an attempt to make prostitution illegal would fly directly in the face of the spirit, if not necessarily the letter of the Bedford decision sending the gov't back to the drawing board. I believe any law they try to pass, they will run by the SCOC before enacting so hopefully they can act as a brake against excessive stupidity
The SCoC decision specifically dealt with the issue of the laws in place that effectively endangered people otherwise engaged in lawful activities, it did not say that those activities were constitutionally protected. It used the lawful nature of prostitution as the starting point, and decided the other laws were unconstitutional as a result.
BUT, if prostitution was made illegal, that starting point would no longer exist, and
THEN the laws regarding solicitation, living off the avails and bawdy houses would be constitutionally valid.
There are two simple routes the government can take to address the problem:
(A) Make prostitution illegal completely. This would eliminate all constitutional problems with any other laws they pass that relate to prostitution.
(B) Target the clients. The constitutional issues that apply to laws regarding the selling of sex raised in the recent court case do not apply to the buying of sex.
The problem with (B) in isolation is that it could encounter a similar challenge, in that you would have one set of laws making it illegal to use a lawful service. This in not an issue in Sweden because they don't have a constitution like we do, but it may be one here. How the court will interpret that is not as clear however, since you cannot demonstrate a damage to the target of the laws when the target is the buyer and not the seller. So, what we will probably see is a hybrid of A and B, and I think it will look like this:
If I was the government, and was determined to have some sort of prohibition in place that allowed me maximum flexibility with enforcement I would first of all make prostitution a crime, but not one that carried a serious penalty. That would allow the police to stop the providers when they found them, but do it with intervention (compulsory attending courses, supervision, social service intervention, etc, with escalating penalties if someone did not "get the message"). By having prostitution as a minor crime, all gloves would then be off for anything related to it, which would mean that the government could turn things such as pandering, procurement, pimping, and using the services of prostitutes into major crimes that carried serious penalties (mandatory minimums for example). That would allow police to come down hard on the demand for prostitution, and soft on the supply of prostitution, which would fit well politically with societies general view of the dynamics involved in the industry. They could sell the idea to the electorate that this scheme would address the real source of the social problem by aggressively attacking the demand, while at the same time rehabilitating the "victims".
peace
