Buy hook or buy crook?

JAMES O'CONNOR/BRANDON SUN Enlarge Image

Street hawkers attempt to distribute cards for escort services recently on the Las Vegas Strip in April. Couples passing by brush them off. While prostitution in the city itself is illegal, there are legal brothels in some counties in Nevada.

"Roxanne, you don’t have to put on the red light

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Those days are over, you don’t have to sell your body to the night

Roxanne, you don’t have to wear that dress tonight

Walk the streets for money, you don’t care if it’s wrong or if it’s right"

— from the 1978 hit song "Roxanne," by The Police.

It’s thought that Police lead singer Sting wrote the song from the point of view of a man who falls in love with a prostitute.

He was inspired by the prostitutes strolling in a seedy part of Paris while the band was there for a gig.

I was inspired to write this column after visiting Las Vegas recently, where prostitutes are marketed as aggressively as the entertainers performing in the casinos.

And while street prostitution might not be rampant in Sin City, a stroll down The Strip — the six-kilometre section of Las Vegas Boulevard that features most of the major hotels and casinos — has aggressive hawkers pressing leaflets into palms of passersby promoting the various escort services available.

The graphic literature comes in leaflet form, and also in trading card sizes (mix and match? collect the whole set?).

They offer "totally nude," "full service" and "to your room in 20 minutes or less."

There are pizza companies that can’t match that speed. And their products come "all dressed."

But then I hail from a small Prairie city that officially has no prostitution problem.

"I have checked with our records department and they don’t know of any prostitution-related charges being laid as far back as our current system goes," said Brandon Police Service spokesperson Const. Ron Burgess. "As far as prostitution-related investigations go, I was advised that there are none currently being carried out. This information would suggest that prostitution is not currently a problem in the city of Brandon."

And while it isn’t a problem, it certainly does exist.

It’s no secret that every summer, there are a couple of streetwalkers strolling around a couple of downtown hotels. They are discreet, and work in the wee hours, but they are there.

It’s also no secret that some strippers who come to town will turn a trick or two.

And it’s clear for anyone to see online that several Winnipeg escorts offer services to Brandon. They will often set up shop in a hotel for a few days and run through a dozen or so clients.

But it’s nothing compared to the situation in Winnipeg, where entire city blocks are overrun with sex-trade workers day in and day out.

Massage parlours are also advertised in the provincial capital, along with escort services — albeit with a much softer sell than in Vegas. Police in The Peg do run regular sting operations and make arrests, as both types of businesses offer "happy endings."

Years ago, I recall visiting a massage parlour on Broadway the day after a bust and was greeted very warmly by the woman at the front desk, until I identified myself as a reporter.

I was then asked to leave. An unhappy ending.

In any event, as I now come from a comparatively chaste city, I was kinda shocked to see the panel trucks slowly cruising the Vegas strip advertising escort services on large billboards. And there were some very easily noticed ladies of the evening out on the boulevard after dark.

Vegas, baby, is definitely a place for adults only.

While in Vegas, news came of allegations that some of U.S. President Barack Obama’s Secret Service agents hired prostitutes prior to his appearance at a Latin America summit.

Also still in the news was fallout from a ruling by Ontario’s top court that it will now allow brothels, but still rules soliciting is illegal.

As reported in the Toronto Star, sex workers should be able to conduct business in homes and brothels, and to hire security so long as the relationship is not exploitative, but communicating for the purposes of prostitution should still be considered illegal, Ontario’s Court of Appeal has ruled.

While appeals could be launched — and Parliament has one year to redraft legislation — the ruling gives prostitutes the option to move indoors, where it can be much safer than working on the street.

And talk of legal brothels in Toronto is already filling editorial pages, blogs and talk shows.

In the Toronto Star, anti-prostitution groups called on the government to make it illegal for men to buy sexual services and to do more to support women economically so they don’t have to sell their bodies.

"Prostitution is inherently dangerous and the legal changes that are currently being made in Ontario will not change that," the Institute of Marriage and Family Canada said.

But it simply isn’t something that’s going to go away.

So it’s best society finds an appropriate way to deal with it.

A story in the Metro Toronto newspaper suggested the best-known way to regulate brothels is instituting a legal red-light district like Amsterdam’s. Coun. Giorgio Mammoliti, who last year suggested setting one up on the Toronto Islands, noted that the ideal location would be somewhere out of the way, suggesting the city look at industrial parks.

Any number of sites that fit that bill dot the GTA, including the Port Lands, which was also bandied about as a possible location for a future casino.

Hmm, prostitution and casinos.

Wasn’t that a fear mongered by those anti-casino forces in Brandon in the plebiscites we had on a gaming house?

But I digress.

Back in Toronto, Tim Lambrinos, executive director of the Adult Entertainment Association of Canada, also told Metro Toronto that a solution is to simply allow strip clubs to apply to add a brothel.

Nevada has sort of found a solution — sort of — to this age-old issue.

It’s the only U.S. state to allow some legal prostitution, as it has some regulated brothels. But prostitution outside these licensed brothels is illegal. That includes Las Vegas and, in theory, the "entertainment to your room" advertised in a hard-sell fashion on The Strip.

Ironically, Las Vegas has worked to expand tourism by attracting families.

But advertising for escort services appears to have the run of the place.

Back to Canada, where prostitution is legal — but some aspects surrounding it aren’t.

Communicating for the purpose of prostitution will land the offenders in hot water. Those convicted of communicating for the purpose could face a jail sentence of up to six months, a $2,000 fine, or both.

In Manitoba, the offender’s vehicles are seized immediately. And upon conviction, they may lose their vehicle.

Those convicted may also have to attend John School and stay out of areas known for prostitution. In fact, I was working as a press secretary to then provincial justice minister Vic Toews in 1998 when those laws first were announced.

The press conference was held in a police satellite office in a Manitoba Housing complex in Winnipeg’s North End. Right in the middle of the "low-track" for street prostitution.

Over the years, as a journalist covering crime and courts, I met several prostitutes. Some were drug addicts with no other options and a bleak future, others were smart women who felt they were the ones taking advantage of the dumb "johns."

So one might ask why this cat and mouse game continues? Why are some women allowed to work safely in brothels — which could also soon be legal workplaces in Canada — while others work the streets in the shadows?

Yet another class are allowed — nudge-nudge, wink-wink — to "entertain" in strangers’ hotel rooms. The lumbering Canadian legal system is on the right track as it works to make it safer for prostitutes to ply their trade in brothels.

Street prostitution is dangerous for women, not to mention detrimental to neighbourhoods. And while I’m generally a law-and-order kind of right-wing guy, sometimes the law is an ass and needs a good spanking.

Forget the Victorian attitudes, or some religious extremism, prostitution isn’t going away and needs to be regulated, not refuted.

It’s then up to each person to make the moral decision as to whether to purchase the services of a prostitute.

Republished from the Brandon Sun print edition April 21, 2012