Runaways often turn to prostitution as work, in the US. This is because as runaway children they can’t find legal work, and this is the only labor available.
Prostitution itself generally means issues with drug/alcohol abuse, getting beaten, raped, STDs, and post traumatic stress disorder and/or death as a result of the former items. It’s not a cheery nor safe profession when undertaken illegally. And regardless of you stance on the legalization of prostitution, I think you would have to agree that legalizing child prostitution is not going to happen before legalizing self-supporting minors.
What are your thoughts on a law which:
Allowed a workplace to offer work to minors so long as it was not during school hours, and not to exceed 20 hours of work a week.
Allowed minors to emancipate easily from their parents if they have received an offer of legal work.
Provided extra income to these children to be self-supporting.
Or, alternately, what sort of law would you want to see passed, if any?
I’d rather simply support children than have them work. As far as I’m concerned they already have a job: school. And children are simply too easy to exploit.
#2 should still require either consent or service of process on both parents, if living, and any guardians if applicable. The burden of proving maturity is on the minor.
#3 is a bad idea. Why should a 16 year old minimum wage worker get a supplement not available to a 23 year old for the same work?
I think your proposal assumes that runaways have a rational basis for fleeing home. I’m sure many do, but I’m also sure that many run away because they’re immature little punks. Since it’s unlikely that any job they can acquire will pay enough to support them (and since I don’t support subsidizing them), I think the best course of action would be to return them to their parents and make sure they stay there.
Do you have a cite to support your contention that runaways often turn to prostitution? Sounds scary but implausible.
Maybe they go back home. Maybe they crash with a sympathetic friend. Maybe they become squatters. It could be any number of solutions aside from resorting to prostitution.
Children shouldn’t have to be self-supporting. And most of them, including (probably especially) the ones who run away from home, aren’t really equipped (emotionally, financially, etc.) to be self-supporting. It sounds like you’re proposing treating runaway kids as, and expecting them to live as, adults.
The whole point of classing them as minors is that they are not considered capable of looking after themselves. Even when they left school at 14 to become a different sort of miner they were still expected to live at home and their wage be part of the family income. I can’t see that establishing some sort of employment for runaways would amount to much more than re-introducing the Workhouse or some sort of 3rd world sweat-shop. They may not be turning to illegal prostitution because anything else they might do is just as illegal. They might find it freer and better paying.
I would rather see kids who can’t live with their families placed in good foster homes and given the support they need to finish school and learn independent living skills.
I’ll do it if you allow adults to have free education (remedial & college) at any age. The opposition to putting runaways in the labor force is tied in the national mind to the idea of an educated society.
But that analysis treats them as competent to “sign up” for something. And they whole point of their “minor” status is that they are presumptively not competent to sign up for anything.
And people who drink beer and drive are signing up for death and murder. Should we facilitate this?
It’s one thing to advocate personal responsibility. It’s another thing to propose that society should push every person’s stupid ideas forward to their natural conclusions, putting ‘teaching them a lesson’ above the greater good.
No. Put them in government run orphanages and then conscript them into the Army or Peace Corps if they don’t have much other oppourtunities or college once they’re eighteen.
And I’m also sure that the reason they’re immature little punks is because they are young and they have clinical depression (or other personality disorders) or really crappy parents.
Having a mental disease or abusive parents would tend to make one disagreeable, no?