As most of you know, my research paper was on legalization of prostitution, and how it would be beneficial to society. On the Friday before we had to turn in our papers I was surprised to find several things on prostitution in the news that day.
The first was an interview on 20/20 that Cesley alerted me to, with the former prostitute, Ashley Dupree, who was the last prostitute to be with former Governor of New York, Eliot Spitzer. Unfortunately Dupree was a almost the stereotypical prostitute in that she got into prostitution because she got into drugs and needed the money and now regrets it and would never do it again. Though an insightful interview, not exactly helpful to my claim.
However, the piece on Nightline later that night was very helpful. It was a look into one of the most famous brothels in Nevada, the Mustang Ranch, and how the economy has affected them. It also followed a girl who at the moment was named Kimberly, who was just joining the brothel because after sending some twenty or thirty job applications with no interviews or call backs, she had nowhere else to go. She had applied to anywhere from department stores to day care centers and ended up taking a job as a prostitute, not because she’s addicted to drugs, or was abused as a child, but because she simply needs the money. I was even able to use this in my paper piece in my paper.
The most interesting piece of news I came across though was online. It was about San Francisco in this latest election and how they voted on Proposition K, a proposition to decriminalize prostitution. Though not the same thing as legalization, simple the fact that an entire city was voting on prostitution is quite a landmark. Even more so though is that the proposition only lost by 16 percentage points, a startlingly small number.
Though I am against decriminalization because it does not include regulation of the industry and mandatory STD testing, I am impressed with San Francisco’s open mindedness, though I suppose if any city in the U.S. would be open minded it would be this one.
Here is one of the articles on the proposition if you’re interested:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/10/05/BAQ01387OA.DTL