Decriminalizing prostitution won’t make it safer, Crown argues

http://bit.ly/meV37O

Kirk Makin in the Globe does a good job setting out the case presented to the Court of Appeal today in the prostitution appeal.

His article says:

"Up to 95 per cent of prostitutes are vulnerable women who would gladly leave their tawdry profession if they could, an Ontario prosecutor told a landmark prostitution appeal Tuesday.

"It is not a voluntary choice, but a highly constrained choice," Crown counsel Christine Bartlett-Hughes told a five-judge Ontario Court of Appeal panel that will decide the fate of the prostitution laws.
...
Ms. Bartlett-Hughes conceded that the laws can make it more difficult for prostitutes to protect themselves from violent customers. However, she told the judges there is no proof that decriminalizing prostitution and moving prostitutes off the streets into brothels will make them substantially safer.

In fact, she said, it is far from clear that legalizing brothels will have any effect whatsoever on the number of street prostitutes in the country."

The difficulty is that it seems the Crown is arguing that the court below got the facts wrong.

And appeal courts almost never revisit factual findings. The trial judge finds facts and the appeal judges accept those facts unless they are manifestly absurd. Justice Himel's finding that prostitution would be, generally, safer if legal is almost self-evident -- it certainly isn't manifestly absurd.

If the Crown is basing its case on arguing the facts, the Crown is facing an uphill climb.

(Of course, the Crown has a far better argument - prostitution is not a protected activity because it is an economic activity and the constitution does not protect economic rights. None of this suggests that prostitution should, or should not, be fully lawful -- but it does suggest that it's a policy matter for Parliament and not the Courts)