Prohibited Sexual Behavior and Sexual Violence

Prostitution: Legal Aspects 7

Prostitution meets the definition of a victimless crime as long as it does not affect others and remains a private voluntary exchange between participants who are legally capable of consent. The debate about prostitution therefore usually focusses on these two issues:

1. Prostitution may be voluntary in many instances, but sometimes it is not. Prostitutes may be forced by their traffickers or pimps or simply by their drug addiction or their poverty to sell her services. Their consent is therefore questionable. On the other hand, how valid is the consent of people whose poverty forces them to take low-paying “regular” jobs that they know to be hazardous to their health?
    
2. Prostitution as a personal transaction between two or more people may not always affect others, but sometimes it does. For example, as victims of trafficking, foreign prostitutes are usually in violation of visa and residence requirements and also evade taxes on their income. In fact, tax evasion may also be practiced by native legal prostitutes with valid working permits. This is unjust and undermines the public order. In the final analysis, it harms every law-abinding citizen.

As these examples show, the concept of “victimless crime” does not always fit the case of prostitution. Sometimes it may indeed have no victims, but at other times it victimizes the prostitute, or society at large, or both. However, calling every prostitute a victim by definition and under all circumstances also overstretches the case. It denies the reality that some prostitutes are independent operators who are content with the choice they have made. This is especially true of self-employed women who work in the various electronic media and never actually meet a client in person. In this case, it is also more than doubtful that the prosecution of their many international “online clients” would be feasible or serve any useful purpose. Indeed, the general public may not support the world-wide strict enforcement of such a policy. On the other hand, if it is not strictly carried out everywhere, it is arbitrary and therefore inherently unjust.