Comments on: Police more likely to sleep with than arrest prostitutes

By: steve

steve — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 15:07:29 +0000

The police arrest men for the same thing.the law is the law,the police are no different than us.

By: xrey

xrey — Wed, 16 Jan 2008 11:57:15 +0000

I suspect that many of the “freebies” are in fact a quid-pro-quo for protection. After all, these women can’t exactly go to the police every time they are beaten up by their pimps/johns.

Perhaps the women maintain contact with these police in the event they need protection.

Of course, if this were legalized/regulated, they could approach police without risk of punishment.

By: JB

JB — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 23:38:30 +0000

So if they legalized it in Chicago, prostitution would go down by 3%. AND the cops could spend more time fighting real crime instead of sleeping with those naughty prostitutes.

By: Ted

Ted — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 23:22:08 +0000

“3%” is hardly low if it means a police officer is 15 times more likely to have sex with a prostitute than to arrest her.

By: Ignoring The Obvious Conclusion

Ignoring The Obvious Conclusion — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 17:32:24 +0000

Ned, above, starts by saying how “surprised” he is by the 3% figure because it is rather low. Why is he surprised? Because he accepts the “prohibitionist” argument that government/police corruption goes hand-in-hand with “morals” laws. Yet this study clearly shows rather little corruption. Perhaps an empiril approach would show that corruption/crime are a function of something else and that, in the right context, morals laws on balance improve the public welfare.

By: BladeDoc

BladeDoc — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 16:16:02 +0000

If the IRS offered me that deal I’d really have to think about it.

By: BRT

BRT — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 14:16:57 +0000

Please keep in mind this report is far from being good data. The 3% figure is taken from the verbal estimates for the street hookers, most of whom are high on drugs. Real data would have a researcher doing observations of the hookers to determine how much money they are really making and how many so called “fee-bes” are going to police.

By: Ned

Ned — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 12:58:31 +0000

The thing that surprises me is that the 3% figure is so low. Corruption of law enforcement goes hand-in hand with this sort of “morals” legislation. Remember the old TV series, “The Untouchables,” where a small group of honest federal agents battled mob bootleggers during Prohibition because all the local cops were on the take? The same thing occurs with drug trafficking, only on a much larger scale. All this might be worth the price if the laws actually worked, but they don’t Prostitution and the drug trade flourish, the cops are paid off and the profits go to organized crime. What a deal!

By: Tom T.

Tom T. — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 11:54:03 +0000

Well, the 3% is a surcharge. Presumably the women involved are as liable for income taxes as you and I are (albeit perhaps in a lower bracket), but there’s just no enforcement against them.

By: Anonymous Attorney

Anonymous Attorney — Mon, 14 Jan 2008 11:10:57 +0000

In Virginia, one police agency was actually allowing its officers to “do the deed” with prostitutes as part of their sting operations. I think that if I were the judge, I would throw out cases involving that activity by police on some kind of dignity-of-the-tribunal grounds.

Still, I wonder if applications to this department went up in the wake of the publicity…