Access

Comments

11 responses to “Access”

1. 

   Your Name’s not Bruce?

   Nov 18, 2017 6:39 PM

   By this same logic, the US could reduce its incidence of mass shootings by opening up free fire zones where killing a small subset of designated people is completely legal.
2. 

   quixote

   Nov 18, 2017 8:13 PM

   @YNnB, hollow gallows-humory laugh.

   Plus, this nonsense assumes the stat on rapes reflects actual incidence. It’s at least worth asking whether prostitutes in the “legal” zone bother reporting rapes. I don’t think that study did. And I, for one, can just hear the “Yeah, right” reaction of cops in that precinct.

   And also plus, trafficking goes up in “legal” zones, so a higher proportion of prostitutes may be foreigners and even less likely to report.
3. 

   chigau

   Nov 18, 2017 8:21 PM

   Then there is the notion that rapes occur because the rapist has a desire to engage in sexual intercourse.
4. 

   chigau

   Nov 18, 2017 8:23 PM

   Rather than a desire to humiliate and harm their victim.
5. 

   Holms

   Nov 18, 2017 9:33 PM

   Researchers at a public research institute in the Netherlands discovered that when major cities in that country opened tippelzones, or areas where street prostitutes could work legally, reports of rape and sexual abuse declined by as much as 30 to 40 percent in the first two years after the zones were opened. In cities that licensed the prostitutes permitted to work in these tippelzones, rapes and sexual abuse dropped by as much as 40 percent, while the reductions in sexual violence were slightly lower in zones that did not enforce the licensing of sex workers.

   Not counting the “street prostitutes” of course, and why would we count them? They ask for it.

   I don’t think the prostitutes are being left out of that evaluation; rape and sexual abuse declined by 30 to 40% amongst prostitutes and non-prostitutes alike as far as I can tell from the verbiage of the article. Perhaps my impression is wrong, but it strikes me that your objection might be based on the idea that merely purchasing time with a prostitute is itself considered rape / sexual abuse. If that is the case, I find the last line of the article proper quite apposite: “Indeed, as the Dutch researchers note,“95 percent of the interviewed prostitutes report feeling safer within the tippelzone.””
6. 

   iknklast

   Nov 18, 2017 10:31 PM

   It’s interesting how easily people slide between “decriminalization” and “legalization” as if they are the same thing.
7. 

   Bruce Gorton

   Nov 18, 2017 11:19 PM

   I read the article and…

   Not counting the “street prostitutes” of course, and why would we count them? They ask for it.

   Where does it say the figures exclude sex workers?
8. 

   Steamshovelmama

   Nov 19, 2017 5:55 AM

   I’d like to see the evidence that there are fewer rapes in places where prostitutes are common compared to places they are rarer.

   This is one of those, “men are animals who need handling” arguments. In this case male libido is so intense that men cannot control it and must therefore be provided with an outlet lest society collapse. It’s insane, and utterly insulting to men. It also assumes that rape is always – or mostly – the result of sexual frustration. And I’d like to see the evidence for that too.
9. 

   John the Drunkard

   Nov 19, 2017 6:14 AM

   Well sure, the REPORTS decline. But can we re-bottle the genie about the problems of getting assaults reported in the first place? Especially by stigmatized victims like sex-workers.
10. 

    Dave Ricks

    Nov 19, 2017 7:27 AM

    The German IZA paper about Dutch tippelzones is one thing (Street Prostitution Zones and Crime, by Bisschop et al, 2015). What Allison Bass wrote about it is another thing (in her Huffpost article). And what Adam Khan tweeted is a slightly different thing (quoting Allison Bass).

    First I’ll correct a mistake that does not affect the arguments. Bass called the IZA paper “a new Dutch study” by “Researchers at a public research institute in the Netherlands,” but the cover page says:

    The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program.

    Now about the arguments, she misrepresents the paper two ways:

    1) She says the paper says what she has been saying, then she makes claims not supported by the paper; e.g. she quoted an escort she interviewed, “Sex work can be real preventative of sexual abuse — clients can indulge their fantasies with us rather than with other women or children.” Emphasis mine because the IZA paper makes no claims about children.

    2) The one quote she does take from the paper is out of context. Bass wrote:

    While the researchers were unable to pinpoint exactly which women were spared by the opening of the tippelzones, the researchers concluded that legalizing prostitution in these areas led “to a decrease in sexual violence on women more generally by providing an anonymous, appealing and easily accessible outlet for sex to otherwise violent individuals.”

    The IZA paper really said this paragraph:

    A second possibility is that opening a tippelzone leads to a decrease in sexual violence on women more generally by providing an anonymous, appealing and easily accessible outlet for sex to otherwise violent individuals. Under the theoretical predictions of subsection 2.2, a tippelzone may attract potential instigators of sexual abuse and rape but have the effect of diffusing sexual violence elsewhere in the city. If this type of substitution behavior occurs then the opening effect of tippelzones may reflect reductions in sexual abuse and rape on all women, not only on prostitutes. Without more precise data on the victims of sexual violence we can not separate these two hypotheses.

    In other words, Bass quoted the second of two hypotheses as a conclusion, when the complete paragraph says they cannot make that conclusion.

    Khan’s tweet was also misleading. Bass wrote, “When prostitution is decriminalized and regulated to some extent, as it is in the Dutch tippelzones, sexual predators are less likely to strike at random women,” and her sentence ended there. Khan quoted her sentence as, “When prostitution is decriminalized and regulated to some extent, as it is in the Dutch tippelzones, sexual predators are less likely to strike at random women and children.”

    I see Bass and Khan make these invalid arguments — especially bringing children into this fallaciously — and I think if the facts were on their side, they would make valid arguments instead.
11. 

    Freemage

    Nov 21, 2017 7:33 AM

    Wasn’t there also a study showing that child trafficking increased after decriminalization in Germany?

    Ah, yes, found it: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0305750X12001453