. Various local councils have different regulations but if it is in an approved brothel or a single worker’s premises then there’s no legal problem. Amazingly to me they still find the occasional illegal brothel, but in general this arrangement keeps problems down to a minimum.
Drugs here are about as illegal as they are in the US.