Sir, – I cannot be the only person fascinated by the logic employed by those vociferously demanding a change in the law so that the “selling” of sex will be decriminalised while the “buying” will become a criminal offence. We are told with all the breezy confidence and bluster usually employed to ballast featherweight arguments that this change will decrease the number of men tempted to avail of prostitutes and therefore lead to a general decrease in the amount of women alleged to be trafficked into the jurisdiction to work as prostitutes.
Let’s just put aside the decidedly mixed empirical evidence from those (stunningly few) jurisdictions that have followed this course and look around for some comparative reference here.
For argument’s sake, and without taking any moral position on the rights or wrongs of commercial sex, if I was to put forward the notion that decriminalising the sale of, say, heroin, but retaining the tariff for its purchase was sound policy on the grounds that such a change would inevitably lead to a reduction in demand and, therefore, sequentially, a reduction in supply, I’d like to think that, at some stage, someone would gently point out that buying heroin is already a crime and it seems to have no impact whatsoever on the numbers of those in the business of selling it.
I’d like to think that my sceptic would go a little further and advance the utterly self-evident point that in the event of there being no penalty whatsoever for engaging in the practice of selling heroin that more, not fewer, people are likely to engage in such transactions.
Decriminalising the sale of something of which we disapprove, while criminalising its purchase, will not lead to a reduction in demand.
If we accept that there’s no real “supply-demand” logic to this proposal and that, if anything, it’s actually more likely to actually increase the number of prostitutes operating, then we must surrender to the nagging suspicion that there are other motives lurking behind the proffered one.
It’s genuinely difficult to avoid the conclusion that we have rather too many quangos and advocacy groups whose contributions in this area are marked by a conspicuous inclination to heap opprobrium – and penalties – on the men involved, while insisting that all the women involved, often despite their protestations and testimonies, are “victims”.
We are being unceremoniously hustled along toward the enactment of a logically incoherent, epically unfair and unworkable law.
We are entitled to test proposed laws against logic and the record in other comparable jurisdictions and we are entitled to have proper scrutiny of proposals for law that appear to be ideologically derived and driven.
Those strictures must apply as precisely to the promptings of gender studies departments and unverified – and unverifiable – privately commissioned “reports”.
I’m not sure that prostitution should be an indictable crime at all. But I’m absolutely certain that if it is going to be an indictable crime, then it should be for both parties involved or for neither. – Yours, etc,
CATHAL MacCARTHY,
O’Connell Avenue,
Limerick.