Article by Colonel Nogov on Oct. 2, 2015
Buyer Beware
In October of 2014 the Seattle police department implemented the “Buyer Beware” program. A program to crack down on the solicitation of prostitution by focusing arrests away from prostitutes and onto customers, aka Johns. The program was heavily advertised in local media outlets.
This new tactic in the immoral crusade to crack down on prostitution is justified, in the minds of the crusaders that is, because prostitutes are the “victims” of men paying them for sex.
“Police, city attorneys and judges across the county are all working to shift that dynamic to hold men accountable for the harms caused to the mostly girls and women caught up in the sex trade”, reported the Seattle times from comments by King county prosecutor Dan Satterberg.
The police claim as one of their motives is to catch men engaging in soliciting girls under the age of 18, but also freely admit it’s difficult for them to actually find anyone engaged in this type of behavior, so they conduct seductive online sting operations posing as teenage girls to titillate, entice, and entrap weak willed men. Is it so surprising that there are men out there who’s wills are so weak they couldn’t resist the overt sexual advances of a teenage girl? Manipulating a weak willed individual into engaging in activity they normally wouldn’t engage in without the manipulation is a simple thing.
Most of the arrests for solicitation are against consenting adults with the exception of the few entrapment cases.
“2014 was the first year patronizing charges outpaced prostitution charges — and they did it in a big way”, said King County Senior Deputy Prosecutor Val Richey.
Effects
In October of 2014, the month and year of implementation, the rate of rape shot up 150% compared to October 2013. November 2014 the rate of rape shot up 225% compared to November 2013. December 2014 the rate of rape shot up 80% compared to December 2013. Statistics for 2015 are not yet available from Seattle.gov.
The rape rate from January 2013 to September 2013 compared to the rape rate from January 2014 to September 2014 were nearly identical with the rate in 2014 being up a slight 4% for the nine month period. Once the “Buyer Beware” program was implemented in October and the correlating jump in rape for the final three months of 2014, the final three months of 2014 compared to the final three months of 2013, the rape rate was up 151%. That brought the year over year rate up 28%.
It is impossible to definitively determine that the spike in the rape rate was a result of the “Buyer Beware” program, but the correlation is pretty damn compelling.
Prostitution is not a crime. It is only made “illegal” by government decree. Consenting adults engaged in sexual activity regardless of whether it’s within a marriage, a long term relationship, a one night stand, in exchange for rent and grocery money, or any other non-coerced circumstance is not a crime. The government’s enforcement of imaginary “crimes” has caused an increase in actual crime: rape.
The government and their media propagandists try to justify assault and false imprisonment of consenting adults by claiming women who engage in prostitution are “victims”. They make the exaggerated claims that most or all of these women are “sex slaves” or are in some other way manipulated into being prostitutes. The government’s repeated attempts to verify that claim with facts have repeatedly failed. With unsubstantiated claims in hand, the government uses the term “Sex trafficking” and calls anything remotely related to the “illegal” sex industry criminal whether it’s voluntary or not.
Here are a few data points which makes it pretty hard for me to believe the government’s other data points. Government, after all, has a vested interest in keeping prostitution illegal just like keeping drugs illegal; they’re both easy sells to the public and big money makers for them.
“The average annual income of a U.S. prostitute = $290,000” (tax free, I might add. No one reports their prostitution income)
“Percent who want to quit but can’t due to lack of money = 92%” (seriously, after making $290,000 per year tax free?)
“average price per trick = $49.45” (They’re making $290,000 a year at $49.45 per trick? Let’s check some math. That calculates out to 16.2 tricks per day, everyday of the year with no days off. Could a woman even survive that kind of abuse for a short while? The sex and hours.)
I’m not suggesting that forced sexual slavery doesn’t exist or that runaway and/or sexually abused teens don’t engage in prostitution. I’m certain it occurs in a small percentage of instances. This is, of course, tragic. The data on it is unreliable, comprised of mostly guesses and assumptions and anecdotal evidence. The hysterics regarding alleged sex trafficking as some sort of worldwide epidemic is all hype and no substance. Reason just put out a great article on it.
The real tragedy is government’s persecution of people engaged in any type of consensual sexual activity the government doesn’t approve of. If anything their efforts should focus solely on catching the small percentage of instances where true criminal activity takes place; involuntary prostitution and rape.
The last time the rape rate spiked in Seattle was 2012 when the government raided and shut down a dozen massage parlors that were fronts for prostitution.
There is a correlation between prostitution and rape. When the government cracks down on prostitution, rape rates spike.
This latest tactic of arresting more “Johns” is the government grasping at straws in an attempt to solve a “problem” created by the government itself. The unintended consequences is that more women are being raped because of it.
The real solution is to abolish government. The freeing of humanity solves most of the problems created by government. But short of that, the solution is, that the so-called moralists who are actually altogether immoral won’t even consider, is to legalize prostitution. Unregulated, unlicensed, untaxed. Prostitution is nothing more than consensual sex between adults. This solves the two main problems with criminalizing prostitution, 1) The freedom issue(moral), and 2) it eliminates the black market and any criminal activity associated with it(pragmatic).
