Hi everyone, have been out of the area on speaking engagements, but let me offer my two cents on the question from my former law enforcement prospective.

Prostitution - like other “vice crimes” - is a tiered crime, meaning that where you find prostitution you will find other crimes such as drugs, corruption and others.

Most cops I know who have worked the vice details will tell you of the times they collared more than the prostitute during stings and in some cases gained information on other crime related activity from the suspects taken in.

Yet there are issues and problems with enforcement - especially considering the cost of running a vice sting. For instance a department may received ten-thousand dollars to cover man-hours for a two week enforcement to clean up a particular neighborhood. At the end of the operation the “net” may be only ten arrests which may - in the eyes of those who write the checks - to be (sorry) little ‘bang’ for the buck.

Of course we also cannot leave out the “moral factor”, nor ignore the history where such vice played a definitive role in the fall of that particular society such as Rome. Ed’s points of individual worth are important, but we have to understand that the idea of such laws are not of the saving of souls, but of social order and the maintence of society.