OK I was watching an episode of Prisoner (Prisoner: Cell Block H), and Dorren is trying to get arrested because well Wentworth Prison is just so much fun to be in everyone tries to get arrested.
If you look at this clip here from YouTube while Dorren tries to chat up a cop outside a police station, the cop comes back with “soliciting’s not a crime” (at about 0:42)
Now I realize TV, and Prisoner especially, aren’t good reliable sources of information but surely solicitation is a crime.
Is there any truth to this or is this just another case of a TV show glossing over facts for comedic effect?
AFAIK prostitution itself is legal in every Australian state and territory and some even licence and regulate brothels. When I went there with People to People our 1st hotel in Sydney was across the street from a brothel (granted so was the motel in LA we spent a layover at).
I don’t know how the law stood when that television show was produced, nor in which state it supposedly took place. The prostitution laws have tended to swing back and forth somewhat in terms of liberalisation over the last thirty years. Currently, in NSW at least, soliciting is a criminal act only if it takes place in certain physical locations e.g. near a dwelling, school, church or hospital (cf Summary Offences Act 1988 (NSW), section 19)
Well this was episode 435 and the copyright is 1983 on the end credits.
I was just wondering, 'cause the show was set in Wentworth Prison and there were certainly enough prostitutes in the prison. Though I believe the charge was always something like “living off immoral means or something along those lines”
So maybe the act of soliciting wasn’t illegal as long as money didn’t exchange hands?
