[Z]

Originally Posted by InOne

Unless they're a high class hooker; most women in the UK are on drugs or do it because there's no other choice. I just don't see how making it legal would help the women who are already in trouble. They have teams dedicated to that kind of thing but they need to really clamp down on the problem before they even think about making it legal. The police already know most brothels that operate, but if it was made legal they would be popping up at a massive rate. There's already police cuts as it is so they couldn't pick them all with a fine tooth comb. I think it would just make it easier for criminal gangs to make it out as a legitimate brothel with the police doing a lazy job of properly searching. And who is to say any of the women would cooperate anyway? Some are in fear of their lives. People are just making out it would be an easy switch. But the UK isn't like Amsterdam or other places, it's just not in our culture.

Yeah, but if you legalise prostitution, it cuts out a huge part of the problem. If prostitutes and police co-operate, it eradicates a lot of the problems that come with prostitution. If a prostitute is beaten to within an inch of her life, she's not going to go and report it to the police because she was committing a crime when she became the victim of a crime, in the same way that a burglar wouldn't report being beaten up by a home owner while he was in the middle of a burglary, because he would be at fault. But if you make prostitution legal, prostitutes can talk to the police more freely.

As I side in a previous post, having something as simple as a log book or database of prostitutes with pictures, known aliases and personal information goes a long way in helping to monitor things. Prostitutes wouldn't go missing if someone knew where they were meant to be, their home addresses, their family situations, their usual haunts - if said database had photos of the prostitutes, it would help police to spot unfamiliar faces. Police laziness is another matter entirely, I still think legalising it and regulating it makes far more sense than ignoring a problem that is not going away and is only getting worse by ignoring it.