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Prohibited Sexual Behavior and Sexual Violence
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Prostitution: Legal Aspects 6
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Not only illegal, but also legal prostitution may be connected with various forms of criminality, from tax evasion to pimping, drug use and physical violence. These crimes are less frequent and less serious where prostitution as such is permitted, but even then they do not necessarily disappear.
In spite of this, prostitution has often been called a “victimless crime”. How can this be justified? And what is a victimless crime to begin with?
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A victimless crime is an illegal voluntary exchange of goods or services between people who are legally capable of consent. This exchange serves their mutual interest, and it is victimless as long as it does not affect others either directly or indirectly. However, it provides the immediate participants with something they desire and which the law tries to deny them. Therefore, they have no interest in seeing the law enforced. They will neither initiate prosecution nor give evidence to the authorities.
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As this definition makes clear, enforcing the laws against victimless crimes is difficult. Indeed, it tends to involve questionable methods, such as systematic spying and snooping, secret surveillance, the use of undercover agents, enticement and entrapment. This, in turn, can breed new crimes such as bribery and police corruption.
While the theoretical concept of a victimless crime is clear enough, its application in practice can be controversial. Some crimes are victimless only a first glance, but actually victimize uninvolved third parties. For example, someone who privately employs an illegal immigrant as a housekeeper thereby cheats the tax collector. The consumption of certain drugs, whether legal or illegal (alcohol, marijuana, cocaine etc.), may harm not only the user by impairing his judgment, but indirectly also his family if it turns into a self-destructive addiction. It may even harm total strangers if it leads to a traffic accident. Thus, while the drug use as such may be a private affair, it may also have public consequences. Other cases are less clear: Assisted suicide may be victimless in the sense of the above definition, but it violates a moral principle that many societies hold dear. Serious discussions may, over time, resolve such a complex issue in one direction or the other. (Assisted suicide has now been legalized in a few jurisdictions.) Similarly, statutory rape may be redefined following an intensive debate. (In some countries the “age of consent” has been lowered or raised in response to shifting public opinion.)
Now, what about prostitution?
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