From: [d--i--e] at [eskimo.com] (Ben Delisle)
Newsgroups: alt.politics.libertarian,alt.politics.sex,talk.politics.misc,ca.general
Subject: (Fwd): NEWS: San Diego & Frisco to Decriminalize Prostitution?
Date: 10 Oct 93 04:21:10 GMT

Who was the wiseguy who said, "Prostitution is a combination of free 
enterprise and sex. Which are you against?" ;-)

>From the November '93 issue of REASON magazine:

Safer Sex
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   "After unsuccessful attempts to stamp out prostitution, two
California cities are looking at the merits of decriminalization.

   Last year, the San Diego City Council, at the instigation
of Council Member John Hartley, appointed a task force to
study how best to combat prostitution.  After a year of
talking with community residents and experts, the task force
is ready to make its recommendations, but Hartley and the
rest of the City Council may be surprised at the results.

   "If anything, I went into this project thinking, `We've got
to jail them and get tougher,'" says Dale Durbin, chairman of
the San Diego Citywide Prostitution Task Force.  Although the
task force has not made a final decision on its recommendations,
he expects one of them to be that the city appoint a new task
force to look into decriminalization.

   Durbin notes that the criminal status of prostitution may
be responsible for putting sex workers on the street.  And he
says San Diego's law-enforcement resources are squandered on
prostitution while crimes against people and property go
unaddressed.

   For some of the same reasons, San Francisco is creating a
task force that will consider decriminalization as one possible
policy for dealing with prostitution.  "Prostitutes can be
arrested twice in the same night," says Jean Paul Semahah, chief
aide for City Supervisor Terence Halinan, who proposed the
task force.  "It's just not an effective and efficient way to
deal with the problem."  He says Halinan wants the task force
to consider decriminalization but does not favor any one policy.

   After decriminalization, Semahah says, prostitutes would no
longer have to work on the street, where they offend tourists
and drive away business.  He also argues that decriminalization
would improve the safety of prostitutes, noting that the "illegal
nature of the activity creates an atmosphere that attracts other
types of crime."

--Jacob Kramer

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