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Manhattan DA says his office to stop prosecuting prostitution
- throwaway0a5e 5y agoMaybe I'm too cynical but I bet they crunched the numbers and figured out that the prostitutes are generally poor people who can't pay big fines and the courts generally go easy on whereas the customers are generally a couple rungs up the ladder and get no slack from the courts because they can pay so they'll just refocus all the resources on prosecuting the customers which is where the money always was anyway.
- chillwaves 5y agoIt doesn't make sense to victimize sex workers. It makes even less sense to keep them in the shadows, afraid to work with cops, given they are such a vulnerable population.
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- newacct583 5y agoI don't have data on sex work specifically, but in general criminal fines don't come anywhere near paying for the law enforcement and prosecution apparatus required to get the conviction or plea.
- throwaway0a5e 5y agoIf that were the case they wouldn't run speed traps. Letting the hookers go about their business and arresting some fraction of their customers but not a large enough fraction to keep the customers from showing up at all (wouldn't want to deplete the metaphorical fishery) sounds an awful lot like a speed trap. I wish I could not be cynical but there's just too much evil in law enforcement and the social services that deal with vices for me not to take this as a face value good thing. I'm sure they're happy to not be arresting hookers who've done nothing wrong. Beat cops don't like arresting people who've done nothing wrong. But I'd be lying if I didn't think there wasn't someone somewhere in the bureaucracy twirling their mustache while congratulating themselves on finding a way to both increase in revenue policing and satisfy the politically involved people who want progressive policy points. Don't get me wrong, not arresting hookers is a good thing. But all my experience with the parts of government that deal with this sort of thing tells me this happened because the stars happened to align, not because someone with decision making power had an epiphany and decided that hookers shouldn't be arrested.
- Ericson2314 5y agoThe speed traps is more a small town thing I think? NYPD is politically powerful in a rich place and just has a massive budget. In this case there is dueling advocacy for the so called "swedish model" and full decrim, and by all accounts the lame duck DA is just trying to look good with the boring middle ground before his terms up.
- david38 5y agoSpeeding and parking tickets are the obvious outliers. Most other things, drug investigations, assault, etc are not earners.
- ruined 5y agodrug "investigations" actually, through civil asset forfeiture of "drug dealer" assets, are very lucrative. the police department in my hometown used to brag about how the city did not spend tax money on any of their vehicles, radios, and a bunch of other equipment.
- newacct583 5y agoA misdemeanor ticket can be issued and fully enforced in minutes. The discussion here is about felonies, which require courts, judges, juries, testimony, depositions, and evidence management. That stuff costs a lot of money and employs a bunch of people (some of whom are very well compensated!). The state doesn't make money on criminal law. It just doesn't.
- ALittleLight 5y agoI think it's more likely that punishing women is politically unpopular whereas punishing men is fine or desirable. Especially because women involved in prostitution may be especially vulnerable (poor, immigrant, drug addict, etc).
- krapp 5y agoPunishing women, especially women in the sex trades or involved in sexual scandal, has never been unpopular in any society at any time in human history.
- xenihn 5y agoYou can say this about literally any group that wasn't classified with elite status, like royalty or clergy. Replace "women" with "men" in your post, and it's still just as true.
- krapp 5y ago>Replace "women" with "men" in your post, and it's still just as true. No, you're either attempting a low-effort troll or you have a profound misunderstanding of history. Men have almost always been classified with elite status compared to women in most societies. The entirety of Western civilization is founded under religions that teach a Male God created Man (male, not collective humanity) in His image and that women were created to serve men and obey them, and that the weakness of women is the source of all of the world's evils, and the cultures and legal systems which emerged have often reflected and enforced that patriarchal bias. For most of history, women were basically the property of their fathers, then traded for dowry to become the property of their husbands. They couldn't own property, they couldn't vote, they could be stoned to death for disobeying their husbands.
- xenihn 5y ago>For most of history, women were basically the property of their fathers, then traded for dowry to become the property of their husbands. They couldn't own property, they couldn't vote, they could be stoned to death for disobeying their husbands. For most of history, both men and women in any society couldn't do any of the things you just described. The majority of people in any society, of both genders, have belonged to the lower classes. This is still true today, but you have far more rights as a lower class person today than you would have 200 years ago. You're viewing history solely from the perspective of the upper classes (which includes the middle class).
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- setr 5y agoThis was always a crime of the sensibilities — I don’t think number crunching really weighs in. It’s not like financial crime
- rtpg 5y agoI think you really should look at some actual stats if you think that poorer people aren’t extremely over-represented in court systems. There’s a reason that there are huge pushes to end cash bail and the like.
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- pcbro141 5y agoSex workers' clients will still be arrested. "A spokesperson confirmed to NPR that it will not change the office's existing approach to arresting patrons of prostitution." https://www.npr.org/2021/04/21/989588072/a-relic-and-burden-manhattan-district-attorney-to-stop-prosecuting-prostitution https://www.npr.org/2021/04/21/989588072/a-relic-and-burden-...
- dang 5y agoWe've changed the URL to that from https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/04/21/nation/manhattan-stop-prosecuting-prostitution-part-nationwide-shift/ https://www.bostonglobe.com/2021/04/21/nation/manhattan-stop..., which is behind some sort of barrier. Thanks!
- trainsplanes 5y agoWild to me that when it comes to drug offenses, the law is turning away from punishing the buyers and towards punishing sellers. But when it comes to the sex industry, it's steering the opposite direction.
- darig 5y agoPimping will still be prosecuted.
- darig 5y agoHN despises the truth.
- mc32 5y agoI guess you blame the pusher and not the user because the user is the weaker party. In the sex trade, the pimp and the user are the strong parties and the sex worker is the weak party.
- xwolfi 5y agoInteresting take, that's rare to see it that way, thanks for changing a bit my perspective. If choosing one party to arrest, I'd go with the client now.
- someonehere 5y agoDoesn’t this legitimize sex trafficking?
- ceejayoz 5y agoNo? It permits victims of sex trafficking to go to law enforcement without being arrested for prostitution by unsympathetic cops.
- gremlinsinc 5y agoExactly this, and if sex-workers can operate in the sunlight they can use services that maybe offer security in case they're doing outcall and go missing... I listened to a podcast about some pig-farmer who killed like 49 prostitutes over 10 years back in the 80s-2000s in Vancouver, B.C. the police didn't know the prostitutes were missing because they don't want to be seen, they are hidden so they're easier to just kill and nobody notices... I guess.
- cutemonster 5y agoWow that's totally sick. It's not easy for me to understand why the legal system attacks the ones it's supposed to help, I mean, makes selling illegal, rather than making only buying illegal. (In some/many? countries in Europe, it's ok to sell sex, but illegal to buy. So the prostitute can go to the police)
- GavinMcG 5y agoCould you help explain why you think that would be the case? Sex trafficking can still be prosecuted. In general, though, prosecuting the victims of crimes doesn't make it any easier to prosecute those who victimized them.
- waterhouse 5y agoThe more legal prostitution gets, the more likely it is to occur in the "sunlight", where it's easier to notice and report problems like sex trafficking (without risking legal trouble yourself just for being in or patronizing the industry). In other words, no, probably the opposite.
- albertop 5y agoGreat news for NY Governors!
- ceejayoz 5y agoNope. > The office will continue to prosecute other crimes related to prostitution, including patronizing sex workers, promoting prostitution and sex trafficking, and said that its policy would not stop it from bringing other charges that stem from prostitution-related arrests.
- selfishgene 5y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliot_Spitzer_prostitution_scandal#:~:text=On%20March%2010%2C%202008%2C%20The,known%20as%20Emperors%20Club%20VIP https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eliot_Spitzer_prostitution_sca....
- arrty88 5y agowhy is this on HN tho?
- elliekelly 5y agoA lot of internet regulation is passed under the guise of preventing prostitution.
- dang 5y agoIt's arguably an interesting new phenomenon. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- junippor 5y agoNew phenomenon for Americans.
- umanwizard 5y agoYes, and there are a lot of Americans on this website. Does that bother you?
- junippor 5y agoYes, very deeply.
- avs733 5y agoWell still arrest you but we aren’t going to prosecute you ...great...really wonderful representation of our justice systems focus on arresting people for literally no reason
- pcbro141 5y agoThey will prosecute sex workers' clients. They just won't arrest/prosecute the sex workers.
- waterhouse 5y agoI was going to say "No, the quoted portion says they'll arrest the johns, not the prostitutes." However, looking at the article, it says: The Manhattan District Attorney Office's previous policy was to dismiss prostitution cases after the charged individual completed five counseling sessions with service providers. Going forward, it said its Human Trafficking Response Unit will file paperwork to decline formally to prosecute, and to inform the person arrested about purely voluntary services. The text of the new policy notes it does not preclude officials from bringing "other charges that may stem from a prostitution-related arrest." Which sounds like they will still be doing the arresting of prostitutes, so I think you're actually right...
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- throwaway0a5e 5y ago>The Manhattan District Attorney Office's previous policy was to dismiss prostitution cases after the charged individual completed five counseling sessions with service providers All the perverse money-printer incentives of running a traffic school combined with the socially stigmatized customers you get when running an ankle monitor service. I'm sure the people that own the businesses offering those counseling services will be upstanding citizens of great moral character and the people referred to these businesses will have fair and honest business transactions with them (obvious sarcasm should be obvious).
- 5y ago
- hk1337 5y agoIs Manhattan its own city? I thought it was just a district or borough of NYC. How does this work with the rest of NYC.
- tacostakohashi 5y agoNo, but it is its own county. Each of the five boroughs has a coterminous county, each with its own district attorney.
- ardit33 5y agoManhattan is part of NYC, but also it is so large that it is its own county as well... county of New York. And each county has its own DA. Other counties of NYC: Kings County (Brooklyn), Bronx County (The Bronx), Richmond County (Staten Island), and Queens County (Queens).
- nerdponx 5y agoIt's even more fun/complicated than that. New York City is dividied into five boroughs, each of which is coterminous with is own county. Boroughs are subdivivions of New York City City, counties are subdivisions of New York State. Manhattan is the borough, New York County is the county. However, I don't think any of the 5 counties that correspond to boroughs have their own governments. So there is no government at all for County of New York, but the Borough of Manhattan does have its own government, which is fine because the County and Borough are coterminous with each other (and both contained entirely within the City of New York).
- bradleyjg 5y agoIt’s not much of a government. The DA of Manhattan is far more powerful than the borough president, who mostly doles out patronage jobs and pork projects.
- Ericson2314 5y agoComing from "The City and County of San Francisco" the NYC situation makes sense as the logical next step. I look forward to visiting the borough of Yerba Buena someday.
- didibus 5y agoStill not sure why we don't legalize the whole thing. What are we trying to prevent or protect by having it be illegal?
- austincheney 5y agoHuman trafficking.
- sneak 5y agoKidnapping is already illegal. There's nothing about legal prostitution that prevents enforcement of the myriad of existing laws prohibiting kidnapping, battery, and robbery associated with human trafficking.
- austincheney 5y agoHuman trafficking is different than kidnapping. The former is the forced distribution of persons for criminal acts while the later is the act of taking persons against their will.
- sneak 5y ago"forced distribution" is the same thing.
- austincheney 5y agoIt’s not the same. Kidnapping is an illegal act but not a form of slavery while human trafficking is. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_trafficking https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_trafficking https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_to_Prevent,_Suppress_and_Punish_Trafficking_in_Persons,_Especially_Women_and_Children https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Protocol_to_Prevent,_Suppres...
- Ericson2314 5y ago
- neonate 5y agohttps://archive.is/D1RGF https://archive.is/D1RGF
- baggy_trough 5y agoI don’t understand how the DA can decide this. Is it not a matter for the legislature?
- bombcar 5y agoIn the USA the prosecution can decline to bring a case, and make it policy. The DA is often an elected position and can’t easily be fired.
- baggy_trough 5y agoIt's kind of crazy that the DA can choose a subset of laws to enforce.
- bombcar 5y agoThis exists at every level - a cop can choose to pull you over for speeding or not, and if pulled over choose to give you a ticket or not. You can't get rid of the human element.
- baggy_trough 5y agoThere's something different about an elected official cancelling the enforcement of any set of laws.
- pcbro141 5y agoIs anyone knowledgeable about European countries where prostitution has become fully legal (clients won't be arrested)? Specifically the countries where pimping is illegal, but an individual sex worker and client transacting is legal. Is there reliable data either way about legalization increasing human trafficking?
- Lazare 5y agoThere's extremely poor data on human trafficking in general, and not even a lot of consensus on what it is. (The legal definition is often at odds with how the phrase is used in popular media.) FWIW, New Zealand legalised prostitution fully in 2003, and it seems to have had no negative effects. There was a major review 5 years after the law was passed (so 2008). Safety up, crime down, fewer sex workers on the streets, and at that time, no instances of human trafficking for the sex industry were able to be identified. (Come to that, I'm not sure any have been since either.) Of course, individual laws exist in a larger framework of laws and culture, so it's not always clear that adopting a single law will have the same effects in other jurisdictions. Still, the NZ experience has been almost unremittingly positive.
- DoreenMichele 5y agoAmnesty International is for decriminalization on the grounds that it decreases trafficking. Some sources (that I've only skimmed a bit -- and they don't uniformly agree): https://www.endslaverynow.org/blog/articles/faq-will-legalizing-or-decriminalizing-prostitution-decrease-sex-trafficking https://www.endslaverynow.org/blog/articles/faq-will-legaliz... https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/08/07/why-sex-work-should-be-decriminalized https://www.hrw.org/news/2019/08/07/why-sex-work-should-be-d... https://inquiringintothings.wordpress.com/2020/08/04/does-legalizing-prostitution-decrease-sex-trafficking/ https://inquiringintothings.wordpress.com/2020/08/04/does-le... https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/decreasing-human-trafficking-through-sex-work-decriminalization/2017-01 https://journalofethics.ama-assn.org/article/decreasing-huma...
- RickJWagner 5y agoI'm surprised they'd say it decreases trafficking. It seems it would increase it.
- temp8964 5y agoProsecutors can choose which law to enforce or not. This doesn't sound good to me at all.
- ed25519FUUU 5y agoSelective enforcement really is a great evil. The law most be applied evenly or it should not be applied at all. “To my friends: anything, to my enemies: the law”
- lvs 5y agoWhat you're describing is far more totalitarian than I think you understand. Corrupt selective enforcement is an evil, but prosecutorial discretion is a necessary component of a free society.
- Ericson2314 5y agoI mean if trials really were speedy and the justice system not heavily backlogged would it be? Jury nullification is supposed to fill that need.
- lvs 5y agoSo the state is obligated to prosecute all crimes with extenuating circumstances all the way through trial in your dystopia? No thanks.
- strken 5y agoIf discretion is applied to every single crime, it's got nothing to do with extenuating circumstances and everything to do with bad laws that shouldn't exist. For the state to make a law and then refuse to prosecute it is dangerous, because it could at any time turn around and start.
- koheripbal 5y agoIF bandwidth was not an issue, then lots of things would be possible. ...but that is not a reasonably possible IF. We don't have infinite resources to hold jury trials for every time someone walks outside a crosswalk.
- ed25519FUUU 5y agoHow does it make any sense to decriminalize sex workers (and their pimps by extension) but still criminalize their clients?
- psychlops 5y agoAt least now the police can do their sting operations legally.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- buggythebug 5y agoJust want to comment that an article about sex posted on a site like hacker news where the majority of people have never had sex or don't have sex is probably going to get a bunch of dumb comments that have no frame to reality.
- late2part 5y agoWell, that's one way to keep the rich in town.
- finikytou 5y agoI cannot believe my eyes and the comments there. The logic is "human traffic happens because prostitution is not legal" how is it different than far-right activists saying "police shooting people to death happens because people commit crimes". You need to wake up seriously. it is not because you think it empowers women and should be legalized that there isn't a huge human trafficking issue to address even when legal (and in some countries it makes it worse). It is a myth and it is dangerous to communicate the lies that legalizing will solve everything when talking about human lives. "State Department estimated that between 15,000 and 50,000 women and girls are trafficked each year into the United States." if for you it is a small number I dont know what to say...
- danans 5y agoThey aren't stopping prosecution of patrons, just stopping prosecution of the sex workers themselves.
- armchairhacker 5y agoidk if the argument is that legalizing prostitution decreases sex slavery or that it just doesn't increase it. You're 100% right that even if we legalize prostitution people will still be exploited. But if we criminalize prostitution people will still be exploited. And you're right that some countries allow prostitution in a way that makes exploitation easier or even legal. But that doesn't mean other countries can't do it a better way by allowing prostitution but heavily regulating it in order to protect the prostitutes. Moreover, the real issue they are tackling in the article is that the DA is no longer arresting the prostitutes. Whether or not you think prostitution should be legal, hopefully we can all agree that punishing the prostitutes (the people who would be exploited!) for furthering exploitation is absurd.
- ffggvv 5y agoso the DA can just pick and choose which laws to enforce? what’s the point of having a democracy then where we vote on laws? or judges and juries to determine cases? whether or not you agree with the decision i feel like it should be done the proper way by changing the law not just up to a DAs whim. what happened to all the people screaming about democratic norms in the past 4 years?
- simonblack 5y agoSex workers are just service workers. The same as waitresses, barbers, nurses, social workers, etc. It's only the backward or prudish countries where prostitution is not legal.