Police call to legalise brothels.

[spindrift]

I read a book about a girl who worked in a "legal" brothel in Amsterdam ,it seems there is more corruption and using of the women ,plying them with drugs,forced prostitution etc than there was before they were legalized

 

The parenthesis is obsolete, brothels ARE legal in The Netherlands.

 

What was the book called?

[spindrift]

 

A brothel is a less safe environment for a woman than the streets, precisely because it is legal and the police cannot interfere except on technical grounds. .

 

Source.

 

Please.

 

Fifth time, you keep saying brothels are more dangerous than the streets, Forty women have been killed on the streets in the last decade, how many in brothels?

 

I've no idea where you are getting your "facts" from but I would suggest sources other than tabloid papers are more reliable than where ever you are getting this dangerously ignorant stuff from.

 

And nobody's suggested "selling" women to brothels, that's a thought straight from your own sweaty imagination.

[Glamrocker]

The parenthesis is obsolete, brothels ARE legal in The Netherlands.

 

What was the book called?

The type of brothels that these girls work out of may be legal in the sense that they cant be prosecuted for prostitution,the way they are staffed and run is a different matter hence the parenthesis.I read that many books the title escapes me I will see if it is still on the library shelves and take note.

[roger_pearse]

Gambling is just one.......

 

Evidence?

 

Any?

 

At all?

 

Hang on, half the nation is now buying tickets for the national lottery and you demand people prove to you that gambling has increased?

 

Why are you doing this?

[roger_pearse]

Fifth time, you keep saying brothels are more dangerous than the streets, Forty women have been killed on the streets in the last decade, how many in brothels?

 

You keep asserting that women won't get killed in the brothels you want to create. Why this should be so, you do not say.

 

I've no idea where you are getting your "facts" from but I would suggest sources other than tabloid papers are more reliable than where ever you are getting this dangerously ignorant stuff from.

 

You're welcome to engage sensibly with the points made, if you can.

 

As for my sources, while I don't spend any time reading either tabloids or material about brothels, I do know how the brothels of the restoration worked, from the pages of Samuel Pepys, John Evelyn, and the "Spectator" of Addison and Steele. I know how the trade used to work in Cairo between the wars, from the biography of Russell Pasha, who was Mamur Zapt at that period and involved in setting up international anti-drug agencies.

 

But I am not really appealing to authorities. I'm suggesting that we just think about it for ourselves. Just imagine how these sorts of places are run, what the motivations are, what the financial and other imperatives are.

 

And nobody's suggested "selling" women to brothels, that's a thought straight from your own sweaty imagination.

 

If you tell me that you have never heard of sex trafficking, then, I believe you. I thought we all heard the BBC news stories from time to time of police finding these unfortunates in brothels here, and where those bought and sold end up.

 

Russell Pasha tells us that British women were not allowed to work as prostitutes in Egypt. The implication was that this would have tended to reduce the respect for the governing power. But he tells us also how the brothels of Cairo were filled -- by "those for whom [the brothels of] Marseilles had no further use", who were sold on. How a woman becomes of "no further use" in the trade, but still useful to those less discriminating, I would prefer not to imagine.

 

All the best,

 

Roger Pearse

[spindrift]

Sixth time:

 

You claim brothels are more dangerous than girls walking the street vulnerable to people like the Cross bow Cannibal, the Ipswich murderer and many others.

 

40 streetwalkers have been killed, twenty four murders of street killers remain undetected.

 

What is your evidence that brothels are more dangerous?

 

If you have no evidence then admit it and I'll stop asking.

[spindrift]

Sex workers have long used word of mouth and internet forums to warn each other of violent clients and criminals who specialise in robbing them. In Liverpool, where six sex workers were murdered in the first five years of this decade, a so-called “ugly mug” scheme has been set up with support from the police to warn sex workers of known offenders.

 

The warning system has been combined with a drive by officers to protect prostitutes rather than prosecute them leading to a significant series of arrests against violent clients. In the five years before the new approach was rolled out across the city there was only one conviction for a series of assaults against sex workers. Last year alone there were 10 convictions for rape with several more trials due to start early next year.

 

But information on violent punters is rarely shared between forces leading to calls for a national database that would allow officers to warn sex workers when those with a track record of violence towards prostitutes move to their area.

 

A warning forum on the website PunterNet, which the previous government tried to close down, provides a snapshot of some of the day-to-day dangers faced by sex workers. Postings contain physical descriptions and partial mobile phone numbers for violent clients. In recent months there have been warnings for a man who is repeatedly robbing sex workers at knife point, an abusive client in the Norfolk area and a stalker in Bristol.

 

The Home Office is currently reviewing the way police approach prostitution and is expected to decide whether it will roll out a national database system next year.

 

Many sex worker groups, however, say only full or partial decriminalisation of the sex trade will dramatically improve safety. They say the anti-brothel legislation which prohibits more than one person selling sex in a single property forces women onto the streets and away from the comparative safety of a group.

 

“The law as it currently stands makes sex workers vulnerable to the police, criminals and vigilantes,” said Catherine Stephens from the International Union of Sex Workers. “We are criminalised if we work together. I know of brothels that are regularly targeted by gangs because they know they won’t go to police for fear of being arrested themselves.”

 

She added: “If we want to make sex workers safer we need an intelligent and informed debate on Britain’s prostitution laws based on evidence and not misinformed stereotypes. The law doesn’t just fail to target violence and exploitation, it actually facilitates it. Would we be safer working together? Yes. Is that legal? No.”

 

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/regulating-sex-industry-would-protect-women-says-police-chief-2171121.html

 

What a damning indictment of modern Britain that it is a website like Punternet that is doing more to protect prostitutes than the police or the state!

 

And to think that the response of the Labour government was to attempt to close Punternet down!

[melthebell]

Are there many of them knocking around Kelham Island or Manningham?

No put yer money away lol

[roger_pearse]

A couple more questions have occurred to me.

 

1. Will all women wishing to sell themselves be obliged to work in a brothel -- enforced by the police -- or not?

 

Obviously if the answer is 'not', then women who can't face degrading themselves for money, only to give the tax-gatherer 20% (VAT) plus the brothel-owner's take ('marketing fees','security fees'... probably much more than 20%!) will prefer not to. And the brothel-owners will find women who don't bring in much custom "too much trouble" and kick them out.

 

In which case, we will STILL have the street-walkers, as before -- but we will have created an additional layer of pimps and brothels and facilities to lure women into prostitution AS WELL.

 

Or else this will not be permitted. Only women who pay a percentage to a pimp, and 20% to the government, will be allowed to degrade themselves. Those who try to dodge this will be arrested, fined, imprisoned, not for prostitution but for cheating a pimp. In which case ... what kind of society does that?!

 

2. Will the brothels take men also, as rent-boys? If so, how many of those cheering the pimping industry will be taking up, erm, position as inmates?

 

3. At present a woman gets to choose her customers. Too dirty, too smelly, too frightening ... she can run away. In the brothel the pimp gets to choose. Do you think, can we perhaps imagine, that women will be forced to service men that are even more disgusting than before? If not, why not?

 

#1 should dispose of the "women won't be killed on the streets". Yes, they will, unless brothels become compulsory.

[Bonzo77]

Are there many of them knocking around Kelham Island or Manningham?

 

I wouldn't know. Why do you ask?

 

I'm not talking about girls who walk the street, I'm talking about female escorts. There is loads of them in Sheffield, I know a couple (the are friends). I'm telling you now, they live a really nice, wealthy life!