Pubdate: Tue, 24 Jul 2007 Source: Winnipeg Free Press (CN MB) Copyright: 2007 Winnipeg Free Press Contact: http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/502 Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/decrim.htm (Decrim/Legalization) STREETS FOR WALKING THE people who are trying to make homes on Magnus Avenue, the scene of a recent spate of violence unusual even by Winnipeg standards, have various explanations for it and offer various suggestions about what might be done to clean up their street and their area. One explanation involves the proliferation of crack houses, another the proliferation of prostitution. Both result, at least in part, from police actions. When the police crack down on drug dens on one street, the dealers and addicts move to another -- the criminal world operates on the law of supply and demand more rigourously than do many legitimate businesses. The same applies to prostitution. You can move the prostitutes and their customers from one street to another, but you cannot remove the supply that one offers and the demand the other makes. Crack houses may be an insoluble problem until society gets a better handle on how to deal with drug abuse, and that seems likely to take some time. The problem that Magnus Avenue residents face from prostitution, however, could be dealt with quickly and the failure to deal with it can be laid squarely on the doorsteps of elected politicians too fearful, or too hypocritical, to legalize, license and regulate what is essentially the most victimless of crimes -- consensual sex as a business transaction. As long as solicitation for the purposes of prostitution remains a crime, police enforcement of it will only move the problem from one street, one area, to another. Even as residents of Magnus Avenue were wondering why Winnipeg can't create a legal red-light district and so make at least one of their problems disappear, federal members of Parliament were arguing about whether the law should hold prostitutes or their customers more culpable. The Conservative government appears to have no inclination to reform these pointlessly punitive laws in any way at all. Liberal and New Democratic MPs say the law should be rewritten to put the more severe punishment on johns and pimps, and perhaps there could be a case made for that. It is, however, the wrong case. The case that needs to be argued, the change in the law that needs to be made is to completely legalize and adequately regulate the business of prostitution. If society cannot be rid of it -- it is notoriously the world's oldest profession -- then it can at least make it safer for workers and less intrusive on the lives of people who would rather not see it. That would make life better and more secure for prostitutes and make the streets of Canada's inner cities, such as Magnus Avenue, safer and happier for the people who live on them. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake