This argument is silly. Whether prostitution related offences should be decriminalized (remember prostitution itself is legal) is an issue to debate -- but there can be no doubt that making running a bawdy house, for example, a crime, makes it harder for the inmates of the bawdy house to get assistance from police.
Current laws protect prostitutes, argue opponents
As legal arguments continue into a challenge of Canada's prostitution laws, those who oppose the sex trade say the current laws are actually the best way to protect prostitutes.
Joanne McGarry of the Catholic Civil Rights League, one of the groups that has been granted the right to legally intervene in the case, says effectively decriminalizing prostitution would not end violence against prostitutes.
"There are risks inherent to the occupation that don't relate to whether it's legal or illegal," McGarry told Canada AM Wednesday.
"In a certain percentage of cases, there will always be people attracted to prostitution for the purpose of dealing harm. I think the laws we have now provide the police with some means for reducing that harm
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""There are risks inherent to the occupation that don't relate to whether it's legal or illegal," McGarry told Canada AM Wednesday."
She's right, but forcing prostitutes to work alone isn't the answer. No one wants to support a pimp but a group of prostitutes working like a company needs a manager. If she thinks the police need laws to help prostitutes what does she think will happen when prostitutes can be legally employed by a company, are covered by WCB (would a venereal disease be a work-place injury??) and could use all the power of civil law to negotiate and enforce working conditions?
Subsistence prostitution will always be a problem because properly run or managed bawdy house could not employ drug addicts with diseases. Those women will always work the streets, but it would be easier to police that with business licence regulations, zoning, and all the myriad red tape any other business deals with.
The Catholic Civil Rights League obviously knows more about prostitution than actual prostitutes, just like Rob Nicholson obviously knows more about drug crimes than the social workers, lawyers, police officers, health workers and drug users who deal with drug crimes on a daily basis.
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