Sherry F. Colb, JD, Professor of Law and Judge Frederick Lacey Scholar at Rutgers Law School, wrote in a Dec. 17, 2006 e-mail to ProCon.org that:
"Prostitution should not be a crime. Prostitutes are not committing an inherently harmful act. While the spread of disease and other detriments are possible in the practice of prostitution, criminalization is a sure way of exacerbating rather than addressing such effects. We saw this quite clearly in the time of alcohol prohibition in this country.
...What makes prostitution a 'victimless crime' in the sense that no one is necessarily harmed by it is that there are consenting adults involved."
Harry Browne, 1996 and 2000 Libertarian Party Candidate for President, wrote in the 2000 The Great Libertarian Offer that:
"It's not difficult for a free society to keep violent crime to a minimum — with little intrusion on individual liberty and at relatively low cost. But governments also prosecute 'victimless' crimes. These are acts that (1) are illegal, (2) involve no intrusion on anyone's person or property, and (3) about which no injured party files a complaint with the police. These acts include such things as prostitution, gambling, and drug use. They are activities in which all parties participate voluntarily....
Either individuals are responsible for their own acts — including their choices of relationships — or the government is responsible for everything you do. There is no middle ground. Giving government the power to outlaw consensual activity allows the politicians to impose any laws they want on you. And they will use that power."
San Francisco Bay Guardian in the Jan. 28, 2004 editorial "Decriminalize Sex Work" stated:
"San Francisco alone spends tens of millions of dollars a year cracking down on victimless crimes like gambling, drug use, and prostitution. The cops arrest sex workers; the Sheriff's Office has to process them and pay an average of $94 a day to keep them in jail. The District Attorney's Office has to pour resources into prosecuting the cases, and since many of the people arrested don't have the money for private lawyers, the Public Defender's Office has to defend them.
...Law enforcement efforts haven't made a dent in the city's sex work industry and never will. But careful decriminalization, combined with strict regulation, could and would end much of the exploitation that takes place in the underground economy."
Sue Bradford, Member of New Zealand's Parliament, in a Dec. 12, 2005 speech to Parliament, said:
"We believed, and still do, that it was completely wrong to go on living with an archaic law which criminalised generations of sex workers, mainly women, for a victimless so called crime in the name of antique moralities shared by only some of the population."
The National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC), in the 1992 Female Juvenile Prostitution: Problem and Response stated:
"MYTH 2 - Prostitution is a victimless crime.
Prostitution creates a setting whereby crimes against men, women, and children become a commercial enterprise.... It is an assault when he/she forces a prostitute to engage in sadomasochistic sex scenes. When a pimp compels a prostitute to submit to sexual demands as a condition of employment, it is exploitation, sexual harassment, or rape -- acts that are based on the prostitute’s compliance rather than her consent. The fact that a pimp or customer gives money to a prostitute for submitting to these acts does not alter the fact that child sexual abuse, rape, and/or battery occurs; it merely redefines these crimes as prostitution."
The Pontifical Council for the Pastoral Care of the Migrants and Itinerant People, in the June 20-21, 2006 "First International Meeting of Pastoral Care for the Liberation of Women of the Street," wrote:
"Who is the victim?
She is a human being, in many cases crying for help because selling her body on the street is not what she would choose to do voluntarily. She is torn apart, she is dead psychologically and spiritually. Each person has a different story, mainly one of violence, abuse, mistrust, low self esteem, fear, lack of opportunities. Each has experienced deep wounds that need to be healed."
Joseph Parker, Clinical Director of the Lola Greene Baldwin Foundation, wrote the Aug. 4, 1998 "How Prostitution Works," which stated:
"People who have had luckier lives, as well as those who profit from the sex industry in some way, frequently refer to prostitution and pornography as 'victim-less crimes'. They point to a tiny fraction of sex workers who actually might be involved by choice. They selectively read history to find some tiny minority, somewhere, at some time, who gained something in the sex business. The very selectiveness of their attention indicates that, on some level, they know that for almost everyone, involvement in the sex industry is a terrible misfortune. As many an old cop will say, 'Anyone who thinks prostitution is a victimless crime, hasn’t seen it up close.'"
Andrew Arena, JD, Special Agent in Charge of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in Detroit, was quoted in the Aug. 16, 2006 FBI press release "Halting Human Trafficking: 31 Arrests in Major Prostitution Ring" as having said:
"Illegal prostitution is not a victimless crime. The FBI is part of the apparatus in place to protect people, sometimes even from their own poor choices."
