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Prostitution With A Specific Focus On The Essay

¶ … prostitution with a specific focus on the Nevada prostitution situation. We mainly focus on the reasons as to why prostitution was illegalized, the public health concerns regarding prostitution, prostitution and STDs and STIs, the development of laws regarding prostitution, prostitutes and STD's, why prostitution is legal in Nevada, the use of body for sex as well as whether Illegal prostitution lowers STD's, AIDS, HIV. Also discussed is how illegalizing/legalizing prostitution helps in the creation of body integrity if incase such a thing is practical. In the state of Nevada is noted by Levenkron (2007) to have developed during the 19th century during the period of Gold Rush. During this time, the population was disproportionately male. As a result of the dearth of women, the availability of prostitutes and engagement in prostitution was considered to be a vital commodity. The residents of the state soon developed a tolerant attitude to the engagement in prostitution. During the later half of the 19th century, several provisions were introduced in order to restrict the operations of the brothels. These restrictions included the minimum distance of the brothels from schools and churches for instance. The tolerant attitude is noted to have been caused by the fact that prostitution worked well with tourism and gambling, the two main economic basis of the region other than agriculture and querying.

It is worth noting that originally, the Casino owners in Nevada were opposed the presence and operation of the brothels. They argued that the brothels would give Nevada a bad reputation and even deter tourists. The casino owners even organized a lobby group to campaign for the ultimate closure of the brothels. The lobby Group then managed in 1971 to secure a legislation that ultimately prohibited the granting of licenses to brothels in various countries whose population of over 250,000 inhabitants (Levenkron,2007). The interpretation of this law was done inversely because it implicitly permitted smaller counties to operate brothels.

In 1978, Nevada's Supreme Court confirmed this specific interpretation even thoughb it defined brothels as a form of nuisance

A telephone survey carried out later in 1986 indicated that 66% of the respondents in northern Nevada had a belief that the residents of each county should be at liberty to decide if they want or they don't want brothels to be permitted. A referendum carried out in 2002 however revealed that only a single county favored the amendment of the existing legislation of prostitution and brothels

.At the moment, there are a total of thirty six legal brothels in Nevada

The background of legalization of brothels in Nevada

According to Levenkron (2007), the legalization of prostitution Nevada can be seen or regarded as a direct result of the prostitution that took place in the area when the first settlers arrived in that region. There was a perception that prostitution is an important element of the local history, an act that led to the development of more tolerant approaches to the issue. Brothels form part of the Nevada folklore. Legalization was viewed as a process that would enable the supervision and control of the industry and prevents organized criminals from gaining control of the industry.

Prostitution was illegalized for various reasons. The reasons are however mainly pegged on morality and public health concerns

.In this essay we discuss the issue of prostitution with a specific focus on the Nevada prostitution situation. We mainly focus on the reasons as to why prostitution was illegalized, the public health concerns regarding prostitution, prostitution and STDs and STIs, the development of laws regarding prostitution, prostitutes and STD's, why prostitution is legal in Nevada, the use of body for sex as well as whether Illegal prostitution lowers STD's, AIDS, HIV.Also discussed is how illegalizing/legalizing prostitution helps in the creation of body integrity if incase such a thing is practical.

Legalization or the decriminalization of prostitution is noted to amount to the sanctioning of various aspects of the sex industry. The concept of legalizing/decriminalizing of the sex industry involves the conversion of brothels, massage parlors, sex clubs as well as other sites used in prostitution activities into completely legitimate venues in which commercial sexual acts are inherently allowed to legally flourish with minimal restraint. Individuals believe that in legalizing or decriminalizing prostitution, these individuals/governments are indeed dignifying as well as professionalizing the players in the prostitution industry. Raymond (2003) notes that in actual sense, the process or act of legalizing or decriminalizing prostitution does not...

What is dignified is the sex industry as a whole.
The second reason as to why prostitution has not been legalized in Nevada is because it promotes sex trafficking. Decriminalized or legalized prostitution industry is noted to be one of the main causes of sex trafficking. One of the arguments that are advanced for the legalization of prostitution in places like Nevada and Netherlands is that it would help in ending the exploitation of the desperate illegal immigrant women who are often trafficked for use in prostitution. A report by Budapest Group (1999,p.11) indicated that 80% of all the women in the Netherland's brothels are sourced or trafficked from other nations. Earlier on, a report by the International Organization of Migration (IOM) clearly indicated that in Netherlands, close to 70% of all of trafficked women were sourced from the Central and Eastern European Countries (IOM, 1995,p.4).Countries like Netherlands are noted to promote themselves as champions of the anti-trafficking policies and yet they are the same ones who remove various legal impediments to acts of pimping, prostitution as well as brothels.According to Bureau NRM (2002,p.75) within a year since the Netherlands government lifted a ban on brothels, there was an increase in the number of sex trafficking victims. The German government effectively recognized prostitution as a legitimate job in 2002. The promotion of prostitution, brothels as well as pimping is fully legal in Germany. However a study by an NGO indicated that as early as 1993, close to 75% of all the women in the Germany sex industry were from other countries like Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay as well as other South American countries as noted by Altink (1993,p.33).After the Berlin wall fell, most brothel owners reported that nine out of ten women in the German prostitution circuit were from Eastern Europe

Most non-governmental organizations reported that most of these foreign women could not have entered the German territory without some form of facilitation. It is therefore obvious that most of these prostitutes were trafficked from other nations since it is impossible for these por women to successfully facilitate their own journey/migration, underwrite their cost of travel as well as travel documents as well as set up their business without some form of external help.

The third reason as to why prostitution has been illegalized in Nevada is because legalization or decriminalization of prostitution does not in any way help in controlling the sex industry. It actually helps in expanding it. This argument was advanced by Raymond (2003) when she noted that contrary to the usual claims that legalization or decriminalization of prostitution would help in regulating the expansion of the vice and then subsequently bring in under control, prostitution in actual sense accounts for 5% of the Netherlands' economy as noted in Daley (2001,p.4). In Nevada it is estimated that prostitution to have an impact of close to $400 million on Nevada's economy (Ramirez,2008). Daley (2004,p.4) noted that over the years as pimping became completely legal and brothels became decriminalized in countries like Netherlands, the sex industry expanded by close to 25%. In these countries and states, women are displayed on windows while dressed scantily and then offered for sale as mere commodities for the meal consumption. It is worth noting that most of these women are from other nations and are most likely victims of human/sex trafficking as noted by Daley (2001,p.4).There are several officially recognized organization and associations of sex traders/brothel owners such as Nevada Brothel Owners' Association who consult as well as collaborate with the various governments in order to further their interests as well as promote prostitutions within their areas of jurisdiction. In Netherlands and other destinations, there are other associations like the Cooperating Consultation of Operators of Window Prostitution, the Association of Operators of Relaxation Businesses as well as the Man/Woman and Prostitution Foundation which is a lobby group of men who frequently use women in the sex industry and whose main agenda is to make prostitution s well as the use of the prostitutes' services a more acceptable and openly discussible phenomenon. Their main aim is however to protect the interest of the clients as noted by NRM Bureau (2002, p.115).Some countries such as Germany have noted the death of women who want to work in the legal prostitution sector. They have therefore come up with ways of marketing these women in order to allow them a legal and yet controlled access to their markets as noted by the Bureau NRM (2002,p.140).

The legalization of commercial sex in the State of Victoria in Australia has been noted to have led to a massive expansion of the…

Sources used in this document:
References

Altink, S. (1995). Stolen Lives: Trading Women into Sex and Slavery. London: Scarlet Press.

Brent, BG Hausbeck, K (2005).Violence and Legalized Brothel Prostitution in Nevada Examining Safety, Risk, and Prostitution Policy. JOURNAL OF INTERPERSONAL VIOLENCE, Vol. 20 No. 3, March 2005 270-295 DOI: 10.1177/0886260504270333

Budapest Group (1999). The Relationship Between Organized Crime and Trafficking in Aliens. Austria: International Centre for Migration Policy Development. June 1999.

Bureau NRM (2002). Trafficking in Human Beings: First Report of the Dutch National Rapporteur. The Hague. November 2002.
Levenkron, N (1997).The legalization of prostitution: myth and reality: A Comparative Study of Four Countries. http://hotline.org.il/english/pdf/The_Legalization_Of_Prostitution_English.pdf
Ramirez, J (2008).Feeling the Pinch.Nevada's brothels hit hard times. http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2008/06/15/feeling-the-pinch.html
Sullivan, M. And Jeffreys, S. (2001). Legalising Prostitution is Not the Answer: the Example of Victoria, Australia. Coalition Against Trafficking in Women, Australia and USA. Available at http://www.catwinternational.org
Tiggeloven, C. (2001,). Child Prostitution in the Netherlands. Available at http://www.nw.nl/hotspots/html/netherlands011218.html.
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