Tomas at Teekay’s Coffeeshop has an excellent post on how the Czech police decided to go after the oldest profession and benefit from register all hookers in a special database. The software for this essential exercise was provided by the UN.
After raiding 475 nightclubs past weekend in a well-meant effort to combat organized slavery, the Secretary of Interior Mr Gross (nomen omen) came up with this idea that prostitutes are to be monitored. The official goal is to find out about the movement of prostitutes within the EU.
Police will enter the data about anyone who looks like a hooker, after checking and recording data on your citizen ID card (it’s mandatory to bear it at all times). Main source of data will be nightclubs and bars of certain sorts, but the police isn’t limited to these venues only.
Central European babes are not known for their coy dress sense
Apparently, it is enough for a girl to wear something ‘crazy’ for her to end up in the National Hooker Registry. And there is no recourse, just as there are no rules, no checks, no appeal. Tomas concludes:
The next step will be regulated legalization: with all of them registered and monitored, the State will make a liberal gesture and allow some prostitution. Carefully controlled, with price limits, annual re-registration, you name it. Of course, it will also be much easier to monitor the customers of such services, and that could come in handy, too, right?
I think he may be on to something there…
Yep, lets declare all women prostitutes, and work our way back from there. Afterall, in the eye of total government like EU, all subjects are cattles.
Hey baby, you’re looking hot, wanna stay off the hooker registry? I’ve got an idea….
How fat, ugly, or just socially maladept cops of tomorrow will satisfy their “needs.”
Kundera is shaking his head at this one, for sure.
I love the line, “anyone who looks like a hooker”. Crikey, some of the paleo-social conservatives out there who occasionally comment on this blog think that any woman not covered head to foot is a hooker!
Is it terribly statist of me to believe this is a better plan than sending prostitutes to jail for five years (or, indeed, at all)? It could also be viewed as better than leaving them to be beaten by pimps and slave-traffickers.
Do you seriously think those are the only three options at hand, here, john b?
Papieren, Bitte.
Has Europe learned anything??
Is it terribly statist of me to believe this is a better plan than sending prostitutes to jail for five years (or, indeed, at all)?
If you think that forcing the registration of prostitutes is better than not jailing them at all, I would say, that, yes, it is rather statist of you. It is probably better than jailing all prostitutes, but you will still be jailing the unregistered ones, so this would be a marginal improvement at best.
It could also be viewed as better than leaving them to be beaten by pimps and slave-traffickers.
Of course, being beaten by pimps, slave-traffickers, or anyone else is already illegal. Perhaps the question is why the cops aren’t enforcing the laws against assault.
Another question might be whether it is the underground nature of the sex trade, due to its illegality, that facilitates violence by pimps. Registering some of the prostitutes will leave others in the black economy, at the mercy of their keepers. If you really want to put the pimps out of business, legalize the trade. All of the trade.
Remind me again of the benefits that will flow from this registration?
RC Dean / Jackie D – yes, obviously legalised prostitution without strange government intervention, but with strong police efforts to prevent abuse of vulnerable sex workers (especially junkies, people who don’t speak the local language, etc), would be preferable.
However, it seems a little odd for everyone be kicking up a major fuss against this policy, when it’s far less deranged than that of most other governments. If Blunkett announced a parallel scheme tomorrow, it’d be an improvement on the status quo.
John, much like registering guns, I still don’t see what the benefits are to me (or any other citizen) of registering prostitutes. I see the benefits to our masters of this scheme, I just don’t see any benefits to society.
This is not the legalization of prostitution – unregistered prostitution is still illegal, so all the abuses that come with black markets will still occur. At best, it is a partial solution that just begs to be corrupted in any number of sordid ways, and won’t begin to get at the worst of the abusers in the sex industry. At worst, it will increase the resources devoted to enforcing the prostitution laws, arguably leaving the trade even more subject to state intervention than it was in the past.
This is not progress.
John B – What is this “sex workers” crap? We’ve had words for whores for a couple of thousand years at least. No one here is saying whores of either sex should be aggressed, but let us not pretend that a “sex worker” is the same as a bank teller or someone who digs up streets for a living. It’s a sleazy trade, especially at the lower end, you should excuse the term, but certainly they are entitled to the same protection under the law that the rest of us enjoy. What one chooses to do with one’s own body is not the government’s business. You want to rent it out? Fine. (BTW, I never understood that term, “selling her body”. Surely when she wakes up the next morning and the John is gone, she still has her body?) But why should there be “strong police efforts to prevent abuse” of these people, when there are no “strong police efforts” in England to protect taxpayers/NHS payers from burglary and mugging?
Verity –
Sex workers / whores / slags / ladies of the night / whatever need protection from violence and abuse while they carry out their legal business, just as people walking home do.
The fact that the police are too busy manning their cash machines^H^H speed traps and dressing up as the Klan to actually solve any crimes of any kind whatsoever doesn’t have any bearing on whether they ought to be protecting hookers (and grannies, and stockbrokers, and everyone else). Of course they should.
Why should they be subject to any controls at all for charging money for sex? Why not register the johns, the vice cops and the pimps, who are the ones who have actually turned it into an underworld sleaze enterprise?
No one is forced to use the services of a prostitute. It is a free choice.
John – Why do you make a special plea for prostitutes to be protected by the police? Why should taxes be diverted from protecting society at large to providing special protection for people who contribute nothing to the economy by way of taxes or wealth creation? Why the special pleas for “strong police efforts to prevent abuse of vulnerable sex workers (especially junkies, people who don’t speak the local language, etc)”?
I always draw attention to it when people with political agendas attempt to manipulate the language – thinking they’re being oh-so-subliminally clever – to diminish its meaning. This is attempted theft, and I don’t like it. You use the term “sex workers” to try to introduce the notion that prostitution is just another career choice. It’s not, of course.
Although there are indeed some astute call girls and gigolos who do well out of it, most prostitutes’ lives are degrading and violent in the extreme – both from the nature of their trade and the vicious pimps who run them, and that they are almost always junkies. This is not just an alternative to choosing nursing or supermarket management as a career.
Despite your plea above for special police protection for “vulnerable” whores and rentboys, doesn’t it occur to you that prostitution is a vulnerable trade – freely entered into in most cases? (Yes, I know that some illegal immigrants are turned out to pay back people traffickers. Most are not in this category.)
Now let us address this inability to speak “the local language”. Which local language would this be in particular? The local language as in English, for example? As though English is just another simple tribal language peculiar to one small section of the country? Another attempt to diminish and cloud real meaning through obfuscation. English – spoken fluently as a first language by half a billion people worldwide? That “local language”? You are nothing if not obvious.
Personally, I don’t think the government has a role in how a people market their brains, talents, personality or their bodies. I don’t care one way or the other about prostitutes. And I don’t care about your motivation for advocating special police protection for them. But I care very much about the prostitution of my language and I’m not letting you and your socialist, manipulating ilk get away with it.
I’ll thank you to leave my socialist, manipulating elk – and all the other creatures in my socialist, manipulating menagerie – out of it. Although I may collect Trotskyite household pets, my instincts are pretty free market. Which includes free in the sense of “not based on snap moral judgements”.
I said “the local language” because the piece was about the Czech Republic; I imagine that 1) a lot of hos in Cz speak Ukrainian or Armenian and not Czech 2) not speaking English isn’t a major disadvantage for Czech prozzies if they speak Czech and/or German.
And the point of the police comment was that at the moment, toms get -less- police protection than members of the general public. I’m not making a case for special treatment for mollies – rather, they should get the same treatment as accountants, nurses, and TV continuity announcers.
Finally, what’s all this about contribute nothing to the economy by way of taxes or wealth creation?
In a sensible society, solo scrubbers would be taxed the same as any other self-employed person, while madams and ponces would be treated as small businesspeople.
And I’m not entirely sure what “wealth creation” means here – I think you’re trying to claim that trollops make less of a useful contribution to society than coal miners or brain surgeons, and therefore don’t deserve the protection of the police. Does that mean that professional footballers, pop stars, and people who work in HR departments should also be denied police protection?