If we are to draw a parallel – the police can in many countries arrest most “customers” of sites like thepiratebay or megaupload, yet those sites still attract quite a lot of said customers.

How can being able to work as a prostitute without fear of prosecution mean that they can not determine their own livelihoods?

Try running a grocery store if the police arrest everyone who tries to buy groceries.

How can being able to work as a prostitute without fear of prosecution mean that they can not determine their own livelihoods?

The article makes many interesting points, but it is clearly an argument for full legalization. Which is what you also seem to advocate.
I do not have a strong opinion for or against legalization, but, I do believe most people and mainly most governments are most definitely far from considering full legalization.

So given the choice between criminalizing the victim, or criminalizing the customer, I think the choice is clear.

A person who pays for sex with a prostitute is never the victim, no matter how you spin it – no one forces anyone to pay for sex. However many prostitues are indeed victims.

The example made in the article, where a client was able to help a trafficking victim, and would in theory be unable to do so under Swedish laws, is laughable. Anonymous tip lines exist for this type of situation.

Also, the idea that this type of law somehow drives away clients from prostitutes who really need them, is laughable. The only thing that drives away customers from street walking prostitutes in this country is 8 months of cold winter. Also, it became illegal to drive through the most popular prostitute street in Stockholm, making any car on that street extra suspicious – that probably had a bigger effect than the law itself.

So while we wait for the world (still waiting since the 15th century?) to make things legal, this type of law might be helpful to those who are victims right NOW.

As for exporting or importing anything to the baltics, I doubt that even full legalization would solve the problem of women from the baltic states being sold into the sex trade.

Also note that I do not really have a good insight into how well the Swedish model works, or whether it in fact works as intended. I merely suggested that it is a better option than the US model of criminalizing the seller.

That pretty much makes them bad cops as well…

But rejoice, New Yorkers! You are safe from condom-carrying women and 32 ounce sodas.   

See this article.

http://goodenoughmummy.typepad.com/good_enough_mum/2012/04/why-the-swedish-model-is-a-bad-idea.html

This doesn’t mean that prositution is without its very vocal detractors.  There is still debate about where a brothel should or should not operate, and the challenges of street workers in otherwise quiet residential areas.  But I’d sure as hell rather live in my country than yours.

That’s the point of laws so over-broad they technically criminalized almost everyone: they apply to whoever the cops want them to apply to, as long as those people are weak.

If they targeted the strong – people with the resources to hire competent lawyers, the support to fight the case all the way to the top, and the eloquence and middle-class+ appearance to look like innocent victims on the nightly news – then the laws would rapidly be overturned, and couldn’t be used to target the weak anymore.

I mean, seriously, going after prostitutes is like arresting heroin addicts. It helps no one and just creates more problems. Oh wait…

Not endorsing this view, just pointing out the implications of how some people think about all this. That’s what we are up against.

I think about that law every time I go to a favorite watering hole of mine all the way over near Avenue C in the East Village.  There are TWO huge fishbowls full of NYC condoms, and safe-sex flyers aimed at just about everybody.  The clientelle is everything from daytime drinkers to rockers, sex workers getting a Prostitute’s Lunch between shifts (rum and coke and a smoke) to the occasional junkie.  BUT, I guess they pay the cops well, because even though there is usually at least one patrol car on the block, even the obviously-impaired (ie a stubling-down junkie) are not being targeted. 

OTOH the cops are CONSTANTLY harassing transgendered/gay youth outside of a halfway house/shelter in Queens specifically designated for them.  Young, just coming out, and interested in sex?  TOO BAD, no condoms for you (said in a Soup Nazi voice).  Even in the middle of winter, when these kids were bundled head to toe in the thickest, least-revealing clothing that they owned, they were being accused of “soliciting” pretty much for being outside and happening to have condoms on them.

Heck, I am an Eternal Optimist and usually have a few Bloomberg Raincoats in my Timbuk2 bag, and I think the same can be said for any sexually-active (and the hopeful) in NYC.

The NYPD as well as every other City agency is famous for selective enforcement of laws.  Don’t get me started on how the Health Department shut down my favorite new ramen place for a weekend because the naive Japanese owner (new in town) didn’t know he was being shaken down for a free meal.

So your argument about this special interest thing doesn’t hold water.  Special interests benefit only themselves to the detriment of the public good.  This benefits the public good (if you believe in a justice system that requires a protection of probable cause standards) and this group is expending their own resources to that end.

Is it fair to say they have a pecuniary interest in doing so? Like when we notice that a pharmacology manufacturer advocates for something that helps their business? 

I think the issue here is revealing how the police are conducting themselves as they stop and search women or transgendered folk on the basis of what they are wearing and whether they have condoms in their possession and using that to prosecute them of the crime of prostitution.  What we’re talking about is the steamrolling of “probable cause” standards to its lowest levels in order to effectuate an illegal search of a person and then using the most medieval legal arguments (possession of condoms) as “proof” and “evidence” to arrest and jail someone.

Keep in mind that most impoverished people do NOT have the resources (an overworked public defender does not mean much) nor the time to mount a defense and carry it through a jury trial.  What will happen is that these folk will take a plea from the DA and suffer through some minimized yet still actual punishment (some incarceration and/or probation and/or work-release and an entry in their criminal record) in which they admit guilt (no contest means practically the same thing) and then try to move on with their lives after being so injured by the state.

Police are finding that it is easier to arrest “normal poor people” than actual criminals.  They don’t fight you, they just bend over, take punishment and abuse, and allow you to meet quotas more quickly.  Predators seek out the weak, not the strong.

If cops can bust women with such specious arguments, imagine what they do to young men carrying some cash (drug dealer!), people driving with tinted windows (hiding something! concealing contraband!), the disabled (terrorists trying to look innocent!), babies (probably filled with explosives! search them!), the elderly (their colostomy bag may be full of contraband! disconnect it at TSA checkpoints!), people with black hair (probably illegal immigrants! demand proof of citizenship anywhere in the USA!)

The slippery slope won’t get tilted back flat when we’re all too busy to look up from our smartphones even as we become more aware of it because of our smartphones.