Pokey Options

[Simon Kirby]

Person is given a suspended four month prison sentence for helping to run a brothel. That seems harsh to me. Actually I can't for the life of me understand why running a brothel is even illegal in the 21st century, or for that matter the whole bunch of legislations that involves itself with prostitution generally. It just seems incredibly repressive, like one of those laws we'll look back on in fifty years time and wonder at how Victorian we all still were 150 years on.

[motormad]

I did a few weeks work at ProBike when I was 17...Mark or Curly as we called him was my boss

I think if women are happy with it and it's safe for them in a secure environment and people are happy to pay, what is the actual problem.

Oh well.

[Simon Kirby]

I think if women are happy with it and it's safe for them in a secure environment and people are happy to pay, what is the actual problem.

Exactly. I don't see what is being achieved by making it illegal. If you want to regulate what business goes on where then we have planning control for that, but making it illegal just seems to get in the way of making it safe, secure, and respectable. I can imagine that there are an awful lot of risks working as a prostitute, and some risks too in using the services of a prostitute, and it just seems irrational to make life so difficult for the oldest profession.

[Cognosco]

Exactly. I don't see what is being achieved by making it illegal. If you want to regulate what business goes on where then we have planning control for that, but making it illegal just seems to get in the way of making it safe, secure, and respectable. I can imagine that there are an awful lot of risks working as a prostitute, and some risks too in using the services of a prostitute, and it just seems irrational to make life so difficult for the oldest profession.

Perhaps NTC could run and subsidise the profession in Newbury......it would add to their empire?

[On the edge]

Perhaps NTC could run and subsidise the profession in Newbury......it would add to their empire?

Brilliant idea! If people want it suppressed that's exactly how to stop it

[motormad]

Exactly. I don't see what is being achieved by making it illegal. If you want to regulate what business goes on where then we have planning control for that, but making it illegal just seems to get in the way of making it safe, secure, and respectable. I can imagine that there are an awful lot of risks working as a prostitute, and some risks too in using the services of a prostitute, and it just seems irrational to make life so difficult for the oldest profession.

I don't think that that being a prostitute is as dangerous as it's made out to be. Certainly no less dodgy than randomly banging a bird you meet in a bar.
ID is taken, protection is used.

[On the edge]

Given the license nowadays in other areas of life, this has been left and as you say quite irrational. The penalties are out of all proportion too - it would seem that glassing a bystander in the Market Place whilst off your head on alcohol is a more acceptable offence. I suppose the next thing will be for Trading Standards to do their usual game and set up traps in likely business premises.

[Strafin]

But it is illegal, so the sentence to me actually seems quite lenient. For running an illegal prostitution operation the lady will serve no time whatsoever. 160 hours community service is probably about right in place of a prison sentence but an £80 fine?

[Simon Kirby]

But it is illegal, so the sentence to me actually seems quite lenient. For running an illegal prostitution operation the lady will serve no time whatsoever. 160 hours community service is probably about right in place of a prison sentence but an £80 fine?

Is it reasonable that it's illegal though? What if it was illegal to grow a beard, or illegal for women to wear trousers, or illegal to hold hands in public, presumably it would then be just to imprison anyone for any of those things?

[Cognosco]

Is it reasonable that it's illegal though? What if it was illegal to grow a beard, or illegal for women to wear trousers, or illegal to hold hands in public, presumably it would then be just to imprison anyone for any of those things?

Simon will you stop giving the Councils ideas they are supposedly strapped for cash.......just forgot the £9000 found laying in the bottom of the cash box? They could raise money by fining people for all those things you suggested. But running the local brothels could be the one project they may make a success of...we live in hope? After all it is a project they have some knowledge of in a similar sort of way......they have been shafting the precept payers of Newbury for years?

[Biker1]

Is it reasonable that it's illegal though? What if it was illegal to grow a beard, or illegal for women to wear trousers, or illegal to hold hands in public, presumably it would then be just to imprison anyone for any of those things?

Sharih Law??

[On the edge]

But it is illegal, so the sentence to me actually seems quite lenient. For running an illegal prostitution operation the lady will serve no time whatsoever. 160 hours community service is probably about right in place of a prison sentence but an £80 fine?

I'm old enough to remember the Montague homosexuality case. Exactly this argument was used back then. 'Its illegal and the sentence seemed quite lenient'.

[Andy Capp]

I'm old enough to remember the Montague homosexuality case. Exactly this argument was used back then. 'Its illegal and the sentence seemed quite lenient'.

I don't think this is quite the same. It's one thing being a prostitute, it is another matter running a whore house.


From what I gather, the majority in the UK are against prostitution, but the biggest argument against it, apparently, is human trafficking. The argument goes that human trafficking increases with relaxed prostitution laws. I would imagine with our privatised society we have - where people tend to live in private homes - is that living next to a whorehouse would devalue ones home.

[Simon Kirby]

I would imagine with our privatised society we have - where people tend to live in private homes - is that living next to a whorehouse would devalue ones home.

And like I say, we have planning laws which regulate what business can be carried on in what place, so this isn't a good reason.

As for the majority being against prostitution, are they? Perhaps if this discrimination wasn't enshrined in law people might actually feel a little more benignly towards prostitutes. There certainly is an awful lot of discrimination, some of it extremely hateful, with a whole vocabulary of hate all of its own. You've probably Googled the statistics that I have and seen that in America prostitutes are something like 10 times more likely than any other worker to be killed at work. I find that a shocking statistic. If any one workplace was so obviously more dangerous than all the rest I would expect the Health and Safety Executive and Trades Unions to be demanding action, and yet as it's a stigmatised and vilified profession there seems to be an acknowledgement that these workers don't deserve the same safety and security that the rest of us expect. Prostitution itself is not illegal, but without legitimate premises in which to operate prostitutes and service users are both exposed to criminal prosecution and the risk of coercion and exploitation that goes with doing anything illegal. To my mind legalising brothels would help the situation.

[dannyboy]

I think if women are happy with it and it's safe for them in a secure environment and people are happy to pay, what is the actual problem.

you have just answered your own question.

[Andy Capp]

And like I say, we have planning laws which regulate what business can be carried on in what place, so this isn't a good reason.

I didn't say it was a good reason, just a hunch.

As for the majority being against prostitution, are they? Perhaps if this discrimination wasn't enshrined in law people might actually feel a little more benignly towards prostitutes. There certainly is an awful lot of discrimination, some of it extremely hateful, with a whole vocabulary of hate all of its own. You've probably Googled the statistics that I have and seen that in America prostitutes are something like 10 times more likely than any other worker to be killed at work. I find that a shocking statistic. If any one workplace was so obviously more dangerous than all the rest I would expect the Health and Safety Executive and Trades Unions to be demanding action, and yet as it's a stigmatised and vilified profession there seems to be an acknowledgement that these workers don't deserve the same safety and security that the rest of us expect. Prostitution itself is not illegal, but without legitimate premises in which to operate prostitutes and service users are both exposed to criminal prosecution and the risk of coercion and exploitation that goes with doing anything illegal. To my mind legalising brothels would help the situation.

Human trafficking?

[Simon Kirby]

Human trafficking?

Do you think I'm proposing the legalisation of human trafficking, whatever that is? It's not unusual for construction workers to be bussed around the country by their contractors, sleeping in crappy accommodation and seeing their families at odd weekends. It's not unusual for office workers to commute for three hours each day. Trafficking seems to be one of those "Daily Mail" words that we don't quite understand what it is, but when the popular press ring the bell we salivate, not least because it's usually feckless "foreigners" who are being trafficked and its suits our island nation narrative.

There are some significant problems with prostitution, but the first I'd address was drugs dependency, not least because it can be an expensive drugs habit that obliges someone to work as a prostitute. Drugs policy is another area where sense and reason and subordinated to ignorance and prejudice, and I would like to see change there too.

But back to trafficking: people all over the country are obliged to work in jobs they don't enjoy, and I imagine that's true for prostitutes too. The way out of that is to work hard at school and get the best education you can, and not to live beyond your means. If people are being physically forced to work then whatever the job that's not acceptable and I'm hardly proposing a legalisation of slavery, but miserably weak employment laws are more the issue here, and it certainly doesn't help that prostitution is socially stigmatised and operates on the edge of the law. I would have thought that working for a legal brothel within the purview of the Health and Safety Executive and belonging to a good trades union were the best solutions to some of these problems.

[blackdog]

Surely human trafficking is the biggest argument FOR the decriminalisation of prostitution? A regulated, licensed, prostitution business would be a far more difficult system for the unscrupulous traffickers to operate in.

[MontyPython]

Surely human trafficking is the biggest argument FOR the decriminalisation of prostitution? A regulated, licensed, prostitution business would be a far more difficult system for the unscrupulous traffickers to operate in.

Hopefully decriminalisation would also mean that there would be no more pimps.

That might gives a problem in describing Motormad's car though!

[Simon Kirby]

Surely human trafficking is the biggest argument FOR the decriminalisation of prostitution? A regulated, licensed, prostitution business would be a far more difficult system for the unscrupulous traffickers to operate in.

You'd think so, but apparently the Dutch experience is otherwise. That seems counter-intuitive and when politicians and prejudice are involved I don't necessarily trust what I'm told. So yes, I agree.