Las Vegas is making an effort to arrest sex workers who are "repeat offenders" -- and the local newspaper has published photos of many of these woman.
"We're talking about girls who have been arrested repeatedly over the years, ones that we all know by face and by name," said Hughes, citing one woman who was arrested 18 times in a single year."If they get the message that Las Vegas is not going to ignore their subsequent arrests, then maybe they'll take their lifestyle to a different city," she said.
Ah, right. Clearly the only people with this "lifestyle," involved in this crime, are the women. Yup, all those women, selling sex to each other. Nah, no men purchasing sex. No pimps. Only these women pictured on the lefthand side of the screen. (Ok, end sarcasm...) Can you imagine the local police imposing a "crackdown" on johns or on pimps? Publishing photos of the men involved in this crime? Yeah, me neither. Even though I'm willing to bet there are a LOT of male repeat offenders as well.
Just because police don't have a list of the most prolific pimps doesn't mean the vice unit is ignoring that part of the problem in its undercover operations, Hughes said."We've got two investigative teams that deal with nothing but pimps," she said. "But we also want to minimize opportunities for prostitutes to be aggressive with the tourists and with men who aren't interested in that."
Because clearly the sex-workers are a more aggressive threat than the pimps or johns? Please. As I scroll down the page, reading this article, the women's photos run down the entire lefthand side. I mean, they just keep coming. This whole thing is so painfully gendered and shaming. Who is this helping?
Contact the Las Vegas Review Journal:
Reporter Alan Maimon: amaimon @reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0404.Info for letters to the editor is here.
Thanks to dozens of you for sending in the link.
UPDATE: On a related note, Kay writes, "If we are going to say prostitution is illegal, why are so few men prosecuted for it? The answer is because they are powerful, well-connected, and can afford expensive lawyers that can keep their names private. ... becoming 'tough on prostitution' is likely to fail in the same way becoming 'tough on drugs' has."
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If the concern is actually for the women in sex work (which of course it isn't), how does publicly outing them help at all? Once they're outed in such a fashion as sex workers, how are they to get "straight" jobs?
It's just ridiculous. A lot of those women weren't arrested for prostitution, either, but for trespassing or something else. Looking like a "whore" is enough to get you arrested on the street.
It's wrong and completely one-sided. You know if they started publishing client photos, there would be outrage. But since these women are just sex workers, who cares about them? Ugh.
The thing that scares me, too, is that once you publish the names + photos + details about these women, it's just going to make their working conditions that much more unsafe.
It's almost giving the okay for people to treat them with that much less respect and decency, and to think of them as less than human.
It's really problematic, and frightening, that this is seen as a good way to deal with prostitution in that state.
I agree. They might as well have published their addresses, cell phone numbers and where they went to high school.
Well, our legal system is not very focused on helping law breakers find better work. I imagine that Vegas is far more concerned with appeasing the casinos and real estate developers than promoting social welfare.
The only thing policy does is help prostitutes get business as prostitutes. I mean if you get caught, you might as well get free advertising.
I thought prostitution was legal in Vegas.
It's legal in the state of Nevada, but not inside Vegas city limits.
I agree that this isn't a good idea. However, there are a lot of places that publish photos of "Johns" in an attempt to shame them. I have even heard of places that run the names and photos on public access TV. This isn't really a new way to attempt to reduce prostitution.
There's a difference here, in the application of the idea though. Punishing the "customers" actually works to reduce the demand for prostitutes. Punishing the prostitutes themselves, who are often driven into their line of work by desperate times or even sometimes trafficked against their will? Not so much.
As others have said, calling these women out publicly does not make them much more likely to get a "legit" job, given how our society views prostitution. The only logical conclusion I can make is that the idea is to make examples of these women in order to scare others from following suit.
This is similar to an argument used for promoting the war on drugs. By prosecuting people with small amounts of drugs, they aimed to eliminate demand. The problem was the demand was too overwhelmingly huge to eliminate this way. So they had to target dealers and approach it from the supply side.
With prostitution, by targetting the women they are not striking at the root of the supply chain, the pimps, nor the demand, the 'customers'. There's really no good economic or political basis for going after the workers, other than thinly veiled misogyny of course.
(I know I'm talking about women in the same language as commodities, and this issue is way more complex than a brief economic analysis. Its just another way to look at it.)
well, that's sort of up for debate-yes, it reduces customers, by reducing the number of customers to people who are ok with being criminals. and guess what, that means the customers tend to be more violent. though I suppose, that does prove the whole anti prostution=all johns are bad. argument in the same way that abstinence only education does make sex more likely to lead to disease and pregnancy. also, Ann-I believe Minnesota is an example of a place that publishes the Johns name, if not photo(don't remember right now which it is)
Where I'm from (Denver), we have a public access called "John TV" which scrolls names and pictures of those arrested for soliciting prostitutes. If you're ever in the Mile High, check it out, although be prepared for shock because I've seen (more than once) people I know featured on the program. Now that's great TV.
Yes, I'm from Colorado and that's what I was thinking of.
What is it with society and shame????????Cauuusseee these women do what they do because they think everyone feels good about it and their super proud and if they had the option of a different lifestyle they would still choose prostitution. But Now. Nooowww that these pictures have been put up...they've said to themselves...Oh, well. I guess this is shameful. I'll go be that astronaut. Wtf? I have known people that went into prostitution. They were already ashamed but they were into it and they felt they didn't have any other option. And its even more complicated when drugs are involved. This can only make matters worse. And I hate to think about it...but if you were a "John" and you saw a picture in the newspaper...wouldnt you be more likely to approach these women??? Cause you know for sure what they do for a living! It can be adverstisement...You know what they say about publicity.
And doesnt this shame last for a lifetime? Its just like being released from jail. The idea is that you are redeemed and placed back into society but theirs still stigmatization with being an ex-con. So when these women "change their life around" what happens when people still identify them as prostitutes?
Come on. We can come up with something different.
It's true. Innocent or guilty- these women have been marked for life. They might as well get a scarlet "W" for "whore" sewn on all their clothes, because no one will ever seen them as anything else, even if they try to get "legitimate" jobs.
Has anyone thought of, you know, asking the women if there's anything that would make them stop being sex workers? Does this happen anywhere?
Where were they trespassing? I don't get why most were arrested for that. Though I must say, I don't see why people would stop doing something if they get arrested but get no jail time.
How about, has anybody ever thought of, you know, asking sex workers if there's anything that would make their working conditions safer? (I'm thinking addressing police harassment might be on the short list...)
I'm guessing the arrest for trespassing means we are talking about casino property. These women likely frequent the casinos looking for customers. Once identified as prostitutes they were likely kicked out (on many occasions) and told not to come back. They tried their luck again and got snagged. Casinos likely were working in cahoots with law enforcement on this one.
*I only know this because my old man used to be quite the card counter...he he.
There are escort services who supply high priced call girls to male casino guests. The people who run those escort services do NOT like it when lower priced freelance prostitutes "poach on their territory" by coming into the casinos to solicit customers.
Since "whales" (men who bet a LOT of money on a regular basis) often seek out the company of prostitutes, the casinos probably have commercial relationships with some of the escort services, and for their own commercial reasons also don't want streetwalkers cutting in on their action.
This might be an explanation why streetwalkers would get detained by casino security, who would then call the Las Vegas Metrocops and press 'trespassing' charges, while the call girls are allowed to go up to the guest rooms without a problem.
It's still hypocritical - one group of prostitutes (the ones who have to give a cut of their earning to an escort service) are allowed to work unrestrictedly, while another group are subject to police persecution.
Actually, there are lots of cities that have posted pictures of johns too. I'm working right now so I don't have time to look up all my sources on that, but here's one anyway:
http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?sec=technology&res=9F0CE3D61E3BF930A15755C0A9639C8B63&fta=y
To be very clear from the outset, I completely agree that the police tactics outlined in this article are completely unacceptable and abhorrent, and that if they are treating sex work as a crime, sex workers aren't the only criminals. However, some parts of this really rub me the wrong way:
"Ah, right. Clearly the only people with this "lifestyle," involved in this crime, are the women. Yup, all those women, selling sex to each other. Nah, no men purchasing sex. No pimps. Only these women pictured on the lefthand side of the screen. (Ok, end sarcasm...) Can you imagine the local police imposing a "crackdown" on johns or on pimps? Publishing photos of the men involved in this crime? Yeah, me neither. Even though I'm willing to bet there are a LOT of male repeat offenders as well."
Um, actually, at least here in Montreal, the police do crack down on johns. They'll be picked up and sent to john-school, to try to reprogram them into understanding sex work as dirty, wrong, and exploitative, no matter what the circumstances. This is something that a lot of sex workers really object to, because those johns are their clients and are the way that they make their money. When the police crack down on johns, they take away business from sex workers.
This is not to say that in cases where someone is being forced to turn tricks, for example, the john should not be held responsible for not checking out the circumstances under which he is paying for sex. And just to highlight something, I say "he" here because I am using the word "john," lacking a succinct, gender-neutral term that means the same thing. However, it is not only "women" who do sex work and not only "men" who pay for sex. people of all genders, yes, "all," not "both," genders, do sex work and pay for sex. This constant discussion of sex work along such binary lines erases a lot of people's experiences of sex work, whether positive or negative, and that is not remotely in line with a feminism that is queer- and trans-inclusive, and in my opinion, those are necessary components of any feminism today.
Although I acknowledge wholeheartedly that there are plenty of sex workers who very much would rather be doing something else, or who are quite clearly forced into sex work, I think it's pretty patronizing to assume that no sex workers want to be doing what they are doing and that none of them enjoy it or are empowered by it. Sex work doesn't only continue to exist because there is demand for it, although that is one reason. It also continues to exist because some people, and yes, some women, find this line of work fulfilling and enjoyable.
I really highly recommend checking out Stella (a support organization run by and for sex workers here in Montreal), at chezstella.org, and the blog Bound, Not Gagged at deepthroated.wordpress.com, for some alternate perspectives on sex work. Constructing "sex workers" as some sort of monolithic, universally victimized group is getting old.
I tried (perhaps unsuccessfully) to use language that did not frame all sex workers as a monolithic, victimized group. I do realize that other law enforcement tactics have cracked down on johns. I merely wanted to point out the shaming language and one-sided-ness of this particular situation.
Thanks for the links. Will definitely check them out.
In New York City's Borough of Brooklyn, the New York Police Department and the Kings County District Attorney's Office have a program where they do sting operations with female detectives posing as prostitutes.
The men who try and solicit them for sex get arrested, and then they are forced to pay to attend a lecture where they get yelled at for being bad people and paying for sex.
And if they don't pay for the class, they have to do time out on Rikers Island.
This is supposed to stop prostitution on the demand side.
Of course, the men arrested are overwhelmingly working class and disproportionately Black or Latino.
Upper class men (a group who are, in our racist society, disproportionately White) tend to hire call girls who work for escort services. They hire the prostitute over the phone or via the internet, the woman comes directly to their home or to a hotel room (often by car service) so the whole transaction happens behind closed doors.
Needless to say, these men NEVER get caught up in those sting operations.
Does Montreal's program of arresting johns look anything like Brooklyn's?
I hope it doesn't, because the program in Brooklyn has serious race and class bias problems - and it leaves a whole section of prostitution users totally unpunished (assuming you even agree with the idea of prostitution being illegal - which I do not).
"Can you imagine the local police imposing a "crackdown" on johns or on pimps? Publishing photos of the men involved in this crime?"
Uh.. Yes? As others have pointed out above, that's almost always the way it works, shaming Johns on TV, in the newspaper, on the internet, and outing them to family, friends and employers. This is done by clean-up-the-neighborhood organizations, Christian groups and other moralizers, and through official channels like the police. I'm not sure, but I think it's likely that some feminist anti-prostitution groups like WHISPER do it too.
I wonder if the reasons for this crackdown came in part from the same motivation that only allows counties with population under 400,000 to license brothels. I think they don't want prostitutes, especially the ones who roll tricks, driving away the tourists. And, of course, Hughes plainly came out and said that it's the tourists they are worried about. Which, of course, would make the whole situation even more repugnant. Business interests give way to consideration of people's lives, as usual.
In my experience, it's not the prostitutes who are "aggressive" with the tourists, but the hordes of guys who stand on the strip pushing flyers for their services... the first time I went there I thought they were handing out coupons for free drinks or something.
Publicly shaming sex-workers only serves to divert the focus from the role of johns, pimps and legislation in Nevada. The state of Nevada appears to be more invested in controlling women's bodies than offering viable alternatives.
According to a recent study on Nevada prostitution cited in Ms. magazine (spring 2008, Melissa Farley), "81% of the women in the state's legal brothel system wanted to escape but were controlled by legal & illegal pimps. There was also evidence of transnational trafficking into the legal brothels."
This article also mentions that when legislation was passed in Sweden to prosecute pimps & johns, as well as offer social & vocational services to sex-workers who wanted to escape, the trafficking of women significantly decreased. Five years after the law was passed, "the number of men buying women's sexual services had dropped 75%." The number of women being trafficked in Sweden has dropped to 500 women a year.
The overarching context of prostitution needs to be examined. The state of Nevada is shaming women for a system that it has helped create. Does the state want to "clean up" its image on the streets by publicly sacrificing a handful of prostitutes or intiate enduring change?
Targeting these women only confirms that Nevada wants to guard its political role as State Pimp. It is very convenient to vilify these women and divert attention from the root issues. Nevada does not want an alternative for women, but a greater measure of control. A pimp punishes a prostitute who does not do what she is told. Releasing these photographs is the publicly sanctioned punishment for those who dare to disobey.
maybe they'll take their lifestyle to a different city
Since when is good law enforcement just about moving criminals on to a different city? This acknowledges that their method isn't likely to help prostitutes out of prostitution (aka cut recidivism).
This is a ridiculously dumb policy. I am much more familiar with programs that shame johns publicly, and like those programs or not, I at least get the sense behind them: johns are regular members of society that commit their crimes anonymously. removing that anonymity cuts down on demand.
but publically shaming sex workers? I mean, there are a lot of reasons to become a sex worker, from economic desperation to an unusual view of social empowerment, but anonymity is significantly less central to the career of sex workers than the behavior of johns.
Worse, the police are actually discouraging sex workers from switching jobs. After all, how successful can switching to a more traditional career be, if a complete dismissal of professional respect (and probably termination) can result if a coworker happens onto the right website?
That's an interesting comparison. And the 'supply side' of prostitution is the patriarchy - not that the government cares about stopping that.
*apologies - meant to reply to 'blissed0and0gone'
I saw this article but I didn't read it as an attempt to shame women. Between the photo gallery and the mysterious lack of male customer mug shots, I read it as a blatant, crass advertisement for prostitution-enhanced Las Vegas "entertainment": "Come on, all you real men, give the wife the slip and hustle your horny asses to Vegas! You won't need a personality to score strange pussy, all you'll need is a little cash. You want whores? Brother, we got 'em right here, more whores than you know what to do with! They're everywhere; you can't hardly swing your arm in Las Vegas without slapping a whore! And don't forget: what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas!"
Ugh I hate this so much. It makes no sense to me why the law only targets prostitutes and not the pimps or johns who, in my opinion, are doing something much worse.
This just makes me feel bad for these women and gross in my stomach.
The crazy thing about this is, in Nevada, prostitution is legal in most of the state - prostitution is only illegal in Las Vegas and Reno.
So if those women had been about 20 miles north, their work would be perfectly legal.
Also, even in Vegas and Reno, there are escort services who advertise openly in the phonebook and through fliers - but those women (and their bosses) don't get arrested, only the streetwalkers do!
Hypocrisy!